did you have similar EC’s too?
Maybe they filtered after after a full review. But how would someone with an almost empty activity list get deferred from a top 10 engineering school? Like makes no sense even if STATS are high!
Hey I know I’m kinda late but I was hoping someone could chance me because I’m super anxious right now!
I’m an Indian and I didn’t apply for financial aid (I know that doesn’t really matter cuz Harvard is need-blind). For the last 14 years, I’ve studied in a reputed private high school in India. But after my 9th grade, I decided to drop out because I despised the regimentation of the Indian curriculum and I always felt stifled by it. Everything was based on pure rote learning and we never got to actually learn, you know? So I dropped out in March this year.
Since I was so hell-bent on pursuing my undergraduate studies in the US, the only viable option for me was to enroll in an accredited online American high school. Hence, after a week of rigorous research, I found a good high school (Excel High School) and I enrolled in it. At the same time, I was also taking a college-credit course offered by MIT (it was an introduction to programming using python course). In July, I also started taking other college-credit courses offered by Sophia and BYU. Within a month, I was able to acquire around 21 college credits and moreover, most of these courses would also count towards my high school graduation.
Excel High School didn’t offer that many AP courses in subjects that I was passionate about and in order to substitute for that, I started taking courses at Acellus Academy. In the month of August, this was just a part-time school for me but eventually, I fell in love with their teaching methodology and I deceived to transfer to Acellus as a full-time student.
So that was just a brief context that I thought I should provide. By October, I had acquired 25 high school credits and 35 college credits. This should’ve been enough for me to graduate and receive my diploma but as per Acellus’ graduation policy, a student must be at least 16 years old in order to receive his/her diploma. I addressed this concern with my counselor and she suggested that I continue taking more courses till July 2021 and on August 1st, I’d receive my diploma. So that’s what I’ve been doing right now!
So here are my stats:
4.0 UW GPA; our school doesn’t calculate weighted but till now, I’ve taken 9 APs, 4 Honors courses and around 11 dual enrollment courses (excluding those that do not count towards my graduation). And I’ve gotten an A in all of these classes. I am scheduled to take 4 more APs and 1 more honors course by the time I graduate.
Our school doesn’t do class rank.
I didn’t take the SAT or ACT (I was scheduled to take both in May and June respectively but they were cancelled due to the Coronavirus).
I got a 108 on my TOEFL, 298 on my GRE (I just took it cuz I was really bored during the pandemic and I hadn’t studied for it at all), 135 on Duolingo English Test, and I forgot my exact score on the California Achievement Test but it was in the 99th percentile.
My teacher recommendation letters were written by my AP Calc BC teacher and my English teacher. One of them is the president of the International Academy of Science (which owns my school as well). I also had my employer at WRAC, write a rec letter for me. And the other one was written by my best friend.
My teacher recommendation letters were pretty good and my best friend’s were extremely good as he knew me very well. I never got to read my boss’ rec letter but she liked me so I’m guessing it’s fine.
As for my extracurriculars, I’ll just list the most important ones:
I founded a company called CollegeBot which helps low-income international students apply to American universities. I also wrote my “expand on one of your extracurricular activities” essay on this. I wrote about how I struggled because I didn’t receive any guidance during this process and how I didn’t want other people to be defined by their circumstances and that they can flourish despite the lack of resources.
I work as the IT Team Manager at Wright’s Resumes and Connections. I first started out as an IT Assistant but in August, I was promoted to the managerial position.
I was hired as the Director of Web Development by a teen-startup, Quaranteen Music Lessons.
I wrote a research paper titled “Artificial Intelligence: The Means to Curb the Increasing Suicide Rates”. This paper was listed as a semi-finalist at an all-Asia research competition which many of you might’ve heard of- YHSA. My paper was also published in the October edition of the International Journal for Scientific and Engineering Research.
I was one of the two people who were given the opportunity to job shadow at India’s leading AI company- Myelin Foundry. This was a one-month internship and through this, we gained access to the newly-developed GPT-3 and we got to experiment with it and create documents for the company.
I was also the chief editor of my former high school’s monthly and yearly school magazines.
Those were like my academic extracurriculars, if you will. As for the other ones, here you go:
I was the captain of my school’s girls basketball team and I led my team to the state championships (we lost though 
). I’ve been playing basketball for 10 years now and it is by far the most time-consuming extracurricular of mine because I used to practice for like 3 hours everyday. I also played for two nationally recognized basketball clubs in India.
