<p>I am still trying to figure out what made me stand out from the other 29000 applicants. I can't belive I got in! I'm trying to imagine the committee discussion on me, lol! There were soo many talented people turned away, and good grades and sat scores aren't enough anymore.</p>
<p>So what made you stand out as an applicant!</p>
<p>hey im the same! i have no idea how i got in. the thought of being admitted to harvard didn’t even cross my mind because i basically just picked two of my essays and sent them in. so i guess the essays worked out! (one was about haircuts and the other was about my thoughts on physics)</p>
<p>I think I have a pretty good idea of what got me in: my unique background and life experiences, which I related through my essays and my interview.</p>
<p>i’m the man and got into Oxford…just because they know i belong there</p>
<p>I think it was my common app essay, It was abt my experiences with religion and how it has affected my life and plans for the future. I was a little timid about writing abt religion but i guess it worked out. and I looked back at my essay after submitting it bc i had to use it for something else, and I found two huge grammar mistakes, yikes! At that point I accepted that i would not get in! The 31st was a great day!!!</p>
<p>I’m still in a freakin’ bubble!
Only that my bubble isn’t perfectly shaped because I was wait listed at Yale (my first choice). But Harvard is still wonderful. It’s the school you can’t even dream of getting into…I never dared to even think about it. I didn’t even rank it amongst the schools that I applied!! That’s how unattainable I thought Harvard was.
I don’t know what made me stand out. Maybe my essays? My 4.0 (unweighted) GPA? My relentless community service hours?
Who knows…even those stats aren’t unique to Harvard (nor do they necessarily mean a guaranteed acceptance).
But I honestly think that it was in my essays (or any part of my application that required a written response). I’m a writer through and through; I tricked them into accepting me. :D</p>
<p>Congrats, all!</p>
<p>uh URM 10char</p>
<p>^Millerl1te</p>
<p>Classy…</p>
<p>I was not accepted but waitlisted so something did they see in me! :D</p>
<p>One positive sign at least, not a flat out rejection :)</p>
<p>^ same, probly waitlisted bc of aunt’s connections, but w.e</p>
<p>Judy how many hours? Like hours from 9 grade seperately, 10 grade seperately and so forth?</p>
<p>A good story woven into an application.</p>
<p>lolz… URM for me too.</p>
<p>I put down “■■■■■■■■” as my main EC for grades 10-12.</p>
<p>Great thread.</p>
<p>I never told anyone I applied to Harvard either. It seemed pretentious to even think about being accepted. </p>
<p>My weirdness made me stand out.</p>
<p>I know exactly what got me in: Latin. If you do really well at the National Junior Classical League’s summer convention, it’s much easier to get into Harvard. They need Classics majors, and the admissions philosophy also generally favors well-lopsided people (e.g. I applied to Yale early and they straight-up rejected me, and I’ve heard they’re looking more for well-roundedness, though I got into other schools like Princeton and Stanford too, so who knows). I placed first on the big academic exam at convention and was top individual player in a quiz-bowl game on Classics, and I know some other people with comparable stats who have gotten in (different years). If you like Latin, study really hard (I mean, this will consume your summer) for NJCL and whatnot and do decently in grades and test scores and you have a good shot. More generally, if you really love something obscure, find some way to demonstrate achievement in that. It’s very obvious if you don’t genuinely love it, though, and are trying to game the system. For example I studied in the summer for ten hours a day (in addition to like two hours a day reading extra Latin during the school year), because I really love Latin, not because I wanted to get into Harvard, and wrote a common app essay on that (and got an 800 on SAT II in Latin, 5 on AP Vergil, did well on National Latin Exam, etc.) </p>
<p>Oh yeah: people say obscure majors don’t help you get in, but they’re wrong to an extent. If you show that you really, really care about and are really good at some obscure field, that helps tremendously. Colleges do have to make sure their departments have people to teach.</p>
<p>Well-roundedness, since I’m not lopsided toward anything in particular.</p>
<p>yeah, “favors” well-lopsided people is inaccurate, but the admissions philosophy gives equal weight to people who are really into one thing rather than a lot of things</p>
<p>Well-roundedness plus good essays (Yale told me so on the essays, so I assume it was the same for H)</p>