<p>Harvard tells the alumnus who heads the local schools committee who got in. It's up to that alum to tell the interviewers.</p>
<p>My personal admit rate does not exceed the national average. Please believe me: Who gets in depends on the student, not the interviewer.While most applicants "qualify" for admission by having the stats and curriculum that would allow them to graduate from Harvard, IMO only a relatively small proportion (let's say 10%) of applicants truly stand out from the outstanding crowd of applicants.</p>
<p>Having high scores doesn't make one stand out in such a pool nor does being valedictorian, class president or having even won some state awards in an activity that's reasonably popular for smart, ambitious people in one's area. </p>
<p>The rarest quality that I see in applicants is intellectual passion -- a love of learning, a willingness to go beyond what's required to get an "A", a willingness and a track record of reading, doing research, etc. simply for fun. (incidentally, this doesn't mean that the reading or research needs to be for some kind of summer program or that the person needs to have published the research).</p>
<p>Even rarer is to find that with strong stats and with an EC that the student has demonstrated a lot of talent, creativity and passion for, going above and beyond what's normally done. </p>
<p>This, however, is what I have seen most Harvard-accepted students have, and is IMO what makes Harvard different from most other colleges -- the intense, passionate quality of the student body -- people who genuinely enjoy being active in terms of their academics and ECs, and who would pursue those interests even if no college or future employer cared.</p>
<p>I have a question. I am from South Carolina which has relatively few applicants (I think). Does Harvard have a quota per se that they like to meet for each state. I haven't been able to find any state by state applicant to acceptee rates. Do you know where I can find these?</p>
<p>The rarest quality that I see in applicants is intellectual passion -- a love of learning, a willingness to go beyond what's required to get an "A", a willingness and a track record of reading, doing research, etc. simply for fun. (incidentally, this doesn't mean that the reading or research needs to be for some kind of summer program or that the person needs to have published the research).</p>
<p>what if a student demonstrates all this, but because of economic and social circumstances (poor immigrant who is a first-gen college student) has lower than average SAT scores...nothing too low to completely rule him/her out, but nowhere near the 1550+ most applicants have... I mean, during my first alumni interview, I felt a bit ashamed to write my SAT scores down on the form he sent me... </p>
<p>Anyway, I feel good about my chances- I've done everything within my power in high school, and have taken advantage of every resource available. Regardless of whether I get accepted to Harvard, I'm convinced that I will be successful in life (no matter what I decide to do.) I just feel that because of the especially specialized nature of the course of study that I would like to pursue (Harvard is one of 2-5 schools that teaches it, and has by far the largest program devoted to it) I think that I would do a little better if I went to Harvard. But o well, if it doesn't happen- I guess it just wasn't in the cards for me at this point.</p>
<p>Good luck all you RD'ers, and fellow EA deferree's :)</p>
<p>Agreeing with Northstarmom's statement that Harvard doesn't report state-by-state admission rates--I've certainly never seen such a report--I'll make an inference here about state admission rates from data provided by other colleges. I've been to several regional information sessions put on by other highly selective colleges this school year (I went to Harvard's the previous year) and in those sessions some of the school representatives did give a specific number of students who had applied for admission from Minnesota, and a specific number for how many had been admitted. It appears that in general that the Minnesota admit rate is about double the base national rate. HOWEVER, I doubt that that has anything to do with Minnesota alumni interviewers having special "pull," or even with Minnesota applicants being a lot stronger, in general, than applicants in other parts of the country. </p>
<p>I think the statistical advantage of Minnesotans WHO APPLY to top schools out-of-state comes from two things: </p>
<p>1) most of the marginal candidates for admission who would apply on a "lottery ticket" basis don't do that here in Minnesota--in other words, the Minnesota applicants who apply to top schools at all are largely people who are really qualified for top schools; </p>
<p>and </p>
<p>2) many of the top high school students in Minnesota stay in state, either at the state flagship university or at one of the top in-state LACs, so there is less oversupply of applicants from Minnesota to coastal schools attempting to maintain geographical diversity in the entering class. </p>
