I’m currently a freshman in high school, and just recently discovered this site. I was roaming around, and thought this site provided many good insights for future incoming college students. I am simply wondering if there’s anything you wish you knew when you were in high school, and any advice you can provide for someone whose top college choice is Harvard. For example, any activities that I should consider enrolling in and classes I should take and pay special attention to would be great. Thank you in advance!
First, Americans say ‘advice for students?’ not ‘advices’.
There is tons of advice here, the whole site is devoted to advice. Start reading. And one interesting forum is called ‘Hindsight and Lessons learned’.
-Don’t slack freshman year- your future self and GPA will thank you
-Set yourself up for leadership positions in clubs
-Take SATs and ACTs early
-Do not shy away from the hardest possible course load
-Be prepared for the social repercussions of studying constantly and having no free time
-Look for good summer activities now
-Find out as much as you can now so you don’t stress later
-Organize your college stuff from the start (ex. Google Docs)
-NEVER turn down an opportunity
-Try not to start having mental breakdowns until at least junior year…honestly it’s a hard 4 years if you are serious about Harvard so mentally prepare yourself for how much high school will suck
Good luck, you’ll need it 
Apply Sideways: http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/applying_sideways. Although it’s about MIT, everything in the article applies to Harvard as well!
@thinkingtoohard,
You’re thinking, and trying too hard.
“honestly it’s a hard 4 years if you are serious about Harvard so mentally prepare yourself for how much high school will suck”
This is the wrong way to go about high school. Work hard. Study hard. Set your priorities. Sure, no doubt. But your aim should be to do your best, not to get into a particular college. Your goal, especially as a freshman, should be to become the best you, to take some time to figure out what you like to study, what you’re good at, what interests you., to mature, to develop a little bit of wisdom and good judgment, to develop your character.
No matter how many acceptances to top colleges you might receive, you have not succeeded if you haven’t become a better you in high school, . You haven’t failed if you wind up at State U but know who you are, have an idea of where you want to go and how to get there, and pursue your dreams in a humane way.
And have some fun along the way.
@notjoe, I say that because I have lived it. The mentality that you have to have to even have a chance at a school like Harvard is intense, to say the least. High school becomes hard, and you have to learn how to deal with it. Of course you should enjoy high school, but chances are if you’re a freshman on CC aiming for Harvard you won’t back down during your high school career. I simply wanted to give them a better idea of what awaits, because it is hard and it does get overwhelming at times, and I think this person deserves to know what’s coming.
And I’m not of the viewpoint that someone can try too hard
I said what I said because both my sons lived it.
Some of your specific advice is good as far as it goes. But this:
“honestly it’s a hard 4 years if you are serious about Harvard so mentally prepare yourself for how much high school will suck”
is incongruous with:
“Of course you should enjoy high school,…”
If you enjoy high school, how much does it really suck? If high school sucks much, how much are you really enjoying it?
My kids worked really hard in high school. But high school didn’t suck. In fact, they had a grand old time, for the most part.
As well, neither of my kids were aiming at Harvard - or any other Ivy League school, specifically - from freshman year on. Wrong approach. They were aiming to do their best, to learn all they could, to learn and mature in ways that weren’t only academic. Only later, as their best turned out to be pretty darned good, did it occur to them, “Hey, I could apply to one or more Ivies, and I might get in. I wonder if I should try that.”
My older son didn’t give Harvard a second thought until well into the first semester of his junior year. And it was just one of dozens of schools that he at least briefly considered.
Your approach suggests trying to fit one’s life into the mold of what one thinks the ideal Harvard applicant should be. The right approach is just to figure out who you are, and then hunt for schools that will fit you, rather than the other way around.
Agree 100% with notjoe. This is a philosophy on living authentically and to your best potential. Do this, and then go to the college that will best serve you.
OP will not like this wise advice but it is spot on. If you are aiming at a particular college this early, you are going at life wrong. It is fine to have dreams and goals, but dreaming of a brand name will distort everything you do in high school. Dream of career, family, travel, and making the world a better place. @rubberfall is right that if you work and live authentically, the best college for you will be revealed to you. Best wishes!
@thinkingtoohard
As someone who received a non-athletic likely letter four days ago, I really disagree with that attitude. I did construction work my freshman summer. My school nominated me to a scholars academy and Boys State my next two summers, and after Boys State I worked as a janitor at my high school. I certainly wasn’t studying all the time. To tell the truth, I very rarely studied. I had free time, and a social life. High school shouldn’t suck. If you’re getting mental breakdowns, you’re doing it wrong. If OP goes through high school attempting to make themselves the “perfect” Harvard applicant, they will fail. Why? Because that’s what the majority of the applicant pool will be doing. The only perfect applicant is someone with a last name of Kennedy. The fact of the matter is that the admissions office cares about admitting interesting and authentic students that have pursued their passions. Harvard could fill their class twice over with valedictorians if it was so inclined. And yet, it doesn’t. To the OP, it is true that you’ll need fantastic academics, meaning a high GPA and SAT with a challenging courseload. Past that, I would advise that you put your time and effort into the things that will make you happy. If you know that you can’t handle that extra AP class that you really actually couldn’t care less about, don’t take it. Use that time to pursue something you’re actually interested in, whatever it is. Find your interests, run with them, and excel. As a final note, it’s also an unfortunate fact that you probably won’t make it into Harvard. Let me tell you, I have no clue how I did. That phone call was without a doubt the biggest shock of my life. The bitter sucky thing is that with an acceptance rate of 6%, Harvard will be turning away thousands of extremely qualifies candidates. That being said, I guarantee that, come April of your senior year, you’ll have many great offers to many wonderful universities. And who knows? If you get lucky, maybe I’ll see you in Cambridge
@thinkintgtoohard and @BraveSirZaphod
I got in SCEA this December and, I must say, I relate more to the advice of @thinkingtoohard. I almost hate to admit it, but I worked my frickin butt off to get into Harvard. It was definitely a major goal of mine since grammar school (of course I kept this fact to myself so as not to sound delusional or d-baggy). Did I also have fun in HS? Absolutamente! Did I drink and experiment with certain medicinal recreational drugs? You betcha! But pretty much every class I took, every EC in which I participated, hell, every relationship i nurtured with a teacher, had some element of of my “Get into Harvard Master Plan.”
