Prospective students are starting to shun Harvard, and it’s easy to see why: The school is not only dangerous for Jews, it’s abandoning excellence in its rush to stand by its woke choice for president.

Early-admission applications to Harvard College just dropped 17% from last year — a clear sign of lost prestige thanks to rank antisemitism on campus and the plagiarism scandal surrounding President Claudine Gay.

That scandal is as much about Harvard itself as Gay, since it’s now obvious that the school has put more effort into protecting her than into upholding to its supposedly rigorous academic standards.

On Dec. 9, when the Harvard Corp. first publicly addressed Gay’s plagiarism problems, it falsely claimed it had already completed a thorough, independent investigation, finding only “a few instances of inadequate citation” and saying she’d make four “clarifications” to two of her published papers.

But on Wednesday the university confirmed that more fixes are needed in her PhD thesis, which its first investigation didn’t even check.

Indeed, that first probe broke from Harvard’s established, formal procedures for checking plagiarism allegations.

The corporation appointed a four-member sub-committee to figure out what to do; it opted to ask three non-Harvard experts to investigate — and has never disclosed their names.

And more cleanup is likely needed: An anonymous professor at another university has filed a complaint to Harvard citing dozens of new instances of apparent Gay plagiarism.

In reality, Harvard hasn’t so much been trying to learn the truth as to hush the whole thing up.

As The Post learned after we the sought the school’s comments back on Oct. 24 about some problematic passages we’d identified.

Blam! came an Oct. 27 letter from bulldog defamation lawyers (who’d previously defended the Sackler family of OxyContin fame), claiming the allegations against Gay were “demonstrably false” and “defamatory” and even wildly suggesting the excerpts in question might have been “generated by artificial intelligence or some other technological or automated means” — when Gay’s suspect works and their apparent sources are actual, published material.

Plus, contra the lawyer’s claims, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Harvard had decided to entirely ignore a 1993 Gay paper because of “its age” — even though The Post had asked for comment on 12 apparently-plagiarized passages.

The letter also quotes some potential “victims” of plagiarism as saying they don’t feel plagiarized.

That’s beside the point: This is an objective offense, and multiple experts have now called out Gay as a clear plagiarist.

Oh, at least one of the “victims” cited in the lawyer’s letter says he didn’t intend for his comments to be used that way; it seems pretty obvious he just didn’t want to cause a stink involving Harvard’s president.

And, again, the lawyers’ threats to us came before the Harvard Corp. had even begun its actual initial investigation, we now know: The school, with its $50 billion endowment, instead prioritized silencing our investigation.

As a result, Harvard has now been blindsided multiple times by problems in other Gay publications that we hadn’t looked into — nor had Harvard when its lawyers threateningly insisted that even raising our questions publicly would be “defamatory.”

There’s no getting the cat back in the bag now: Harvard stands fully exposed as caring more about Gay’s reputation than its once-high standards.

We get it: Firing your first black president would look bad, especially if the reasons show you never should’ve hired her.

Investor Bill Ackman claims he was told Harvard’s prez-search committee “would not consider a candidate who did not meet the [diversity, equity and inclusion] office’s criteria” — which led to the choice of Gay.

If so, the school burned itself with its DEI extremism — and sowed doubt about all its hires in recent years.

It’s not just Harvard’s antisemitism problem that’s deterring applicants and donors. It’s the school’s rejection of excellence in the pursuit of woke cred.

Ousting Gay can only be the first step in any turnaround.

Starting with Harvard Corp. Senior Fellow (and billionaire Hyatt heiress) Penny Pritzker, the board that chose her, and desperately tried to save her, must go too — in favor of leadership that drops DEI and re-embraces academic excellence.