<p>Phone call from Harvard: Harvard is a big, bureaucratic institution in the real world, not a fantasy organization from TV. It has not been tracking your daughter on some radar screen for years; there have been no secret meetings in war rooms to determine they want her. Someone with some authority, either in the admissions office or with input from them, came up with some criteria for flattering reach-out calls to make certain top students would apply. The caller him- or herself probably has little or no connection to the admissions decisionmakers (unless, perhaps, the reach-out criterion in question is your capacity to donate enough money for a new building).</p>
<p>What it means is that the student has done some things that they like to see in the admissions process, and that establish a reasonably high likelihood of ultimate admission (and, in Harvard's case, "reasonably high" could mean 30-40%). When and if she applies, they'll decide whether they want her. Then the financial aid office will decide on a financial aid package, maybe with some input from admissions, but usually not. It will not include any merit money. When you call them up and complain about the financial aid package, there may be admissions input, but they still won't offer any merit money. If Yale, Princeton, or Stanford has offered more aid, they will probably match it; if it's Penn or Duke, they'll say "Good luck at Penn or Duke if that's what you want."</p>
<p>One of my daughter's friends is very much like you described, except he also had some real leadership skills and charisma, something of a politician. That's how the process went for him. He, like most of the people in that position, is attending Harvard and paying substantially more for it than the $0 he could have paid to go elsewhere.</p>
<p>Because Harvard, unlike many state u's and other (non-Ivy) privates does not fund National Merit Scholarships, there are "relatively" few there. Earlier poster is right that many (I expect overwhelming majority) of students are NM Finalists. That's why you will see more NM Scholars at U of Oklahoma than Columbia or Brown. And although many vals do not get admitted, many of those who do get admitted are vals, and very, very few except athletes are much below that. That said, bwrk's are not what Harvard is about. Try Cornell or Dartmouth, which still seem to be looking for the total package, rather than the single shot star.</p>
<p>I stand corrected. It is the National Merit Scholar number I was talking about, not Finalists. Of the @ 2100 students admitted by Harvard last year, only @ 300 were National Merit Scholars. Since Harvard doesn't "make" Scholars out of Finalists, I am assuming these 300 or so were drawn from the ranks of the 2500 Finalists awarded $2500 scholarships by the NMSC (my son was one of those). (I guess they could also possibly be corporate-sponsored Scholars; I don't know).</p>
<p>Even if you drop the 9% internationals, that's an awful lot of American kids being admitted to Harvard who weren't selected as Scholars. Assuming that many of them were Finalists, one wonders what the NMSC was looking at in awarding its scholarships that is apparently very different from what the top schools look at in making their admissions decisions.</p>
<p>As for the poster who said this might be attributable to a higher NMF cut-off in Massachusetts, only 17% of the students admitted to Harvard last year were from New England (much less just Mass.)</p>
<p>All this just circles back around to my original point. There are too many applicants with stellar "well-rounded" credentials. The top colleges are increasingly looking for depth, not breadth.</p>
<p>I prefer to leave it at "There are too many applicants". ;) I understand my D's admissions may have been an aberration last year but other admittee profiles I remember, quiltguru's D for one, were very similar to my D's and were kinda bwrk-ish, too.</p>
<p>Of the superselective uni's (HYPS) my D applied to one, and was accepted RD in a year with a 7% acceptance rate. As to the top 3 LAC's she applied to one and was accepted RD. I know that qg's kid was accepted to Harvard and Yale, and I believe both were also RD.</p>
<p>(EDIT: I am in no way minimizing the exceptional applications submitted by qg's kid or mine. They were and are incredibly well-qualified for admission anywhere and their hard stats placed them in the top 1/10th of 1% nationally. )</p>
<p>"Originally Posted by kelowna
And when Harvard calls and leaves a message (unfortunately no one was home) that they would like to talk? Doesn't that imply that they are interested? Does it mean only - would you consider applying? - doesn't it sugest - we want you"</p>
<p>It suggests that you are on a list Harvard bought from College Board or the ACT company that shows students with scores in the range that indicate they have a background that could make them qualify for Harvard admissions. Please keep in mind that probably at least 50,000 kids "qualify" for Harvard admissions based on their SAT scores. Having an SAT I adding to 1800 or higher would "qualify" one for Harvard admission. About 90% of the 20,000 or so students applying to Harvard have scores and grades "qualifying" them for admission.</p>
<p>Consequently, getting a call doesn't mean that Harvard is recruiting you. It wants to have a good pool of applicants to chose from including students who may be low income, from underrepresented states or regions, URMs or students who may end up majoring in a major that has a difficult time attracting students.</p>
<p>Both of my sons got mail from Harvard. Younger S also got a personal phone call. I am a Harvard alum and have been very active in admissions as an alum volunteer, and my sons and I knew that the calls were based solely on their SAT scores (which were 98-99th percentile), but my sons had no chance of getting in due to having unweighted gpas of 2.7-2.9, something that Harvard wouldn't know from the info that College Board provides (and CB provides such info only if when students take the tests, the students say it's OK for the CB to send info about them to colleges).</p>
<p>Anyway, in my home, when the Ivy letters and calls came, we got a good laugh from them, but certainly didn't take them seriously.</p>
<p>Even for students with stronger grades, given the competition, one should always view applying to school colleges as longshots since the colleges have an overabundance of highly qualified applicants, and choose students to create a well rounded class.</p>
