Hey guys
I am an international student who has a strong resume and good grades…
I wish to apply next year in Harvard for International Relations…
Would like to hear from you guys what kind of things I should have in KY resume and SAT score, TOEFEL, class marks…
Please comment!!
International applicants do NOT have the same odds as US applicants. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford and MIT (among other colleges) limit the number of international students to about 10% to 11% of an incoming freshman class. That means that Harvard admits about 160 to 190 international students per year – and most of those students are from 6 countries: Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, China, Japan and Korea. To see how many students from your country are currently attending Harvard, go to: http://www.hio.harvard.edu/statistics. From the pull-down menus, select STUDENTS, HARVARD COLLEGE (the undergraduate school) and YOUR COUNTRY. Be sure to divide that number by 4 to get an idea of about how many students are admitted each year from your country.
To be admitted as an international student, you have to be the best of the best from your country. Admissions uses a student’s teacher recommendations, guidance counselor’s Secondary School Report (SSR), Essays and Interview Report to choose one high performing student over another. They look for wonderful scholars of “good character” – that’s an old fashioned word meaning the way you develop your inner qualities, intellectual passion, maturity, social conscience, concern for community, tolerance, inclusiveness and love of learning.
In terms of hard numbers, as Harvard doesn’t require the TOEFUL, international students need a high SAT/ACT reading score to demonstrate their fluency in reading and writing English. As such, you should aim for an SAT score of 1520+ or an ACT of 34+.
In terms of a resume, there are no requirements or check-boxes. Admissions looks at a student’s extracurricular activities to gauge the level of commitment they have made to something beyond the classroom – and they prefer activities with years of commitment rather than an a laundry list of activities you’ve just been doing for a few months. The idea is that a student’s energy, drive, determination, and commitment is a transferable skill – something that could be transferred to another activity in college, or something later on in life. See: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattsymonds/2014/05/07/how-extracurriculars-can-make-you-extra-special/#3f05b5165356
Best of luck to you!