Hi guys! I was recently admitted to Stanford, Yale, Penn and other peer institutions. I applied to Harvard EA, and I was deferred and later waitlisted for RD. I am currently committing to Stanford, but accepted Harvard’s waitlist offer. Should I send Harvard a LOCI and mention that I was accepted at such schools but that Harvard remains my first choice - would that help? To be honest, I sent a lot of updates after being deferred and have not won significant awards since. So is the LOCI with my new acceptances worth it? Will it only make me seem desperate, or would it maybe work in my favor? Especially interested in hearing what @gibby has to say!
YES!
NO, NO, NO – PLEASE DON’T! If you do, Harvard is likely to say “Have a great time at Stanford, Yale, or Penn!”
Think about it this way: Three guys name Stanford, Yale, and Penn ask you to the prom, however you really want to attend with a fourth guy name Crimson, but he hasn’t asked you. Would it help your chances of getting asked to the prom by the fourth guy (Crimson) if you told him three other guys (Stanford, Yale, or Penn) asked you to the prom, but you’d rather go with him. What do you think HIS response would be?? Beeotch! Well, it’s the same with college admissions!
I was too late to post the below
If you don’t have any significant updates, send a brief LOCI to let Admissions know of your continued interest. Something like . . .
As usual, I agree with @gibby
Anyone know how many got accepted last year from the wait list and how many are actually waitlisted this year
Agree you don’t want to mention your admission to other top schools. H has limited spots, and they have to figure out who to give the opportunity to, and knowing that someone already has 3 gold tickets in hand, they’re likely to give it to someone who has no golden tickets at all.
@Collegehelp4us: Last year, Harvard was oversubscribed, meaning too many students accepted their offer from the SCEA and RD rounds, so Admissions did NOT take any students from the waitlist. Prior to 2017, Harvard took anywhere from 0 to about 45 students from their waitlist.
Harvard has never released the number of students they waitlist, but Yale and Princeton have – and it’s about the same size as an entire freshman class. I suspect Harvard does about the same, so approximately 1600 students are waitlisted. How many of those students choose to remain on the waitlist? My guess would be about half, so 800.
Actually, @Gibby, Harvard did take some kids off the waitlist last year…if they were willing to accept a z-list spot.
@EastGrad: Correct me if I’m wrong, but traditionally Z-list spots have gone to legacy applicants, or to applicant’s of big-money donors. So, as a general rule, Z-List spots are not offered to URM’s or non-hooked applicants. Was that the case last year?
@gibby: Not sure about last year, but I do know that in our area, the past four z-listers (since 2013) included two who were legacy and two who were completely unhooked. I know another applicant that was a z-lister (friend of my 2020 kid) who was completely unhooked but was much admired by her admissions officer.
I would mention that I got into the other schools. Harvard competes for the best and brightest and they would like nothing better than to take a student that both Stanford and Yale wanted and win the cross admittees war. If @gibby has inside information on this I would be interested to know.
The group of students that get into multiple elites is around 5 for 10 per cent of the admitted students group and there is a form of intense competition that goes on for these students
@gunnerGirl: My first impression after your reading your original post in this thread was that you wanted Harvard over Stanford, Yale & Penn simply because Harvard has not offered you admission.
If you were accepted by Harvard, Yale & Penn, but waitlisted at Stanford, I wonder if Stanford would be your first choice.
The point is you can mention your other acceptances but it might harm your chances of getting off of Harvard’s waitlist for two reasons.
If OP did REA Harvard it is clearly her first choice. What is not clear is what Harvard can offer than Stanford cannot. She has not said much in that regard.
I agreed with Gibby that mentioning other acceptances would not be a good idea in LOCI. I know a kid who was accepted REA Princeton this year but was rejected everywhere else afterward because he said he preferred other schools despite being a legacy and REA at Princeton.
At the graduate level at least the different schools including the elites are obsessed with what other schools you got into and what they can do to convince you to go to their school. I am not sure why so many posters believe it is different at the UG level especially for highly sought after academic talent such as the OP. If anyone has specific factual knowledge why they believe it is different at the UG level I would love to hear it.
I agree with collegedad. Wouldn’t Harvard want to take a student away from Stanford? I heard the top schools compete for cross admits, even using money in the form of merit aid to entice students.
I have never heard of H/S offer merit aid. Perhaps you mean matching each others’ FA packages?
^^ @cocofan either misspoke or doesn’t understand how FA works at Harvard and Stanford.
While top schools do indeed compete for cross admits, Harvard (and Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth and UPenn) are bound by ivy league conference rules, which in part state: http://ivyserver.princeton.edu/ivy/downloads/rulesummary/ivysummary.pdf
As such, Harvard can only match the “need-based aid” of another college, but is forbidden by ivy league conference rules from offering or matching “merit aid” – which is why a college such as Duke, which offers both “need aid” and “merit aid” can best Harvard’s financial aid.
Stanford also offers only “need-based aid” as well: https://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/how/index.html
The top schools do compete for cross admits but generally do not offer merit aid. They sometimes do subtle things like saying I think we can find you a well paying summer internship that will help your career or let us recompute your need based award to make sure we didn’t make a mistake