<p>"Because Harvard, unlike many state u's and other (non-Ivy) privates does not fund National Merit Scholarships, there are "relatively" few there."</p>
<p>Not true. Actually, Harvard tends to have more NM scholars than does any other college in the country. A quick Google search located the below info, which is typical. There are about 1680 students in Harvard's freshman class, 6,050 undergraduate students. </p>
<p>Since the Ivies don't give merit scholarships, many of the NM scholars who chose not to go to Ivies are going to places that lured them with merit aid. </p>
<p>"The Top Universities Recruiting National Merit
And Achievement Scholars</p>
<p>(Reported Jan. 20, 2004 for 2003 enrollment.)</p>
<p>Merit Scholars are selected from among more than 15,000 semifinalists
nationally by the National Merit Scholarship Corp. The students scored in the top one-half percent of high school seniors in their states on the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test-National Merit Scholar Qualifying Test. The top 11 ranked participating schools, followed by the number of recruited Merit scholars, are:</p>
<p>Harvard University-378
University of Texas-258
Yale University-228
University of Florida-224
Stanford University-217
University of Chicago-182
Arizona State University-176
Rice University-173
University of Oklahoma-170
Princeton University-165"</p>
<p>I also found this:
"2005 National Freshman Merit ScholarsPublic & Private Universities
Rank Number vUniversity</p>
<p>1 287 Harvard University
2 262 University of Texas, Austin
3 232 Yale University
4 230 University of Florida
5 194 Stanford University
6 190 University of Chicago"</p>
<p>"Originally Posted by darius
Nevertheless, it was a source of frustration to my son (and to me) when he saw that the vast majority of entering freshman at Harvard are NOT National Merit Scholars, were NOT Valedictorians, and that his SAT score was higher than about 70% of the students admitted. Obviously, the top colleges are looking for something else, and I think that something else is a focused single-minded passion, honored at the nighest national and/or international levels."</p>
<p>Even with respect to purely "academic" admits, this choice is entirely rational for top schools. The difference in ability between 2300 and 2400 with respect to whatever it is that the SAT measures is negligible, as is the difference in ability between the valedictorian and a person who finishes 5th in a class of 200 with respect to whatever it is that that high school grades measure. Thus it makes sense to look for indicia of truly exceptional ability among the top cohort of students.</p>
<p>In response to the question about what is the difference between a well rounded student and a well rounded class.</p>
<p>A well rounded class has students from a variety of regions. countries, economic backgrounds, religions, majors, interests, and types of schooling (private, homeschooled, public, etc.) . Places like Harvard have literally hundreds of student-run clubs that are very active. For instance, the student newspaper is the daily for Cambridge, Mass., and the students run the newspaper by themselves, including making decisions such as whether to buy the building next door to put a printing press there.</p>
<p>Students who are that involved in an activity don't have time to do anything else but that activity. That's typically the way most students at H are with their ECs. They do one or 2 very intensely, not a lot of ECs without that much leadership or commitment.</p>
<p>Consequently, to keep hundreds of clubs running at professional levels (which is what exists at things like the publications, theater performances, etc.) Harvard needs to attract a lot of students who are well lopsided: Very committed and talented in one or two activities.</p>
<p>Students who have gone out of their way to be well rounded by spending a little time in a lot of different activities aren't particularly desireable. However, the very rare student who is deeply active with leadership in several activitities is very desired. For instance, I remember one whom I interviewed who got in: National president of an academically related studetn organization; state and national awards in a math organization of which he was I think his school's president of; local awards in art (a hobby that he pursued over his parents objections as they wanted him to stick with only math/science-oriented activities); volunteered tutoring at his school, sang in school productions, and was NM Commended, 2nd in his class, rigorous curriculum and a very personable person. </p>
<p>It also was clear that his club offices weren't resume dressing as he could describe in detail projects he had initiated and challenges that he had faced.</p>
<p>A well-rounded class would include musicians, actors, journalists, activists of one sort or another. But the individual student need not do all of these things at once, just do whatever it is at a high level, demonstrated by years of that activity.
What is telling though, is that while Harvard wants top musicians, etc., and certainly accepts some applicants (who also have top grades) on that basis, it also prides itself on the fact that their activities are almost entirely extracurricular and relatively few of the students go on to careers in those activities. The overwhelming number of undergraduates at Harvard major in Economics, Government, Biology and other sciences -- which accounts for the high rate of Harvard graduates going into Investment Banking, Law, and Medicine. Out of around 6,000 undergraduates, only 17 were music concentrators.</p>
<p>"What is telling though, is that while Harvard wants top musicians, etc., and certainly accepts some applicants (who also have top grades) on that basis, it also prides itself on the fact that their activities are almost entirely extracurricular and relatively few of the students go on to careers in those activities."</p>
<p>I don't think it's correct to say that Harvard "prides" itself on the fact that few students relatively go onto careers in the above field.</p>
<p>I think that what you describe reflects the depth of students' EC interests. They aren't people who were faking an interest in those activities to try to get into college. They are people who will continue to have a lifelong interest in those activities even though they choose to have a career in other fields.</p>
<p>For instance, someone in my class at Harvard was literally a child prodigy in her instrument, but became a pediatrician. For "fun," however, she directs an excellent youth orchestra in a major city.</p>