<p>I was talking about the Harvard Mid-terms. </p>
<p>Yeah, I was just re-reading my post and realized how ridiculous I sound, but I asked around today, and pretty much everyone was surprised that I didn't know about this. Apparently it's a well known fact. </p>
<p>Also the person that told me (not the girl with the aunt), said that they were talking about it in the middle of class, and that the teacher was participating in the conversation too. </p>
<p>So yeah, I'm more paranoid than ever.</p>
<p>The Harvard admissions office has way more to do than hunt down freshmen who failed their midterms!!! How could they possibly even get that information? Midterm grades usually aren't part of someone's official record, just the final grades are. Go ahead and apply. It would be illegal for Harvard to accept your application fee and then reject you merely on the basis of where you went to high school.</p>
<p>But it wouldn't be illegal for Harvard to reject you because they didn't think you could handle the work. In fact, that's very legal.</p>
<p>OP, just apply. This sounds like an old wives' tale. If you have good AP/SATII scores, then you should be fine in demonstrating that you can handle college work.</p>
<p>I don't think this would be true.
Colleges understand that bright students often need time to adjust to college life.
Just because a lot of the overly anal people here are studying 24/7 doesn't mean everyone that gets accepted to top schools is studying all the time.
Hell, it took me a year to actually start studying for things. My recs probably pointed out that I was kind of lazy before they accepted me though so I don't think my high school got blacklisted at Duke because I had a sub-par freshman year (didn't fail anything or even do that badly overall- just not that great, lol).</p>
<p>There is nothing to this. Zero. Nada. Zip. And if Cato91 saw a letter from Princeton admissions saying they couldn't trust Indiana schools anymore, it was a hoax.</p>
<p>No admissions officer would write such a letter.</p>
<p>No admissions department would "blacklist" a school, anywhere, ever. If it found out the school's GCs and faculty were lying to it, systematically, there might be notes in the file not to believe what they say without checking, but that would be as close as it came.</p>
<p>GCs who feel they have a good relationship with admissions officers at a specific college -- and many do -- try very, very hard to maintain credibility with the admissions officers. If they say the college is a student's first choice, and the student is admitted, and then the student decides to go elsewhere, they lose a bit of their credibility, and if it happens a bunch over the course of a few years, they will no longer be able to go to bat effectively for students, and fewer students from their school will be admitted. But not "none", nothing like a blacklist.</p>
<p>I'm sure admissions offices do some rudimentary longitudinal analysis to relate their evaluation of applicants to the applicants' actual college performance. But my impression is that no one does that yet at any level of great sophistication. I doubt if things are broken down to the high school level (how do kids from X school perform?) other than very imprecisely in the mind of whatever admissions officer does primary coverage on that school. And, in the case of Harvard, the numbers for any particular school that isn't a Boston-area feeder (like Boston Latin, or BBN) would be too small to get any kind of accurate statistical picture over a meaningful time period. No admissions department would make a judgment based on two students' short-term performance. Finally, as many have pointed out, it is utterly improbable that anyone at Harvard admissions has any access to any Harvard students' midterm grades, or that anyone at Harvard admissions WANTS any access to any students' midterm grades. It's not like they don't have enough to do already.</p>
<p>I know applying to college is crazy-making, but take a step back and use some common sense.</p>
<p>Think about it: entering class of 1,600+ Four mid-terms each. The admissions office would be looking at 6,000+ midterm grades. It's not as if it does not have other things to do.</p>
<p>It sounds like it belongs with "The Choking Doberman and other 'New' Urban Legends" (Jan Harold Brunvand, 1984). Quite interesting reading. I wonder what Princeton will do to our school. After a few years of not accepting anybody, this year they accepted 3 and only one went (and it wasn't for financial reasons).</p>
<p>For what it's worth, the admissions office <em>does</em> keep track of how students do once they get in to Harvard: The</a> Harvard Crimson :: News :: Byerly?s Eye On the Yard</p>
<p>But I think the likelihood of a school being "blacklisted" because a couple of freshman are having a difficult transition is next to nil.</p>
