Harvard Admissions Cuts Its Travel Budget

Pity the high school student in California who has not heard about Harvard. Cuts have forced the university's admissions office to slash its travel budget next year by 50 percent, eliminating virtually all non-local high school visits, the Harvard Crimson reports.

Instead, admissions officials will spend their time E-mailing and calling potential students. They're justifying the move by saying, "Because we will be contacting people in a more robust way in the mail and online, we believe we will be more effective rather than less effective because we are going directly to the individuals."

Harvard officials will continue to travel on joint trips with ones from schools like Georgetown, the University of Pennsylvania, Duke, Stanford, Princeton, and the University of Virginia, particularly in hopes of reaching out to lower-income applicants.

The size of information packets mailed to students will also decrease, and the office will continue to push students to turn to resources that are online.