The data in this year’s senior section tells the story of a class bound together by the ways it was pulled apart.

The Class of 2023 was indelibly marked by the Covid-19 pandemic, which kept most of us away from campus for more than a quarter of our time at Harvard. After being sent home during our freshman spring, we proceeded to spend our sophomore year away from campus, with the majority of our survey respondents indicating they did not reside on campus during the entirety of the 2021-2022 school year. For most of us, this marks only our second-ever full year on Harvard’s campus.

Despite the pandemic’s interruptions, Harvard grappled with many important issues during our time here. The University reckoned with its historic ties to slavery in different ways, acknowledging the ways it benefited from slavery in a landmark report while also facing a lawsuit and demands for reparations.

Separately, a lawsuit against the school that seeks to end affirmative action in American higher education worked its way up to the Supreme Court, creating the strong possibility that our class will be the last to graduate with Harvard’s current race-conscious admissions system in place.

Off campus, the Class of 2023 bore witness to the tumultuous 2020 election, nationwide racial justice protests, and the global consequences of Covid-19. On campus, we witnessed the fall of the Undergraduate Council and the subsequent rise of the Harvard Undergraduate Administration; the departure of an embattled Harvard University Police Department chief and the arrival of new leadership; and turnover across University leadership.

Notably, we were the class that finally convinced University President Lawrence S. Bacow he’s had enough: He is set to depart just after us, on June 30, to make room in Massachusetts Hall for Claudine Gay, the president-elect and current dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Each year, The Harvard Crimson conducts a survey of the graduating class, collecting data about where the class is headed next, how they spent their time at Harvard, and what they think of campus and national politics.

Despite an unconventional time during their college years, the majority of respondents were satisfied with their time on campus. Given the chance, 92 percent would choose Harvard again.

Methodology

The Crimson distributed the survey by email to 1,193 members of the Class of 2023 through emails sourced in May 2023 from Harvard directory information. Participants accessed the survey form via anonymous, individualized links from May 3 until May 15, 2023, when the survey closed. During that period, The Crimson collected 652 surveys, representing a response rate of 54.7 percent of those who received the survey.

The data includes academic and social seniors. Four percent indicated they matriculated earlier than 2019, meaning they took leaves of absence from Harvard and later re-classed as members of the Class of 2023. Meanwhile, 11 percent indicated that they will graduate in December of 2023 or later, meaning they affiliate as “Social Seniors” but will not graduate with the majority of their class this May. Overall, 17 percent took time off from Harvard.

To check for potential response bias, The Crimson compared respondent demographics with publicly available information on student demographics provided by the University — information regarding race and ethnicity. Overall, the respondents to the survey were in line with the demographics of the broader student body. The data was not otherwise adjusted for response biases.