<p>I see a lot of people asking questions like, "What are my chances?” "Am I good enough for Harvard?” "How important are SAT scores/ If I do badly will they hurt my chances?"... The truth of the matter is, no one this forum is an admissions officer and therefore no one is in the right position to comment on your chances, not because they are not qualified enough or not well-informed enough, but simply because the truly most influential factor in the admissions process is the applicant pool. No one but the admissions officers knows what the pool is like. Still, however, the pool is invariably competitive and represents the best of the best. In order to understand how the pool affects your chances, you need to understand the difference between an admissions process that is competitive and one that is selective.</p>
<p>With a competitive process, you look more at numbers and facts - who has the highest GPA, who has the highest SAT scores, who has taken challenging courses, who has done superbly on their extra-curricular work. In this kind of process you look more at qualifications. Qualified students get accepted. The problem is, there are so many qualified students, in fact more students than the university can admit, that the process starts to become selective. Here everyone is super, which is just another way of saying no one is. The committee starts looking at other things, like character, personality and ambition. The committee doesn't know who to select because they are all qualified, so they look at these qualities to see who is more interesting, who is genuinely interested in a certain activity, who is likely to pursue something out of sheer love for it, and not just for the sake of satisfying certain requirements. </p>
<p>Given this information, the best you can do as an applicant is to do your best. Would you work less hard for the SATs if they were less important than you thought they were? Also, no matter how much you want a better score, hoping won’t change yours. Instead, you do your best and work as much as you can and get the highest possible scores. To understand how the scores affect your chances, you need to know what they mean. Call them useless, call them pointless or inaccurate or inefficient, but the reality is that they are still required and that some people perform better on them than others. When the committee looks at your transcript, they can only measure how well you've done in your academic environment, they know nothing about how hard it is (this is especially true for international students, and less so for students who graduate out of well know schools). And in this fact lies the role of the SATs. If you come from an unknown school, and get a GPA of 4.0, they only know that you got the best possible GPA, and did what you need to do to get that GPA. They don't know however what it means in terms of academic ability - was the program just easy or did you genuinely earn that grade. Because the SAT is a standardized test, they can compare your grades to other students and separate the hard-work factor from the academic ability factor. Because Harvard expects you to make the best out what is available to you, you wont be penalized for going to less demanding school or program. You will be penalized though for not working hard enough. This brings us to another point. Students who go to demanding and competitive schools and who get high GPAs but lower SAT scores don’t have much to worry about because the whole point of all this evaluation is to determine how well you will perform in university. If you are able to perform well in a demanding program and get lower SAT scores, who cares, as long as you are performing well. The trouble is if you go to a less demanding program, and worse an unknown school or one that doesn't send many students. In this case, if you get high SAT scores but a lower GPA, the committee will think you are smart but won't like the fact that you aren't able to perform well. If you get high GPAs however and high SAT scores, you have the benefit of the doubt, and it usually relies on other parts of your application to show how well you are expected to do in university. So when someone asks "Will a low SAT II score hurt my chances?" The answer is simple. It can't help your chances, but it doesn't have to hurt them. Of course, GPAs, like the SATs, are only a data-point. It relies on the kind of academic work you've done in school like research projects etc. to determine your overall performance. This said there are people who got scores of 600-650 and still got in, either because of their academic performance or something else like exceptional talent.</p>
<p>When it comes to extra-curricular activities, it is what those activities mean and not how much they are worth that matters the most. Notice the difference. Before we used to say, quality over quantity - now its significance over quality. A lot of people are heads of a large number of clubs and teams and have worked miraculous cures for cancer and AIDS. But there’s a difference between a student who works merely to achieve and one who achieves what he wants. Of course, no one would put so much effort into something and sacrifice so much, just to accomplish so much. But then again, did you sacrifice so much just to get into Harvard or did you sacrifice that much because it meant the world to you. I find people confuse this very easily. It’s easy to say that you like something. That’s why it’s up to you convince the committee that you really do. Are you just working hard to get into Harvard, or do you happen to be someone who is ambitious and talented, and has accomplished what he wants. How much will you commit to all these activities after you have graduated out of college? Are you going to be a talented artist, or are you going to inspire others to be like you and try to find ways to promote art and integrate it into people’s lives. </p>
<p>Things like your essays and teacher recommendations put all of this into perspective. They say a lot about your hopes, fear, values and ambitions. An interview isn't meant to be an assessment test but rather a way to find an angle from which to look at your application. They are a chance for you to stand out and make it through the selective process. The answer to most questions is simple. Find what you care about and commit to it. Forget about numbers and lists. Remember that many others have similar achievements if not far superior. It’s also important to understand the importance personal qualities. The committee wants to know if your personality is real or if you are plain fake. They want to know if you are unique or if you are just another high school clich</p>