I was the lead guitarist of my school’s band and every year, we had an annual music festival and we played for an audience of over 2000 people.
I was the president of my school’s photography club. I also do a lot of visual editing and graphic design in my free time.
Those were my top extracurriculars and if you ask me, I believe that my “hook” is the work that I’ve done in the field of computer science and AI. This also ties into my major which i listed as computer science but now I want to change it to computer engineering. I also stated my second academic interest as psychology. In the “what are your goal or what do you wanna do with the education you receive at Harvard” essay, I spoke about a very specific goal which was to establish an AI-based startup that would help prevent suicided and also provide affordable mental health care. In my research paper, I proposed such a model which could detect self-harm threats on the internet by monitoring changes in lifestyle trends and social media activity.
Mental Health and AI are two things I’m very passionate about and hence, this is what I want to pursue in the future.
As for the essays, my Common App essay was about the passing away of my role-model Kobe Bryant and how that changed my entire life. I spoke about how as a kid, I promised him that I’d chase my dreams relentlessly and refrain from making blatant excuses and how after he passed away, I realised that I wasn’t keeping my word. It was due to this epiphany that I was able to achieve all this within such a short period of time and I wanted to emphasise on this incident as this truly was the most important event in my life. My Harvard supplemental essay was a letter to my future roommate. I chose to write on this prompt because although I’m 15 years old, I wanted to show the admission officers that I’m capable of adjusting to the college environment by exposing my volatile personality. I also wanted to show them that moving to a whole new country all by myself and living in the dorms is not something I’m afraid of and instead, it is something I’m keenly looking forward to. I also did speak about my Indian culture and how that could add to the diversity of the college. I did all this by writing a pretty long letter to an imaginary roommate 
Thank you so much for reading this extremely long post and I hope you can chance me!
This was my Harvard chance me.
But TL/DR:
4.0 UW GPA
10 APs, 3 Honors, 15 DEs
Graduated 3 years early (15 yo)
International Student (Will graduate from an online American high school though)
Full pay
Test-optional
TOEFL: 108; Duoling: 135; GRE (cuz why not lol): VR-151 QR-147 AW-3.5
Strong ECs
IDK – start one! 
I got in :^)
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I hope they aren’t too disappointed. So far accepted to Texas A&M and Purdue. Also in our home state Arizona and ASU.
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I did, I guess.
I know right, seems unfair
got into?
Purdue
for CS?
Psych
What should I be putting in my “continued interest form” box…
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If I have questions about the transfer program they offered me should I email admissions or the transfer team?
Accepted
OOS
Did not submit any scores
So excited!
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Son accepted. Had Pay Now
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accepted
OOS
Did not submit test scores
GPA: 3.92, 4.45
3x ISEF Finalist, Grand award winner
Major: MechE
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I think admissions might be the best place to start but there is some info on the website -there should be a link to click for more info in your letter.
DD21 accepted (had pay now button)
Biomedical engineering
Some stats:
GPA 4.76 weighted (4.0 unweighted)
SAT 1570
13 APs (including Biology, Chem, Physics C Mechanics and E&M, Calc AB and BC, Computer Science)
Taking Linear algebra/ MV calculus (took AP Calc BC last year)
most important ECs:
Preprofessional ballet
some science research
school newspaper editor
Rec from AP Bio teacher who loves her.
Looks like a lot of deferrals with similar stats! Feel lucky that she was accepted.
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DS21 rejected (no pay now button) for EE
OOS
3.98W/4.39W, 1500 SAT
13 APs (all As)
Varsity tennis 3 years, cybersecurity internship, other decent ECs
Note to deferred students:
If you want to get in, you must fill out the supplemental update form.
If you don’t fill out this form, when your app is reconsidered in RD they will believe that you aren’t interested.
Use the form to let them know what you’ve been up to and why you are a good fit for the school. Do this without bragging.
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My DD was accepted!
OOS for EA2
Biomedical Engineering
36 ACT
4.7 weighted GPA
Our school does not rank, but top 5% out of 780
11 AP Classes
4 Dual Enrollment
Played a sport (JV level)
Club Leader
2 part time jobs
lots of volunteer work
summer enrichment each year of high school related to Biomedical and Medicine
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