Thank you as was on portal back in December were due by 2/1/21 next to mid-year report but now the date is not there anymore. But at lease will send email as ours comes out end of February.
Some of you mention getting in contact with the Admissions Officers for your area. How do you even know who that is?
Hi ZoZaMo,
Harvard AOs’ emails generally don’t seem to be publicized, likely an understandable effort to reduce the quantity of emails sent directly to the officers. However, you can still contact the admissions office via the email listed online. Nevertheless, it’s important to trust in the process and the hard work you put into your application. Good luck to you and all others!
I have/had no intention of contacting them.
I’m only asking how people know who they are. I’m surprised people know who they are and how to contact them for the very reasons you list.
I was just curious.
GC’s at feeders schools will generally know who the AO is. Or the person may be referring to some random person in the admissions office - not necessarily the assigned AOs.
Once accepted are informed who your AO is.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m over this process, LOL! I decided to take the ACT next weekend, I sent in my extra materials, FAFSA/CSS updates, LOCI and an additional recommendation, and I’m done!
I can’t worry about it anymore and there’s nothing left to do other than do interviews with the other schools and wait.
Man… I can’t wait until this is over just because I’m so tired of editing and worrying. Me gots to focus on school!
Anyone else exhausted with this whole admissions process?
Whew!!!
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And… thank you for the good advice. I forgot to say that in my first response.
Of course!
After son was accepted EA, he was given contact info for his admissions officer, in case he needed to contact them about something.
my son’s HS class is just over 100 students and he is one of two kids from that one small class admitted EA last month. So I’d say they would not set aside other applicants from the same city.
@mamacrum does you son’s HS regularly send a couple of kids to Harvard each year? My school doesn’t use Naviance—I wish they did so I could search this—but I’m only aware of one kid getting into Harvard from my school in the last 5 years. So they don’t know our school well.
Also, I know of one other kid in my actual HS class who is applying just to see if he can get in. He did well on the ACT and has good grades, but not in the more rigorous full IB at my school. Has few EC’s. Nice guy though—we are friends.
Only about 19% get selected out of the whole Gulf Coast, so I figure only a small number can come from LA. I personally know one EA admit from another school in my city (legacy) and I know of 5 other applicants. My guess is that sample means there are a LOT more.
Oh well, it is what it is.
Very happy your son got in EA!! That’s so awesome!
Thank you. You’ve done a lot of research. I really don’t know the bigger picture of our region. I do know that no one was accepted from his HS last year or the year before. His freshman year there were two seniors accepted. His school is the top ranked all boys school in our state, so I would imagine that the AO is familiar. I really hope you are accepted but wish you well wherever you end up.
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Our good, diverse, suburban public high school does use Naviance. Before my kid, they’d had 2/69 accepted, ever since they began using it, which I know was well over a decade ago. I’m sure that the admission committee knew of the school, but kid’s admission was strongly influenced by very high extracurricular achievement OUTSIDE of school, participation in highly renowned programs in NYC and Boston, and placing first in a couple of international competitions. I think that kid could have been homeschooled, and it wouldn’t have mattered. It doesn’t matter what school you have gone to. Sure, if you’re number 1 in your class from the most highly selective exam schools, or at the most prestigious prep schools, with perfect SATs and great school-based EC’s, you have a better chance than if you’re first in your class at blue collar town Massachusetts school, with the same scores and similar EC’s (although it should not be that way). But if you have extraordinary achievement outside of school, in addition to excellent grades and scores, you’re more likely to draw their attention, no matter where you went to school.
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Actually @parentologist, I have read that if all things are equal (scores, grades, EC;s) Harvard will take a kid from a blue collar, urban or rural school that is underserved, over a kid from a top prep school, for instance. The idea being that the benefit of the opportunity is greater and more life-changing for the kid from the underserved school. There is a lot of talk about socioeconomic diversity which is slowly, over the years, more actually close to reality. In fact, top schools do a little prospecting for students from underserved communities.
