<p>Why does everyone on this site say that you can't get into harvard with sub-700's on the SAT, even though 25% of the Harvard population have sub-700's??</p>
<p>Thats what I thought</p>
<p>URMs, Legacies, Recruited Athletes, and Development cases.</p>
<p>/thread</p>
<p>development cases??</p>
<p>what’s a development case?</p>
<p>I think they are the children of the uber wealthy who don’t actually deserve to get in but do anyway.</p>
<p>Development is a euphemism for making a huge (like $5million) to the school towards a capital campaign or endowing a professorship. It is to “develop” the school. The very rich can “buy” their children’s admission by making such a donation. Those students are considered development admissions.</p>
<p>I dont think that many dads are willing to put down 20000000 dollars to build a east wing. 10 kids. I know people who got accepted to Harvard with low 600’s. And no they weren’t a minority. And no daddy didnt build a east wing. What I trying to say is that I honestly think its unjust to tell a person who got a 2200 on the sat, that harvard is I high reach</p>
<p>What I am trying*</p>
<p>
[QUOTE=AKDigger]
I honestly think its unjust to tell a person who got a 2200 on the sat, that harvard is I high reach
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It’s not unjust. It’s the truth. Harvard is a high reach for EVERY SINGLE APPLICANT just because it has a sub-10% admit rate. It doesn’t matter if you have an SAT over 2200, below 2200…Harvard is still a high reach. SATs alone won’t get ANYONE into Harvard. Elite, uber-selective schools (like Harvard) have the ridiculous ability to literally hand-pick their incoming classes from thousands of qualified applicants. They take a few URMs, a bunch of athletes, some development cases, and a whole lot of really high SAT scoring, perfect grade achieving, EC obsessed, “I-cured-cancer” type students from all the best high school in the country (and the world, actually.)</p>
<p>So yeah…it’s a big reach. For everyone. 2400 SAT…2000 SAT…or every lower than that. It’s still a reach. A BIG reach. And that’s just the way it is.</p>
<p>It’s not that no one with less than a 2400 will get in, it’s that so many people don’t get in, 2400 or not.</p>
<p>AKdigger, you make it sound like getting into Harvard isn’t that difficult.</p>
<p>Get accepted. Then come back and make a similar thread.</p>
<p>25% of the students at Harvard may have scores under 700 in their SAT sections, but this population may include recruited athletes, children of influential people, studnets from interesting backgrounds that increase diversity, etc. So, its true that you dont need a high SAT score to get into Harvard. But if you are an applicant that does not have any of the special circumstances listed above that will aid your admission, it is highly unlikely that you will be admitted with a low SAT score. Hell, its highly unlikely that you will be admitted even with a high SAT score, high GPA, superb ECs and recs if you are an unhooked applicant.</p>
<p>@iskander: I never said that it easy, what I did say is why is it so hard for people with 600’s to get (people who have 600 on this site get **** on when they want a chance a harvard, even people with 750+) when in fact harvard’s mid range is from 2080 to 2370. I’m not even applying. I just tend to think that people on this site tend to over dramatize the admission process</p>
<p>In thee case of Harvard, which takes under 3% of unhooked applicants, this site is usually correct. Over 40% of every class is comprised of hooked candidates in the groups previously listed.</p>
<p>While geography, income and other institutional wants/needs and the highly brilliant essay (colleges see 5 or so per year) play a role in kids with not uber high stats getting in, random, unhooked kids with 600’s truly have no chance.</p>
<p>Or those are the kids like that guy on CC last year who got into Stanford with a 1780 or something like that.</p>
<p>my cousin got in with a 620 in the critical reading section, I wouldnt consider him hooked. . . captain of a team, valedictorian. . .wrote an essay about how he stole a mickey mouse sticker from a store. . . all im saying is that people with less than 700 still have a chance imo</p>
<p>“In thee case of Harvard, which takes under 3% of unhooked applicants”</p>
<p>What? I’d like to see some data that supports this statement.</p>
<p>I’d hesitate to say that students with below a 700 have no chance at admissions (because the numbers at Harvard prove them wrong – there are students there with below a 700) and I’d also hesitate to say that the majority of students with below a 700 are “hooked” students – first because I detest the way that term is used here, and secondly because no one’s even pulled out a bit of evidence to back this claim up.</p>
<p>You could not be more wrong. A Wall Street Journal reporter, Golden, recently won a Pulitzer Prize for his work on this very topic. The culmination of this work is a book called The Price Of Admission which details hooks, what each is worth and what percent of a class at an ivy has these hooks (over 40%).</p>
<p>While he came up with some new info on development candidates with accompanying stories (the Duke admissions officer goes to Ralph Lauren’s home for dinner with the family when his child applies) much of what he writes was in the Hernandez book A Is For Admission which is more than a decade old.</p>
<p>A friend of mine got into Harvard with a 1960… Not an athlete, URM, 1st generation, legacy, nothing. So it is possible…</p>