Harvard SCEA- worth it for me?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
1

<p>I love the atmosphere, the academic programs, and the location. Also, quite a few of my indirect family members attended. It's undoubtedly my first choice, and I'm thinking of applying SCEA. However, the restrictiveness makes me nervous and I'm doubtful that it will give me a boost as compared to RD. Here are my stats for some background.
Thoughts?</p>

<p>Female, one of the top public schools in the state.
GPA: 3.94 unweighted
SAT: 2380 (CR 780)
SAT II: Chem 700, Math 800, US History 780
Honors/AP Classes:
9th grade: all Honors
10th: AP chemistry, AP US History 1 (two-part course at my school), self studied AP Music Theory
11th: AP English lang, AP Bio, AP Calc AB, AP US 2, AP Spanish
12th (projected) : AP English lit, AP Calc BC, AP Physics C, AP Econ, AP Gov</p>

<p>ECs:
-Model UN: 2-time elected President of General Assembly, nominated for Premier Delegate Award, President of school chapter
-Youth and Government: Kean Assembly Vice Chair '10, Assembly Speaker '11, winner of Outstanding Statesman award, passed my bill through model Congress, President of school chapter
-Mock Trial Team: school's top witness, took team to states, team captain
-People with Pals (penpal program in Spanish to kids in Ecuador): president of school chapter.
-Peer Leaders (school drugs/alcohol awareness team): elected VP
-Violin: private lessons since age 4, Chamber Orchestra since freshman year, on the road to becoming school concertmistress of orchestra, regionals '10 - '11
-Volunteering at local medical center
-Assisted with neuroscience research at an esteemed medical center for 2 summers</p>

<p>-Indian music (most important): performed over 20 concerts in the US, UK, and India, won over 30 awards and competitions, go to India every year to perform in the music festival, and performed with eminent and notable artists. Performed a benefit concert in this music style to raise money for two charities.</p>

<p>Extras:
-Lived in the UK (Central London) for 4.5 years, until late middle school
-Scripps National Spelling Bee in middle school (dunno if that counts)</p>

<p>Thank you!</p>

2

<p>You look like a competitive candidate, so the question before you is: do you want to know that you got into college (applying to a match, like Georgetown or something, early) or do you want to go for broke and get into your top choice early, with the risk of deferral and having no college acceptances in the bag until the spring? I’d go for the latter, because I don’t mind risk much. But that preference is very much up to you. For what it’s worth, if your essays and recommendations are good, I don’t think there’s much of a chance that they’ll reject you in the first round (vs. deferral).</p>

<p>Also, Scripps depends on how far you got. If you were in the top 50 in the country or whatever–I’m not really sure what’s a good cutoff, but you would know better than me–I would definitely include it.</p>

3

<p>I would love to be certain about getting into college early by applying to a match, but the benefits of being accepted to Harvard early, to me, outweigh the risks of being deferred later on and just having to wait.
The question remains, them; does anyone else have an opinion as to whether this is a wise choice for me, given my stats?</p>

4

<p>bump???</p>

5

<p>Anyway you look at it, you’re facing decision-making under uncertainty (not for the last time in your life). Predicting who’ll get into Harvard is always hard, and there’s no recent experience with early admission at Harvard, so it’s hard to predict how large the early applicant pool will be. Harvard will take some early applicants from Yale and Stanford, but who knows how many they’ll get?</p>

<p>If Harvard is your first choice, apply early because odds are that’s when you’ll have the best chance at admission. If you look at Yale’s recent experience, last year, they admitted about 14.5% of the SCEA pool (761/5,257, but less than 6% of the RD pool (1,245/22,025). Some of that is because the early pool is very strong, but Yale has more room to maneuver early than late. When they get to RD they have already filled a third or so of the available slots. Something similar is likely to happen next year at Harvard.</p>

<p>If you don’t get in early, that means you’ll have to sweat out the RD process, but at least you will have given it your best shot (and, if you get deferred, you’ll still have a shot in RD).</p>