In addition, regarding EC’s, colleges are trying to honor high schoolers’ jobs when there is economic need, things like an older sibling taking care of a younger sibling, and so on. So not everyone is doing interesting EC’s or winning awards.
There is no magic answer to admissions. If your son is musically accomplished I would see him as sprinkles on the cupcake. I am still not sure what constitutes the cupcake but you get my meaning. Musicians are needed to populate student ensembles, orchestra and so on and contribute on campus in a meaningful way.
ps Harvard actually changed their music curriculum in recent years so that it is no longer obligatory to have attended a prestigious conservatory prep to thrive, and the curriculum now provides multiple paths for majors with increased diversity of focus.
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That is just not the way I’ve seen it shake out from years inside of private education and now years as a public school parent, certainly not from big money markets like NYC. I think in principle they would like to do this. In practice, powerful people with money have influence.
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I have definitely seen this. it is of course still a mixture that leans wealthy. I wrote that this ideal of equity is “slowly, over the years more actually close to reality.” Just as with other types of diversity, it takes many years. But 50 years ago the Harvard security guard would not be telling me his kid was at Yale.
Schools need the wealth, still, as well. Legacies, donors, Z list, whatever. The wealth subsidizes the financial need of others, buildings, programs.
I absolutely believe that top schools will take an achieving lower middle class kid over a prep school kid, if their achievements are equal- unless a legacy or some of those other factors that remain quiet. The rhetoric about overcoming obstacles is not empty either. As long as you overcame them well.
ps also there are high school programs devoted to taking academically talented teens out of, say, Queens or the Bronx, and preparing them…
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The problem is that the wealthy have more hooks that increase chances of admission such as legacy status or playing sports like lacrosse, squash, or crew. I have seen many non-profits started by wealthy kids to buff up their ECs. (One nonprofit stated that the kid raised $30K by organizing recycling drives of empty cans. That would be 300K cans! My D knew this kid and never saw them mentioning or doing anything with cans,) Also, with an endowment > $40 billion, does Harvard really need to give extra considerations to children of large donors?
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Colleges are aware of these inequities and also of the kinds of strategic packaging that goes on. There is more regard, as I wrote before, for kids who work or have family responsibilities. These things take decades to change. Progress has been made. Compare today to 1970. Not to mention the financiaI aid that is possible. Let’s just say that personal experience has confirmed these efforts by top schools.
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Better to make a comparison to 1975, after the end of the Vietnam draft. My oldest sisters were told that they were at a disadvantage because the schools were trying to take as many young men as possible, to keep them out of the Vietnam war.
In 1975, there was far less competition for college admission to elite schools than there is now. If you were the top student in your school with great SAT scores, you probably got in. Yes, if you were applying from a well-regarded prep school in the top 25th% of your class, you also got in, whereas if you were in the top quarter of your local public high school, you probably didn’t. But if you were the best at the school, no matter which school, you likely got in. It didn’t matter whether you played field hockey or babysat your younger sibs after school, because no one really cared that much about the extracurriculars back then. It was just such a different playing field. I suspect that many valedictorians from less academically inclined regions of the country simply went to their flagship state U’s, didn’t bother applying to the top schools.
Now? Yes, I think that the top schools DO consider adverse background in accepting students, but they’re still expected to be the top student in the school, unless they are an URM. However, I suspect that the top prep schools, where the children of the wealthy and powerful go, send probably the top quarter of their classes to T20 schools. I don’t think that the admissions committees are weighing students with equal GPA’s, and equal test scores, and choosing the ones from disadvantage backgrounds. I think that there probably are still enough reasons that you’ll see that most of the class at these top schools are drawn from well-off households. Recent analyses of the socioeconomic backgrounds of the students at the top colleges confirm this.
The majority of Harvard students are from public schools. The financial stats are 55% of students get aid (family income under $150k), 20% go for free family income under $65k), 100% are loan-free. Average parental contribution is $12k. These statistics do not support the popular idea that the student body is mostly wealthy. My kids did better with admissions coming from a less than mediocre public school, than their friends who went to a quality private school.
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