This does not work. It has never worked. Yet someone tries it every single year.
There is no way to find your decision early.
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Physics ! (I want to be a theoretical physicist, and want my name to be considered as sacred as Newton & Einstein’s)
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haha no not really but i am sure Harvard wouldn’t let students get away with finding out decisions early by just simply logging into a website.
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I wouldn’t make the conclusion that you’re getting deferred. I don’t think you can really know.
No one knows.
As I mentioned, I think all you can say for sure is that they are still considering you. That means they haven’t decided one way or the other.
I think it’s good in the fact that they haven’t decided to reject you as of last week-- otherwise they wouldn’t bother asking for an interview or contacting your guidance counselor.
That’s all you can say for sure.
All three options are still on the table.
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Haha, that source code thing is hilarious. Obviously it doesn’t work, but if it did that’d be amazing– all this worry about deadlines, and then we would just be able to log in 
With all the anxiety, the dripping sarcasm made me laugh, thank you. 
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So I saw that Harvard has almost like a rubric for how they score people in different categories (academics/athletics/etc), and I’ve always wondered, what exactly would fit into a ‘1’ for the personality category? If anyone has any examples/links they might be able to share to give some insight that’d be great!
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Hello everyone! I wish you all good luck, especially you ED applicants! I’m sending in my app for RD in a few days and I’m getting butterflies…
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Sorry to inform you, but it is a “soft” measurement, that can be fudged however they want. Long, time-honored practice of Harvard’s, instituted originally by their racist, anti-Semitic president A. Lawrence Lowell, who was terrified because Jews were out-competing WASPs (his ethnic group) in the competitive admissions exam. So they added a “character” component, and of course no Jews received top ratings in character. That’s what the “personality” rating is used for, as revealed by the anti-Asian discrimination lawsuit. No Asians received a top rating in “personality”. They can say whatever they want, but rating applicants on soft, subjective measures such as “personality” is the way to skew admissions however they want to - and these days, they use it as a means of admitting certain applicants with lower test scores and lower GPAs. Harvard Rated Asian-American Applicants Lower on Personality Traits, Suit Says - The New York Times
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The history behind some admissions pracitces is abhorrent, but that does not mean that they are presently being used to discriminate against certain applicants especially when Asian students continue to make up the highest percentage of admitted students. Who knew that being admitted to a school like Harvard goes beyond grades and test scores but what you actually have to offer to a diverse social environment?!
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I remember reading the released legal documents from the Harvard admissions lawsuit about a year ago where they talked about personality, and off the top of my head I can tell you that they definitely consider your Personal Statement, Alumni Interview, and leadership experiences to be the defining traits of your personality.
For example, if you were captain of the math team, quiz bowl club, and science olympiad team, that’s really impressive, and certainly a testament to your leadership skills and academic prowess. However, you might be treasurer of your state’s FBLA chapter, or organize a MUN conference for high schools in the area, or start a tutoring group with your friends to save money for college while helping middle schoolers with math - these are all applications of your academic/intellectual skills, which contribute to a personality rating. And of course, I don’t think I have to explain how the alumni interview shapes your personality score haha, as well as the “personal” statement.
They obviously have to maintain at least one factor that they can totally control. What if someone had a perfect GPA, SAT, ECs, but a horrible, vulgar attitude? I think the personal rating is still necessary to distinguish applicants. Is it perfect? No. Can it be improved? Absolutely.
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No. An account is not activated until after admissions are released.
The fact that Asian students make up the highest percentage of admitted students is no defense, if the qualifications of the Asian applicants would have warranted an even higher admission rate. That was EXACTLY the rationale used by Lowell to institute the antisemitic quota. “But if we don’t, Harvard would have too many Jews, and there are already so many of them, because they do better on the admissions test!” BTW, many of the people who have made the greatest contributions to our world in science, medicine, math, arts, music, etc were/are focused, driven introverts, but the application process by far favors highly sociable extroverts. But that doesn’t answer anonymous’ question, namely, what characteristics would get a person rated 1 on personality. My answer to that was that one, first of all, should be born into an ethnic/racial/socioeconomic group that Harvard is currently favoring for admission. Asians weren’t in that group, and none received a 1 on personality. Beyond that, painting oneself as a selfless, community-serving extroverted leader through one’s extracurriculars, personal statement, interviews, and reference letters should be helpful. Oh, and if you can also indirectly infer that you have soldiered on valiantly, overcoming tremendous adversity, without saying so directly, that should help, too.
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A few things I’ll comment on here:
(1) A year ago a Federal district court ruled Harvard did not discriminate against Asian American applicants. Last month, upon appeal, the Federal Appeals court also ruled in Harvard’s favor. The plaintiffs can still appeal to the US Supreme Court.
However, as of now, two federal courts have ruled in Harvard’s favor: Harvard does not discriminate against Asian American applicants.
(2) “They can say whatever they want, but rating applicants on soft, subjective measures such as “personality” is the way to skew admissions however they want to - and these days, they use it as a means of admitting certain applicants with lower test scores and lower GPAs.”
Yep. They do that. And there’s nothing wrong with it. They SHOULD do that.
Trust me, they should.
Harvard’s a private university, and if they are not making admissions decisions based on race, gender or sexual orientation— then they can use whatever criteria they want to.
They SHOULD use other criteria other than SAT scores and GPA for many reasons.
First of all, SAT and ACT scores aren’t even a fair measure of what people think they measure.
For example, if you look at the score distribution curve of the SAT broken down by race (white, african american, hispanic, asian), there are only like 4 African American students in the whole country who score a 1600/36 every year, compared with hundreds of whites and asians. The whole Gaussian curve for African Americans is shifted down by like one standard deviation compared with whites and asians. The average score is, as I recall, like a hundred points lower.
Now, you can argue why that is: AfricanAmericans as a group are poorer. (SAT scores are strongly correlated to parental income.) AfricanAmericans as a group come from worse schools with fewer resources. (School district is strongly correlated to SAT scores.) The SAT is culturally biased. There are many theories.
However, no one can dispute the score distrubution data. That is data.
If you admitted people solely based on SAT scores and GPAs, you would, literally, have 8 AfAm students in every Harvard class. Ditto with Hispanics and Native Americans. You might have 17 Hispanics and 2 Native Americans.
Even white students would be lower in percentage than their makeup in America.
What you would have would be a class made up of 70% Asian Americans.
Second, GPA and SAT/ACT scores are not the only things that matter.
Morality, mental stability, enthusiasm, empathy, communication ability, family experience (have you overcome great adversity, for example), the ability to be a good friend and roommate— all of these things matter when deciding which 1600 people to put together.
There’s so much more I could add here, given the things I know, but I have no problem with Harvard using “soft” criteria to select a class.
In fact, they should
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Very well said! Thank you for this. I always love when conversations revert back to the idea that the standard quantitative metrics of admission should be the only valid ones in determining who does or does not get in.
Does anyone know what the general admit rate is for 1600s? I remember seeing this once but cannot find it now.
I totally agree! This is a point that needed to be made. Often people only focus solely on quantitative or only qualitative factors, when it needs to be a mix of both to get an optimal class of students.
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You can email admissions and ask to withdraw.
I know someone last year who applied to two. Duke and Brown. Was accepted to both. Ended up being rescinded by both… with communication referencing integrity as being something highly valued by university. Gaming the system and breaking rules is a bad thing in college admissions, and in life!
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