<p>This Cincinnati Enquirer article provides some fascinating info about a student who got into Harvard. What stands out to me is that the parents did not program the student from birth to go to Harvard. The parents allowed her to follow her own interests and it ended up that Harvard was a good fit for her. </p>
<p>It's also important to realize that even with all that student had going for her, she still could have gotten rejected. Plenty of outstanding students like her are rejected!</p>
<p>In addition, some of the things that made her appealing -- such as being from the Midwest and apparently being Hispanic (She's in National Hispanic Honor Society) were factors that she lucked into. While she had excellent scores --1580 SAT, 33 ACT, there are plenty of students with such scores who get rejected. </p>
<p>"- The Duncan family hadn't planned on Harvard.</p>
<p>Sure, daughter Julie was smart. But Harvard University? Isn't that the holy grail of the Ivy League?....</p>
<p>The senior at Notre Dame Academy in Park Hills didn't even start thinking about Harvard until last summer. She never had a strategy.</p>
<p>What she did have - besides good grades, advanced coursework and excellent SAT scores - was a whimsical sense of humor and a thirst for knowledge.</p>
<p>Thanks for the story, Northstarmom. You've given my family some (little) hope for our child. I'm reading CC to help figure this whole apps process out, but as a family we're all too busy to give a thought about "programming". We honestly didn't know what one parent was referring to when he noted that our kid has a good "profile", just have always wanted her to find her passion (like her dad and I have had the good fortune to do in our careers) then do it to the best of her ability and with abandon. Doesn't really matter if she gets into the HYC she's looking at...we both know she'll find some place to excel. We did.</p>
<p>Important point, tacit in article, is that this applicant was Hispanic. Her strong record was amplified by that hook. Most 1580's (now 2360's) will be rejected from Harvard.</p>
<p>Shouldn't be. Just don't get hooked on one of the Ivies to exclusion of the other 20 or so top flight schools. Best wishes to your daughter. (a little personal history....got into Yale and Cornell, wl at Harvard. went to Cornell, then on to Harvard for law school and Columbia for further study. wl at Yale for law. you can't predict, and have to make the best of what is in front of you, with no regrets. I wouldn't change what I did, and expect your daughter won't, in retrospect, either.)</p>
<p>I agree that the hispanic wording was misleading. I am the sponsor of our Chapter of the Sociedad Honoraria Hispanica (Spanish National Honor Society) as the word hispanica can be translated either way depending on intent - hispanic meaning nationality not language ability. Another journalist who needs to be more word specific. And as to her looks, they don't matter - her ancestor could be hispanic, and she could still claim being hispanic.</p>
<p>"'She seemed like she fit into that society and that academic world,' says family friend Ken Jones, who did post-graduate work at Harvard and helped Julie prepare her application."</p>
<p>Once again, this is not a kid who filled in the blanks by herself at the kitchen table. </p>
<p>In terms of her qualifications, her numbers were good enough to keep her in the game, and her various activities give her an identity as a leader. Often it's not the sheer number of ECs, but the student's focus, extending from within the school to across the state, as this student's did. </p>
<p>What puzzles me is why people are surprised that this girl was admitted. As Northstarmom says, she might just as easily have been denied. Or she might have been admitted to some Ivies and similar schools and denied by others. We live in a very competitive area, and still, the HYP admits don't walk on water. They are very bright and accomplished kids, but I don't know a single one who won the Nobel Prize in hs.</p>
<p>I've posted this before, but it bears repeating. At the schools who have a significant proportion of student's scores in the far "right tail" of the score distribution, and where the male-female ratio is managed into a 50-50 range, if you were to separate the male female scores, you would find that the female percentile demarcation points were lower than the males. </p>
<p>So........if you are male, and your SAT total is exactly at the publshed 75th percentile for Harvard, (1590) you can be reasonably sure that, in fact, you are not at that percentile for the males at Harvard. If you are female, you can be fairly sure you are above that percentile for females. This is necessarily so because males outnumber females in the upper scoring ranks by a factor of about 2 to 1, and because the published number is a blend of the student body. ( For the 2004 college bound seniors class, 1301 males scored 1580 or above, compared to 757 females. Actually, the numbers would be larger than this because the schools use the "composite" SAT score with the highest of each section from any sitting, while the SAT tables are single sitting scores.)</p>
