<p>You are a competitive applicant, but so are thousands of other students. It’s impossible to predict anyone’s chances as so much of the applications process is subjective and comes down to how an admissions director “feels” after reading your teacher recommendations and essays and compares them to all other applicants. This is true for all students, including URM’s. I have know many African American students who have been accepted and others who were rejected. You need to just send your applications out into the universe and hope for the best. Good luck to you.</p>
<p>See: [Guidance</a> Office: Answers From Harvard’s Dean, Part 1 - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/harvarddean-part1/]Guidance”>Guidance Office: Answers From Harvard's Dean, Part 1 - The New York Times)</p>
<p>"Many people believe “best” ought to be defined by standardized tests, grades, and class rank, and it is easy to understand why. Such a system, another Harvard dean of admissions, Bill Bender, wrote in 1960, “has great appeal because it has the merits of apparent simplicity, objectivity, relative administrative cheapness in time and money and worry, a clear logical basis and therefore easy applicability and defensibility.”</p>
<p>While we value objective criteria, we apply a more expansive view of excellence. Test scores and grades offer some indication of students’ academic promise and achievement. But we also scrutinize applications for extracurricular distinction and personal qualities.</p>
<p>Students’ intellectual imagination, strength of character, and their ability to exercise good judgment — these are critical factors in the admissions process, and they are revealed not by test scores but by students’ activities outside the classroom, the testimony of teachers and guidance counselors, and by alumni/ae and staff interview reports."</p>
<p>“Personal qualities and character provide the foundation upon which each admission rests. Harvard alumni/ae often report that the education they received from fellow classmates was a critically important component of their college experience. The education that takes place between roommates, in dining halls, classrooms, research groups, extracurricular activities, and in Harvard’s residential houses depends on selecting students who will reach out to others.”</p>