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College Admits 13.4 Percent of Early-Action Applicants
The College has admitted 13.4 percent of early-action applicants to the class of 2023, down slightly from 14.5 percent admitted from the early-action pool last year. Of the 6,958 students who applied through the program, 935 were admitted. ( Last year , …
Coastal Banks Shed Risky Mortgages—Putting the Financial System at Risk
Warming oceans—and the storms and rising sea levels they bring—will have their most severe impact on the southeastern shoreline of the United States, from the Texas Gulf Coast up to the Carolina Outer Banks. Mortgage lenders in the area have taken note. …
“Attacking the Concept of Debt”
Only a few years ago, Douglas Jones, who worked night shifts as a security guard at a nursing home in Roxbury, was hesitant to spend even $10 more than his typical budget allowed. Payments on his student loan debt were being withdrawn directly from his …
The Blue Garden
In the Gilded Age, Newport, Rhode Island, became the summer playground of the American upper class. Vanderbilts and Astors built mansions (“cottages”) along Bellevue Avenue, each trying to outshine the others in magnificence. Yet, flying in the face of …
Issue: July-August 2022
Fixing the COVID-19 Swab Supply Chain
In the United States and globally, the inability to test large numbers of people for COVID-19 has severely hampered diagnosis by clinicians and the data-gathering and modeling efforts of epidemiologists. But the shortage does not involve testing capacity, …
Controlling AI Influence over Consumers
Consumer-facing artificial intelligence—algorithms that adjust product pricing based on what they know about a buyer—could, in some circumstances, inappropriately take advantage of the public, argue a pair of Harvard Law School scholars who are assessing …
Issue: March-April 2024
Harvard Reports a $298-Million Surplus and Details Endowment Changes
Harvard has recorded its sixth consecutive budget surplus, some $298 million, up from a $196-million surplus in the prior year, according to the University’s financial report for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2019, published today. From fiscal 2014 …
Off the Shelf
For some serious beach reading: Maile Meloy ’94 returns to writing fiction for adults with Do Not Become Alarmed (Riverhead Books, $27.00). Rapid and absorbing, if sometimes schematic, it follows a family cruise vacation gone wrong, and charts the waters …
Issue: July-August 2017
Happy Returns
A s the punt hurtles through the sky, freshman Justice Shelton-Mosley ’19 stands at the Harvard 14-yard-line, 40 yards downfield from the line of scrimmage. In many ways, his return began long before the ball was snapped: he has assiduously watched film …
Issue: September-October 2018
Dirt Flies
Construction is proceeding rapidly at the commercial enterprise research campus in Allston , where a hotel and apartment and office/laboratory towers (above) will rise alongside a University conference center. South of the Stadium, on North Harvard …
Issue: May-June 2024
Ivy League Announces No Sports in Fall
The first domino has fallen. The Ivy League announced today that athletic competition will not resume during the upcoming fall semester, becoming the first in Division I to shelve fall sports. The news comes days after the University announced a …
Yearning for an Upswing
Rereading, while in self-imposed quarantine, the jittery U.S.A. trilogy by John Dos Passos about the America of 100 years ago—a cynical, fractious, increasingly extremist place disillusioned with the rich, the powerful, and the media—produces a jarring …
Issue: November-December 2020
Joseph Aldy
When Joseph Aldy trekked up Mount Kilimanjaro with his father in 2000, he was a long way from the farm in Kentucky where he grew up—but close to the things that matter to him. Aldy is an economist who works on energy and climate-change policy. He loves to …
Issue: March-April 2012
Legacies’ Legacy
If legacy preferences in admissions—an advantage for alumni children applying to college—end soon, historians will identify two 2023 nails in the coffin. The first is the Supreme Court’s June decision outlawing affirmative action in admissions. Because …
Issue: November-December 2023
Fairfield Porter
In 1975, Fairfield Porter, A.B. 1928, accepted a commission for the Harvard Club of New York to paint former club president Alfred (Al) Gordon, A.B. 1923, M.B.A. ’25, whose portrait would join those of previous presidents lining the walls. Eschewing the …
Issue: September-October 2024