<p>[The above is, of course, not "certain" to be true for any one school, but if you look at the class sizes for Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, and the other schools with higher scores, it has to be true for the whole of them, and therefore for the majority of them.]</p>
<p>Ulysses - I would not argue with Northstarmom. Ask just about any in CC, she knows her stuff and she can take on the best of debates. </p>
<p>As for Hispanics, my Hispanic child has blond hair and pale skin. He's actually what they call Multicultural now, because his dad is white and his mom is Hispanic (both my parents are from Mexico). The Social Security office told us the government considers the chidl the race of the mother.</p>
<p>Survivormom: It is a big plus that he is half Mexican. That's because Mexicans and Puerto Ricans are the most underrepresented of Hispanics. Even though, I believe that 60% of US Hispanics are Mexican-American, their test scores are lower than are other Hispanics, and a smaller percentage of them go to college.</p>
<p>Make sure that his GC knows he is Hispanic because as you see here, some people mistakenly think that people with light skin and hair can not be Hispanic. When he interviews for scholarships, colleges, etc., he also should speak up and explain his Hispanic heritage because the interviewer may not feel comfortable asking him directly about this.</p>
<p>According to the College Board, the average SAT scores for Mexican Americans in 2004 was 909; the same was true for Puerto Ricans.</p>
<p>The average for other Hispanics was a 926. The average for white, non Hispanic was a 1059 and for Asians, it was 1084. For blacks, 857, American Indians, 974. </p>
<p>The average for all families making 30,000-40,000 a year, the average was 960; for those making 40,000-$50,000, it was 989. For those making more than $100,000 a year, the average was 1115.</p>
<p>I am not sure if this is still on the college board site, but anyone who's interested in checking should look in the guidance counselor's section of that site.</p>
<p>"Does the girl look hispanic? Clearly not.
She is pale, very white, and has bright red hair."</p>
<p>Big mistake. Never judge people by their looks. I have white skin, long, blonde hair, green eyes.....</p>
<p>Ethnicity of record? Black!</p>
<p>Sorry, couldn't resist giving my little "don't judge a book" lesson.
Anyway, most hispanics I know are very pale...blonde hair....etc. I would never have thought that hispanics shouldn't be pale. </p>
<p>"The Social Security office told us the government considers the chidl the race of the mother. "</p>
<p>That's sad. I've never heard that before. People should be able to choose a side, if a choice MUST be made.</p>
<p>Actually, I'm not sure when they took the test. I think it is senior year, but it could be from their junior year. The data seem to be for the cohort of senior graduating last year, and I assume it uses their best scores. I don't know if the College board discloses exactly how they do the tables, other than that it has to be a single sitting score, or there would be more high scores than there are because the tables that give the math and verbal separately have lots of 800s compared to the few who score 1600.</p>
<p>My point is really directed to parents of males, to note that at schools where the m/f mix is 50/50, your sat data points are mixes, and therefore you need to be a bit higher if you are male, and you could be a bit lower if you are female. (at these levels, of course, you're only talking about 10 or 20 points difference).</p>
<p>Obviously, the girl in the article was quite able.</p>
<p>So are girls cut a tiny bit more slack with test scores? Or will an extremely high score help a girl more than it will help a boy? I'm female and I test well, so I'm interested if this will help at all. (I need every advantage I can get, no matter how small!)</p>
<p>Who knows if it matters when they took the test? My d was in the class of 2004 and she did score over 1580, sitting for it once in her junior year. She never took it at all as a senior and does not show up in the stats. It's quite possible that a lot of female students in the class of 2004 had their act together and took it earlier, or that boys tend to be late bloomers; we just don't know how big the difference is between males and females without more data. </p>
<p>Momsdream, I remember a Cape Verdean student in college who had very fair skin and bright red hair. He loved to tell about the time he went into the financial aid office and identified himself, to their shock!</p>