<p>Well, I just found out today that my school has been blacklisted from Harvard. A girl who has a aunt who works in admissions told me about it, and apparently the reason behind the blacklisting was the fact that only 2 people who got accepted into Harvard my school, just recently failed their mid-terms. </p>
<p>Now, I'm new at this school so I'm not sure if other people had been accepted before these two, but that's what everyone's been saying. </p>
<p>Apparently it was common knowledge at our school for sometime now. </p>
<p>So my question is, would Harvard blacklist your school just because the 2 people that went there failed their mid-terms? I don't think so, but the girl's aunt said that it's because they represent us, and Harvard feels that our school is too easy on our students.</p>
<p>This really is hard to believe. I've never heard of anything like it before, and like Bay said, why on earth would admissions have access to midterm grades?</p>
<p>It would be more believable to me if they had, say, dropped out, been suspended, etc. Even failing a semester might make sense. But for admissions to know or care about bad scores on tests? Absolutely not.</p>
<p>ETA: Please keep us posted- I would be very interested if this turned out to be true.</p>
<p>That sounds wholly unbelievable and very much like it's typical HS gossip. Additionally, mid-terms don't really mean all that much so even IF (and that's a big if) the ad-office had access to mid-term grades (which they wouldn't unless the personally emailed each professor and asked - we don't have some magical centralized tracking system here) it would still be unfathomable to 'blacklist' the students' HS for it, because it would still be entirely possible for them to pull out a B or a B+.</p>
<p>This girl sounds like she's talking with her head lodged firmly between her legs.</p>
<p>Maybe that girl is secretly applying to Harvard and trying to get you not to apply. I really don't think Harvard would do this. (Well perhaps if it happened year after year, but not the scenario depicted.)</p>
<p>This may fuel the fires of CC paranoia, but here goes:</p>
<p>A couple of years back, a kid from a local parochial school--Valedictorian, solid SAT's, solid EC's (though nothing spectacular)--was rejected unanimously from HYPSM. Princeton sent him a letter. </p>
<p>It said that, although he was a qualified applicant, Princeton simply "could not trust Indiana schools anymore."</p>
<p>Now, that is Princeton, not Harvard, but there may actually be some truth behind these fears. I don't think the performance of alums affects superstar kids or hooked applicants, but for borderline kids, it may be yet another "tip"--although not in the direction you would like. </p>
<p>Poor SAT II's/performance on AP exams would confirm the admissions office's suspicions.</p>
<p>This sounds very drastic - blacklisted school thing as well as the can't trust Indiana school thing. Blacklisting an entire state - isn't that kind of illegal to even think of such a thing?</p>
<p>Now when I was in high school, a bit after the sixties, the rumor was that I couldn't get into one Ivy League school because an alum of my high school had gone there and organized the local SDS and tried to blow up things. I thought that was a cool excuse for my rejection until I found out that was the urban legend at a whole bunch of high schools.</p>
<p>I DEFINITELY don't believe the state of Indiana thing. In particular, Princeton would never, ever, ever send a letter to a student "explaining" why the student was rejected, especially not with such a blatantly offensive excuse.</p>
<p>That would be even if it were true that Princeton had such a policy, which sounds very unlikely to me. It's true that universities do judge schools and regions- a valedictorian from one school is not equal to a valedictorian from another. But it makes no sense to judge all the schools in a state.</p>
<p>Forget about this, stop listening to that girl and do a great job on your application.
Once you get in, you can stop by admissions and introduce yourself to the aunt.</p>
<p>All of this seems like a farce, though I'm sure blacklisting to a degree can happen (specifically, if a substantial amount of students are accepted to a school and none matriculate, or something of that sort, but even then, it seems impractical). And if what the OP says is true, then Harvard didn't screw you over, the people from your school did ;)</p>
<p>They did indeed say that they "couldn't trust Indiana schools anymore." I saw the letter.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, I know of at least two kids since then who still got in. I think their meaning was that borderline applicants from Indiana schools would be more likely rejected. Obviously they aren't going to stop admitting all kids from Indiana. That would be as unjust as it would be embarrassing.</p>
<p>I wouldn't believe that for a second. Plenty of people here are REALLY struggling through their first midterms. That should be expected, it's a really hard school. Not only that, but there is no way that admissions has time to check up on how specific kids are doing in classes, if that info was even available. I have three classes in which I have yet to receive any meaningful grades.</p>
<p>was the original poster talking about high school midterms or Harvards midterms? Either way, I can't believe it. I agree it just sounds like typical high school talk. Kids have a way of exaggerating situations</p>