<p>I would expect that most states outside the Northeast or apart from a few other "feeder" states would beat the national average in getting into out-of-region top schools. I suspect the really tough competition for getting into Harvard is experienced by applicants from Massachusetts, the ONLY state in the country in which more high school seniors apply to private colleges than to public colleges. </p>
<p>But you can feel free to disbelieve on all these points as they pertain to Harvard, because Harvard appears not to publish figures on this issue.</p>
<p>"what if a student demonstrates all this, but because of economic and social circumstances (poor immigrant who is a first-gen college student) has lower than average SAT scores...nothing too low to completely rule him/her out, but nowhere near the 1550+ most applicants have... "</p>
<p>When viewing scores and other parts of applications, Harvard takes students' backgrounds into account. It's understandable that a first generation college student from a low income background doesn't have access to things such as SAT tutoring classes, many AP offerings, sophisticated info about testing, etc. that can help boost SAT scores.</p>
<p>In general, the lowest score that gets in at Harvard is a 1200. Few students with such scores will get in, but they are likely to be from special categories such as being first generation college, having extraordinary talents, etc.</p>
<p>1200 even for recruited athletes? I have a 1350 (taken once), but iv done only 3 years of high school in 3 different schools (with different ed systems) in 2 vastly different countries (Norway and Korea). The summers were spent either in packing up or summer courses that I had to take. Would you think they would understand that I had basically no chances for extra prep and lower the bar for me for the SAT?</p>
<p>"In general, the lowest score that gets in at Harvard is a 1200. Few students with such scores will get in, but they are likely to be from special categories such as being first generation college, having extraordinary talents, etc."</p>
<p>Harvard has a sub-1100 runningback...</p>
<p>Anyways, NSM, i'm going to be interested to see what happens in my case, and maybe you can give a comment or too. I was recruited to play football by Harvard. Unfortunately, after inviting me up twice, they found someone taller than myself (5'11" is very short for a lineman). Now, I have the test scores, grades, two-time national medalist in another EC (W-lifting), but, i'm wondering if Harvard and it's peer institutions just throw my app out after they find out i'm not being recruited? I also wonder what is going to happen because I marked football as my first EC (I was being recruited at the time i turned in the app) and not lifting?</p>
<p>someone from my school got into harvard with a 1130..well she was waitlisted at first..she was an intel finalist and being from nyc thats hard and especially going to the worst school in the city..im sure NOBODY expected it..it's amazing..</p>
<p>Northstarmom - the intellectual passion angle that you mention is one of those subjective traits that is perhaps best demonstrated by the interview; hence the importance interviews are assigned. How is Harvard able to evaluate the discrepancy between interviews?</p>
<p>It seems like two very similar candidates with strong paper credentials might have different admissions results if one candidate's interviewer wrote 2 pages about them and the other wrote 2 paragraphs. Not necessarily by any means, but it seems like a possibility.</p>
<p>I guess I'm curious more specifically how an admissions office compares interview results. It doesn't seem fair that two candidates might be compared with, "Well, A had a great interview, but B was just okay," when that difference can easily hinge as much on the interviewer as the applicant.</p>
<p>As I mentioned before, interviewers are asked to provide examples backing up their conclusions. The examples include quotes from the students and specifics about what the student said. Just look at the links to the Yale interview reports. You can see that some interviewers' reports were vague, and thus simply weren't useful. Presumably a vague or sparse report would not count as a positive or a negative. </p>
<p>My guess is that if adcoms are seriously considering a candidate for admission and the interview report is too vague to be helpful, the adcoms would either arrange a second interview or would do something like call the GC or the teachers who gave recommendations in order to learn more detailed information about the student.</p>
<p>I doubt, too, that adcoms compare candidates to each other by saying which candidate had the best interview. I can imagine that things may come down to whether to take the tuba player from Seattle who started a scholarship fund for needy student musicians or the Wala Wala valedictorian who taught herself five languages.</p>