Early admissions to Harvard plummet amid antisemitism scandal

Several high school seniors said they removed Harvard from their list of prospective colleges because of the university’s handling of antisemitism.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Early admissions to Harvard declined by 17% to pre-pandemic lows, as reported by The New York Post.

Harvard College accepted 692 students for the Class of 2028 from a pool of 7,921 applicants. The acceptance rate was 8.7%, up from 7.6% last year.

The decline coincides with the scandal regarding the failure of the Ivy League administration to deal with rising antisemitism and the widely criticized testimony by the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT before Congress.

Although another factor for Harvard’s declining early decision applications could be connected with the Supreme Court’s ruling that part of its affirmative action admissions policy was unconstitutional, it’s clear that, at least in a few cases, the university’s policy on dealing with antisemitism was a factor.

A college preparatory coaching service, Admissions Village, told CNN that at least two students removed Harvard from their list of colleges because of the university’s faulty handling of antisemitism following October 7th.

Similarly, a student who had applied at the University of Pennsylvania was considering pulling her application following President Liz Magill’s testimony before Congress until she received the news of Magill’s resignation.

The University of Pennsylvania has seen an increase in early decision applications, as well as Duke and Columbia.

The US House Committee on Education and the Workforce launched an investigation in November into campus antisemitism and questioned university presidents Claudine Gay of Harvard, Elizabeth Magill of Penn, and Sally Kornbluth of MIT.

The hearing inspired widespread criticism, particularly when each of the three college presidents refused to say that calls for Jewish genocide violated their institution’s harassment code.

Despite attempts to walk back the disastrous testimony, Liz Magill resigned from her position as president of the University of Pennsylvania.

Although there were calls for Claudine Gay to also resign from her position at Harvard, with the backing of the faculty, Gay remains as the president of the elite Ivy League university.

Just days after the Hamas October 7th massacre, during which terrorists engaged in a campaign of slaughter, rape, torture, and mutilation, killing 1,200 people and taking 240 hostages, dozens of Harvard student groups signed a statement blaming Israel for Hamas atrocities.

The statement said, “We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”

campus antisemitismgaza warHarvardOctober 7th massacre