Finding My Path to Harvard?

<p>I’ll add two things:</p>

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<li><p>I would assume that Harvard gets enough applications from kids in Toronto that they know how to read a Canadian transcript and to evaluate your performance in context. They certainly don’t expect kids who go to schools that don’t offer APs to take 15 APs.</p></li>
<li><p>There is one (and to my mind, only one) serious problem with your record: Your failure to take more than a year of foreign language. Now, I am pretty certain Harvard does not do much to enforce its “ideal” of four years of one foreign language in high school; it regularly accepts students with only two or three years of language, especially when that’s all their school offers. But only one year? In a bilingual country where French is offered at an advanced level everywhere? That’s a very concrete demonstration that at some fundamental level you are not in tune with Harvard’s educational values. Maybe it would be OK if you are already bilingual with another language spoken at home, that you have studied in a systematic way outside of school. But otherwise, it looks like you have not pursued the kind of secondary school education Harvard expects its candidates to have, and to WANT.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>I wouldn’t presume to say that your application would be doomed as a result, because that’s not how Harvard admissions works. But it’s a definite negative to overcome. And it seems more negative because of your utter failure to recognize how much more important that is than your 85 in gym in 9th grade.</p>