I think some people give Admissions too much credit. They believe adcoms possess some supernatural talent to see deep into the souls of applicants. Hogwash. I despised many of my ECs, but they fit snugly into the narrative I devised to gain entrance. I’m sure many applicants followed their true passions, or “authentic selves,” but what about those of us who didn’t get know our true passions and had that Harvard Seed firmly planted in our minds from a young age? Are we supposed to pretend otherwise?
@Regurge01 I’m glad someone on this thread is like me! And I know a lot of the top kids at my school can feel the pressure (numerous mental breakdowns during calc tests, for example). Some people can go through high school and have fun and still somehow wind up at a Harvard or Yale. But I think that if you’re not the 1% of the 1%, planning and pain is required. That’s just the way it is. You can be yourself, yes, but you have to be a painfully good version in some instances.
I really think @CS1211 deserves to know the whole truth- getting into Harvard isn’t magic in most cases. There are a few exceptions, but chances are there are aspects of high school that you will not enjoy. The point of my original post was to inform you of that so you could mentally prepare yourself.
The vast majority of Harvard admits, like my daughter, didn’t dream of going to Harvard. In fact, my daughter didn’t start seriously thinking about college until junior year in high school. She then applied to Yale SCEA and was deferred and then rejected. She went to Harvard – sort of as her second choice – and ended up graduating this past December as a PBK mid-year 2015 graduate. She worked tremendously hard at Harvard and is now doing a post-bac on her way to medical school. For her, and all of her friends; it’s was very long slog for her. I wish you much success in your journey.
@thinkingtoohard I feel like I totally get your point. The “painfully good version” I find spot-on. All this advice to be true to yourself and authentic doesn’t help much with the contortions required to beat these incredible odds against us. There is a lot of unpleasantness required to get into Harvard (at least there was for me): severely hard work and a ton of strategy. I wish it was more cumbaya like the elder posters would have us believe.
My child didn’t decide on Harvard until April 30 which is one day before the deadline. They lived life like Snarlton suggested. They enjoyed high school. They chose Harvard because they thought it was the best fit for them and for no other reason
@gibby congratulations to you and your daughter. Good for her that she never dreamed of going or finagled to get into Harvard. My point is that we’re all different. And there’s nothing wrong with dreaming about going to Harvard. It doesn’t sully or make one a less attractive or “pure” applicant. It’s hard for me to believe the “vast” majority of accepted applicants never dreamed of going there. It sounds apocryphal, another myth: the reluctant applicant.
^^ Maybe you’re on to something, maybe that’s why some Harvard students seem terribly unhappy. What they thought Harvard was like when they were in 8th grade, isn’t what it actually is. The dream never lives up to reality. They never dreamed about the TF’s, staying up all night working on PSets, the general education requirements, the 80-page thesis they have to write, the layers of bureaucracy that require students to get pre approval for having more than 5 students in their dorm room, as it’s considered a party. No college can live up to the hype of a dream, as all of them are far from perfect.
I think students are far better off dreaming of going to a great college, and once accepted, make their decision based upon fit and the reality they see around them, rather than the dream they had when they were in 8th grade. I very much subscribe to Jeffrey Brenzel’s way of thinking. Not only was he the Dean of Admissions at Yale, he also teaches Philosophy there:
First of all, your evidence of alleged misery at Harvard is anecdotal. From reading your posts, I know that your son had a far happier experience at Yale, and your D (and presumably her friends and aquaintances at H) were comparably more miserable. Maybe there’s some self-selection there and your daughter may have been unhappy at both schools. There are unhappy kids at all schools.
Ones expectations must be aligned with reality. I don’t expect to be deliriously happy in college. After taking a gap year (largely to decompress) I’m going in with my eyes wide open. I look forward to using Harvards vast resources to help propel my EC to profitability.!i will have world class consultants at my disposal. It would be foolish to be searching for some pie in the sky experience at college. There will be negatives and positives
All the kids I have seen at Harvard have been very happy. It is very friendly and the resources are amazing. It is also a very collaborative atmosphere. I have no idea where Gibby is coming from. They let you take whatever classes you want yet give you lots of guidance I hardly think taking 8 gen ed classes is oppressive