Harvard Hooks

[hopemaster]

<p>Hey, I know there is another thread about this, but I want to know your opinion about how great of a hook QuestBridge Finalist is. I'm worried because I heard that colleges do take into consideration the number of students they'll admit from the same school and about 10 people from my school who are applying Harvard early have very strong extracurriculars. Some even got into great summer programs such as TASP and RSI. I spent more of my time locally because I do a sport (nationally ranked with many achievements such as Varsity Team Captain, but I won't be recruited to Harvard) and I also have to work to pay for our family welfare (family income about 10,000). Luckily I applied for the free/reduced lunch program for our school and became eligible for free lunch. I have straight As (top 2% of my high school) and have scored above 2300 for my SAT. I have scored 5s on all my AP Tests except a 4 on my English test. I've also scored 800s on multiple SATs but I scored 790 on Math 2 and 780 on Biology (M). I'm also an FBLA National Finalist and have done over 300 hours of community service. I also plan to submit for the science supplement on the Harvard supplement app a summer internship paper that I worked on regarding computational biology, but it probably won't be published yet by the time I submit it for college admissions. Though my academic activities are not as superb as my other classmates applying early to Harvard (higher standardized test scores, more academic competitions, and summer programs such as TASP), I hope that colleges see the situation I'm in with helping out my family (none of my friends are in anyway poor). I'm Asian so I don't think I'm a URM (so idk if low income is so much of a hook if it were a hook in the first place) so I don't know if I should go through the college match or opt out to regular decision and be free to apply harvard early (if I even get selected as finalist). If QuestBridge Finalist is a good hook, and if I get selected, I would apply harvard early because I heard that they were need-blind, but I'm not sure how harvard or other non-partner schools view QuestBridge. Thanks so much for your help!</p>