If I submitted something on the portal, will the admission officers know? For example, will my portal show that there is an update and there will be an officer taking a look at it? Or what happens when you submit additional material.
It only shows that the material has been uploaded. If your file has already been reviewed and a decision has been made, it is very unlikely that anyone will go back to it and read what you have uploaded (the only situation in which I can imagine them looking again at the file of an applicant who has already been theoretically rejected is if this person is informing them of being named an ISEF winner, or their parents agreed to finance a new building).
At this point, we can assume that most decisions have already been rendered, and any supplementary information will almost certainly not be read (unless you are one of the select few borderline candidates who is debated up until decision day).
Assuming that the information was submitted back when final decisions had likely not been made yet, the answer is that it depends. If you absolutely needed it to be read, it would have been better if you had faxed the information.
But if they don’t read it, how will they know what kind of update it is? And even if I fax it, I don’t think the person taking care of the faxing and sorting them into files is going to be an admission officer. It is probably going to a secretary or student helpers doing the sorting, faxing, and the handling the files around the office.
i called in because I wanted to make sure that a letter that was sent on my behalf made it through. Apparently they are a week to two weeks behind in processing. so when i called in this week(as they told me to try again today), they said to just upload it to the portal; Although decisions for some students are finalized- it would only help. And, in regards to the portal to notification part: they said as soon as it gets uploaded into the portal, they[the admissions office staff] are notified of it immediately, and begin processing the info. hope this helps! at this point lol im not exactly stressing over harvard- i got deferred early and there are literally tons of applicants that are so great- im not at all confident that ill get in lol. But, i still submitted an essay an update letter and some extra info that i was notified of to the portal. maybe it will work out maybe it wont. But im just concerned with living my life rn… good luck to you!!! i hope you get in!!!
they are a week or two weeks behind that means pretty much everything in march is still being processed? no wonder my midterm is still not showing lol
@pedestrian1123 when did you send in the letter and when did it arrive? because my school sents report cards and it arrived there last week but still no sign on my portal.
@gibby is a very knowledgeable person and knows a lot about admissions. let me link this to him. gibby, do you know what happens when an update arrives in the office while the final decisions are being made? Thank you very much
@boomboom123 they said that they were really behind when I called. Im not sure the letter has even arrived yet- that is why they told me to upload it through the portal today. It is more instantaneous than faxing because the software (all of this came from the person who answered) notifies the officers that something has been uploaded into the portal. They then download it- not sure what happens after that. maybe they send it to your rep.
@boomboom123 and @pedestrian1123: First off, Admissions Officers read files, they do not download from the portal or put files together. That job is the responsibility of the file room clerk – one person – who if I recall supervised a battalion in the army. He is helped by Harvard students working part-time in the file room. The file room puts together two versions of every student’s file – an electronic version and a paper version. With 35,000 applicants and millions of pieces of paper, some of them arriving by US Postal Service, Federal Express, DHL, UPS, the Portal, Email and FAXes, sorting them out, creating pdf’s to be added to the electronic file, finding an applicant’s paper file and adding the new information to it, and then putting it in front of an Admissions Officer takes time – days and sometimes weeks. And with all the snow days Boston and Harvard has had, it’s easy to get behind.
Although the file room may be alerted that a student has uploaded something to the portal, and it needs to be downloaded, I imagine FAXes spewing out of a fax machine are given priority, otherwise there would be massive amounts of paper overflowing and spilling onto the floor. That’s why I recommend FAXing, which is my best advice. You do with it what you may.
My best guess is that not every update is treated in the same manner – they have to prioritize. So, if a student is on the edge, they probably read those updates first. If a student’s credentials – academic, EC’s and “character” – have been determined to not be “Harvard material” I imagine those are looked if the officers have the time.
And you should think that at this late hour, final updates and submissions are probably at or past the point of even being considered. Given the surfeit of posts on this site about additional supplements and updates, I don’t doubt that colleges will even publish cut off dates for these as well (as nervous applicants seek to inject any feasible boost to their files as possible).
Certainly anything you submitted to Harvard, you also submitted to Yale et al. Every college rec’d from you (and others) an update. And if the portal didn’t indicate the uploading or you did not receive an confirmatory email, you probably emailed or called. More clutter to the admissions clerks. An endless cycle of “new updates” “call: did you receive it?” “email: did you receive it?”