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<p>I wouldn't have expected them to do any less. (I've probably read this article before, so the idea is familiar.) Any college with a thoughtful admission process should have some analysis of the results of the admission process--that is, of the academic and social success of the admitted class. But it wouldn't be thoughtful to blacklist a whole state because of what happened at a few high schools in that state. Each new year may bring forth a few "one off" students who excel beyond the expectations of most of their high school classmates.</p>
<p>I'm very, very surprised that colleges such as Harvard even blacklist schools.</p>
<p>Well, it makes their admissions work a lot quicker, I suppose.</p>
<p>"A girl who has a aunt who works in admissions" from the person with 2 posts... such credible intel I'd base my entire paranoia on...</p>
<p>Over one million people take the SAT and 20 get a perfect score. I dug up an article about a girl from Indiana(back in 2004) who got a 1600(perfect for the 1600 scale). She attends princeton now, class of '10.</p>
<p>HS</a> Senior With Perfect SAT Score Eyes DePauw, Newspaper Notes
Princeton</a> University Orchestra > Member List</p>
<p>Correct current figures: </p>
<p>^^ 1.3 million people take the SAT and only 260 got a full score last year, not 20.</p>
<p>I am not sure if this is so hard to understand. The adcom's job is to admit a strong, cohesive student body. A very important criteria is to make sure to admit students that could do well enugh to graduate in 4 years. Without adcoms digging very hard, at a faculty lunch or cocktail party professors could just very casually mention some kids are not doing well, and if 2 of them are from the same school it would certainly raise a red flag. Why are some HS feeder schools to top tier schools? It's because students from those high schools are better prepared to handle rigorous college courses, especially at a school like Harvard. My daughter's prep school has never done well with Stanford, but sends 4-5 every year to HYP. We think it's because many admitted students didn't matriculate due to distance. I wouldn't be surprised if Harvard's adcom is recalibrating OP's high school profile to make sure future students could be successful at Harvard.</p>
<p>The Crimson article is very interesting, and evidences a little more individualized tracking than I would have thought. (It's especially interesting that admissions officers are also proctors, which gives them an unmediated window for following some of the students they have admitted.) But, read carefully, it's still basically inconsistent with the OP's idea. The meeting between the deans and the admissions office seems to happen in January, after first-semester results are completed, and before the RD round decisions are made. There's no systematic tracking of midterm grades. While consistent underpreparation by students from a particular school will (deservedly) be factored in to assessments of that school's curriculum, the article makes clear that such a reassessment requires a clear pattern over time, not a bad week for a couple of students. Also, the focus of the communication seems to be as much social as academic. The admissions office probably does an excellent job of identifying good students -- it isn't that hard, there are lots of good metrics, and the essays and recommendations will provide a wealth of nuanced material on that. What seems harder is identifying jerks and deciding what to do with them. Lots of the communication seems to be pointed at how to avoid admitting smart jerks.</p>
<p>The article doesn't surprise me. When we've had our college night admissions officers from other Ivy's (not Harvard as it happens) have made statements like, "We know students from your school are very well prepared for academics at our college." They are paying attention, but they aren't blacklisting schools without good reasons. One or two mistakes is not a good enough reason. </p>
<p>I do think it's interesting that they accept kids they force to take gap years. I wonder just what it is in these students that makes Harvard want to take them over other students who are ready now.</p>
<p>I did know that there were some people in the admissions office living on campus. I have a cousin who was a Harvard grad student whose wife worked in admissions - they were proctors in one of the freshmen dorms for many years.</p>
<p>"consistent underpreparation by students from a particular school will (deservedly) be factored in to assessments of that school's curriculum, the article makes clear that such a reassessment requires a clear pattern over time, not a bad week for a couple of students."</p>
<p>Right. My guess is that Harvard would also take note if deans or counselors at a given high school deliberately misled it -- for example, if a recommender mentioned a disciplinary problem in the student's background, but the dean's letter said the student's record was clean.</p>