<p>"Congratulations on your spectacular acheivements..."</p>
<p>I'm sure a lot of people received this email, I just wanted to know who else. </p>
<p>Thoughts? I thought it was a little weird, coming out of the blue, being that I never received one of those "apply, apply" letters that everyone else is seeming to have gotten. I guess its cheaper than mailing out letters to everyone on their mailing list. I'm sure EVERYONE got this, instead of just those with high test scores.</p>
<p>Harvard wouldn’t send such things to everybody because it doesn’t want to give false hope to people who have no chance of getting in. In sending things like that, it wants to increase the numbers of applicants who qualify for admission, not applicants without a ghost of a chance.</p>
<p>Keep in mind, however, that probably more than 50,000 students qualify for admission to Harvard based on their stats.</p>
<p>I do not know about applicants who are ready to apply to Harvard.</p>
<p>However, my own kid who attends Harvard did receive similar email from Drew Faust as kid just received superb grades in the classes. </p>
<p>The mail title is: A message to students</p>
<p>In addition, the message is as follows:</p>
<p>Congratulations on your superb achievements… (no other words in the meesgae).</p>
<p>I do not know what the emails is meant for grades or somone hecked the account.</p>
<p>Im going to Harvard this fall, and I got this email. my first reaction was “WTH” exclamation, since it’s not even a complete sentence and without signature and stuff…</p>
<p>yuminemma:</p>
<p>Lol!</p>
<p>You are not alone. Those of us inside Harvard got it too.</p>
<p>Somone hacked the admin account obviously. This e-mail is from
official @havard.edu Official e-mails from Drew Faust are from
president @harvard.edu</p>
<p>Also, e-mails from Drew Faust start with a date, are addressed explicitly
(Dear …) and always have a closing acknowledgement
including name (Sincerely, …); </p>
<p>Probably a senior 
after receiving their degree in computer science
or whoever sends out the ‘increase mather’ prank e-mails to freshmen
at the time of dorm assignment took it upon themselves to congratulate
the world.</p>
<p>Or maybe DGF just had a little too much champagne last night at the celebration…</p>
<p>My first thought was MIT, though it would have said something much more funny had that been the case.</p>
<p>hahah yeah…I was very confused as to why I suddenly got an email like that. But I did get the random “beware the swine flu” email too, so I just thought the Harvard email system had another brain fart.</p>
<p>w/e twas cool :)</p>
<p>Actually Northstarmom, many, if not most colleges give mailings, e-mails, notifications to students who most likely would not begin. I am currently a Junior and I am being inundated with mailings from the most elite colleges, most of which, I am sure I will not be admitted. </p>
<p>While you are right that Harvard wants to increase qualified applicants, it also wants to increase the applicant body as a whole. Most college rating list’s methodologies use the college’s acceptance rate as a metric and a lower acceptance rate increases the rating and perceived prestige of a college. For example, the four best colleges in the country, arguably are Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the University of Chicago. However, Chicago, is usually never included with that group and is generally grouped with Columbia, Johns Hopkins, etc. While Chicago’s undergraduate college, the College, is one of the best available, including both research universities and liberal arts colleges; it has the best economics department, second best business school (best for finance); invented the field of sociology and a top 5 law school, it usually ranks eighth? Its self-selectivity and academic culture scares off many qualified and capable candidates, keeping its acceptance rate hovering around 1 in 3 instead of around 1 in 10. If its acceptance rate was halved or quartered, it would be much higher. </p>
<p>All of this, while, yields remain practically the same or rise. The only expense the college has is mailing out material, which is mostly, if not entirely, recouped with the application fee.</p>
<p>Haha yah I’ll be a freshman at Harvard next year and got the same email.</p>
<p>it’s not about increasing applications or any of that crap. somebody just hacked the email system. my friends did this earlier this year saying they were yardops and that weld had a cockroach problem. probably just a bigger scale than that. i wish they had actually said something funny though</p>
<p>The graduate students all got the email too. We were puzzled.</p>
<p>Did anyone get another email from him today?</p>
<p>oh wait it was the same one from ages ago</p>
<p>lol, I thought that was strange I also briefly wondered if she was drunk :)</p>