I’m certain that at some point, the mgrs are saying to the clerks: stop updating, stop uploading, Just reply to every phone call or inquiring email: “thank you very much”.
At this late date in the process, Admissions has internally gone through all the candidates and have accepted as many students as they need. In the next day or so, those accepted student files are being sent to the financial aid office, so that financial aid officers can calculate the need-based aid on every student that applied for it. If – and it’s a big if – a wonderful update or supplement came in at the last moment, Admissions would need to cut other students from their ACCEPTED pile, as they don’t want to chance accepting too many students and not having enough beds if more kids than estimated chose to matriculate. So, IMHO, the absolute best thing an applicant could hope for was that their supplement sent in at the last minute would make a sufficient enough impression that Admissions would take the applicant off the REJECT pile, and put them into the WAITLIST pile. That’s how late in the process it is to send in updates or supplements.
@gibby What happens to if, for example, the school needs 500 academic superstars, then they start reading and before they finish all of their applicants (let’s say 80% applicants has been reviewed by entire comittee), they have their 500 or whatever their criteria is. But then, in the remaining applications, they find some even better ones. What will they do in that case?
Since they will not know the strength of the pool until they read more applications, let’s assume they need to read 1/10 of all applications to know the strength of the pool, what criteria are they using for the first 1/10 of the pool when they do not know the strength of the pool? Don’t they also need to go back and decline/ accept applicants after they get a sense of applicants since every year the difficulty to get in changes, but nobody knows how much harder because the admit rate can change unexpectedly.
Hey guys, I have a huge update, like really huge and I uploaded it through the portal and sent them an email through Harvard’s Contact Us form in their website. I got a major publishing deal for a book with the biggest publishing group for spanish speaking people in the world. I don’t yet know if they received my update or not, they never responded to my email. Do you know if there’s a specific email address I can communicate with or maybe I should tell my interviewer or just call them? Thanks
Portal is fine, you don’t have to email them.
Here’s the reality you are not quite getting: Harvard has an 81% yield rate, which means Admissions needs to accept no more than 2050 students to get to their 1660 bed number (the maximum number of students that Harvard can house).
Admissions already accepted 997 students SCEA. That leaves 1053 spots, however, Admissions has Z-listed students from last year (google it if you don’t know the term). No one is sure of how many Z-listers there are, but for easy math let’s say there are 53. So, Harvard needs to Admit 1,000 students in the RD round to make their numbers.
Every application submitted in the SCEA and RD round has been vetted by the regional Admissions Committee. There aren’t more students lurking in the woodwork. They have what they have, In years past, the full committee meeting have ended on March 19th, so every applicant has been reviewed and voted upon. The committee has voted and they’ve already accepted the required number of students to make the math work. If a student should submit an update saying they’ve won the Nobel Prize, yes, the committee would have to reconvene and take one student off their list, but REALLY is that going to happen once every year? Every 20 years? I doubt it.
@gibby However, my question was that (forget all the updates), that when they meet their criteria and there are still applicants left, and then there is applicants they want to accept (without the applicants sending any updates). What happens then if a strong applicant is read very late into the stage and they have met their criteria?
Every student admitted to Harvard must garner 51% of the full committee’s vote. The full committee is comprised of over 40 faculty members and Admissions staff.
At this point in the process, every regional Admissions Officer has presented their best candidates who they think will get the majority vote. I honestly cannot think of a single update at this point in the process that would tip one student to the accepted pile. What’s done is done.
FWIW: Admissions Committee’s make mistakes. For example: My daughter applied to Yale SCEA and was deferred and then rejected. She ended up attending Harvard and graduating PBK Magna Cum Laude from Harvard. Now, did Yale make a mistake in not accepting her? You bet they did! But did it matter? Not one bit to Yale!
@gibby Ah, I get it now. So, even if a strong applicant is placed very late in the pile, for example your daughter, it might be unlucky because of the quota they have to satisfy and then they have no choice but to let it go. Also, can a regional admission officer waitlist an applicant or is that only a job for the full committee?
What decision can the regional issue？ Only rejection and likely letters? What about waitlist/ deferral and acceptance?
No, waitlisting an applicant is the responsibility of the full committee.
A Regional Admissions Officer is not empowered to make decisions about an applicant. Their job is to recommend applicant’s to the full committee.
Hi all! I have an important update to tell the second it may be too late but I feel lik e it is a big one : should I call it in or just not bother? Update: our robotics team made world championships