Have I blown my chances of getting into Harvard?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
21

<p>So far my EC’s include:
(NOTE: Applying for neuroscience/medicine/biochem—) something along that route…</p>

<p>-Medical clinic work experience (1 week)

  • Special needs school volunteering (1 week) (<<<thinking of doing this for another week but it clashes with school hours)
    -Attended painting classes for 6 years to improve painting skills which also led to 2 of my paintings to be selected for an exhibition at a different school. Normally, my paintings have also been exhibited in the art centre’s own gallery. I also donate some of my paintings to the annual charity art exhibition.
    -Grade 2 Guitar with merit award (not that impressive so may leave that out).</p>

<p>-Volunteered at an annual charity fair for the special needs school (<<going to do that again this year)
-Volunteered at a charity art exhibition (<<going to do that again this year) </p>

<p>^^ These are all annual events and happen once a year, I volunteered for 6 hours at both of them, can I still include that?</p>

<p>-Currently completing the IAYP Gold (award). (will take 12 months)
-Attend a science conference/club (Cafe Scientifique) once a month (it only happens once a month) (will do for 2 yrs)

  • Planning on going on a biodiversity field trip in South Africa (2 weeks in summer)
    -Fundraising for the biodiversity field trip to South Africa. (over the course of 1 school yr)
    -I write articles for the school newspaper for the ‘Hard Sciences & Research’ section. (plan to do it for 2 yrs)</p>

<p>-and now the most annoying question…
-What are my chances like for any of the Ivies, especially considering my lack of depth for some?
-What are my chances in terms of breadth? How good is my breadth? Realistically, will I be considered (in terms of EC’s?)
-Anyone have any advice on what other kind of EC’s I could do? Especially related to my choices above??^^ </p>

22

<p>@LexieA,</p>

<p>What @WasatchWriter said. A lot. Taking the lead to get things done. Making sure they’re done right. Expanding boundaries. That’s real leadership.</p>

<p>That very much describes my younger son, who only held formal office in one or two extracurricular organizations. But his letters of recommendation attested to his qualities as a student leader who was always available to make things happen, make them right, and broaden what folks thought was possible.</p>

23

<p>@notjoe- do both your sons go to Harvard? And what kind of things show that kind of leadership (apart from being School President)?</p>

24

<p>Depth and breadth. Three prongs is usually a safe bet-- what you do to pursue your own interests or future goals, what you do for your group (hs activities, for some it includes your cultural or religious group, etc,) and what you do for your community.</p>

<p>There are kids who do pursue primarily one or two things in depth- but that can depend on circumstances. Don’t necessarily limit yourself, assuming they’ll be bowled over by that one choice.</p>

<p>No, it’s not too late. Not all international kids have the same opportunities as US kids; adcoms know that.</p>

25

<p>Regarding the quotas: need-blind schools have hard quotas because external financial aid is from the US government. Therefore, in their models, they need to be able to report to their trustees that they can cover full costs for each foreign applicant (no government financial aid); also, there are tax advantages, etc. that presume that Universities will educate local (citizen) applicants, so even non-need-blind schools have limits.</p>

<p>Regarding ECs: Having lists of roles and ECs serve as a touchstone to what you did, how much it impacted the community, how relevant it was, etc. With no ECs, one conclusion is that you are self-centered, that you have poor time-management habits, or that you spent all your time studying. ECs that draw from a larger stage (e.g. world-wide pursuit to cure cancer) will show a greater impact than those that are less impactful or less competitive. Your job is to do what you love with passion and impact. ECs and awards are simply ways to showcase those activities and give outside validation as to their impact and scope. Do not “rack up” ECs. If you do something, though, make it easier for the admissions officers, and seek outside validation (awards, etc.) so that they can more easily benchmark it.</p>

<p>Then, find schools that will help you achieve your goals. Try not to worry too much whether or not they are part of a sports league. Lay out a convincing argument of how you can contribute to the community (and back it up with concrete verifiable facts, such as awards and ECs and Letters of Recommendation), and how the institution can uniquely accelerate your path. If there are fewer than ~200 in the non-USA world this year who area better match than you for Harvard, there is no other conclusion but to have you join them. In other words, ECs provide a shorthand way for you to “show, not tell” that you are suited towards your pursuits at Harvard.</p>

<p>Some schools look for well rounded applicants; some try to construct well-rounded classes (as a cohort). I suspect most do a bit of each.</p>

<p>Regarding the ACT or SAT, take a practice exam from each. The schools have no preference. I have heard that students find the ACT to be more biased towards testing achievement with more concrete problems and the SAT to be more biased towards testing how one approaches new problems, requiring a bit of cleverness to unlock the answer. Unless you take the practice tests yourself, you will not have a feel for which seems to be a better assessment for you.</p>

26

<p>@ItsJustSchool -

Please provide a source for your assertion.</p>

27

<p>@sherpa, I was told this verbally by someone in the admissions stream at a HYPSM. I have no official source to provide here. I think the empirical evidence of past years’ admission statistics are actionable even without proof.</p>

28

<p>Yes, both my sons are currently at Harvard. One is a junior, the other is a freshman.</p>

<p>The most formal leadership role either of my sons took was that they were each officers in the school’s chapter of the National Honor Society. At their high school, the NHS chapter is both an honor society and a service organization. Those who are honored with membership must serve the school and their fellow students. Members are called on by the school to facilitate dozens of events per year, including assemblies, Masses (we are an all-boys Catholic school, so we have school-wide Mass from time to time), open houses, parents’ nights, teacher/parent conferences, fundraisers, among other events. Also, every member of the NHS must serve as a tutor to students needing assistance. As members and officers, my sons were involved in the planning and execution of many school-wide activities over the course of their membership (they each were admitted as sophomore). They also both performed extensive tutoring. In the case of my older son, the tutoring load grew so heavy in senior year, I had to require him to cut back, as it was affecting the time available for him to complete his own studies.</p>

<p>In his letter of recommendation for my younger son, the principal wrote that my son’s leadership came from being both the first to start the work, and the one to make sure it was properly completed. He’s a pretty quiet young fellow and seldom says a lot, but students would just start doing whatever he was doing.</p>

<p>The rector of the school often took my sons aside, especially my younger son, to remind them to give their best example always, as they had the respect of many students, and many students behaved and performed better in response to my sons’ good example. The Latin teacher recruited my younger son into his classes to give his department a more serious academic tone. My son was taking German at the time, and the Latin teacher and German teacher nearly came to blows over this, as the German teacher didn’t want to lose my younger son. It was agreed he’d take Latin, take private tutoring to get four years of Latin into two, and continue on in German, too. He won both the German and Latin awards for his graduating class.</p>

<p>My sons also both expanded the curriculum at our high school, going beyond the upper limits of the curriculum, and performing academically in ways that exceeded the limits of what some folks thought was achievable. Especially in the case of my younger son, the school is significantly different because he went there.</p>

<p>My sons weren’t very interested in accumulating organizational titles. They just wanted to do what they wanted to do, and to make a positive difference in people’s lives. And they often did. And still do.</p>

29

<p>@ItsJustSchool - </p>

<p>I’m confused. What do you mean by “external financial aid is from the US government.”?</p>

30

<p>“organizational titles,” to use notjoe’s words, are often (not always) more about popularity than they are about leadership, especially when it comes to student government, prom committee, and so on. Admissions officers know that.</p>

31

<p>@sherpa, money for higher education comes from:</p>

<p>-Family contribution
-Outside Scholarships
-Institutional Funds
-US federal programs (Student Loans, Pell Grant, Work-Study, other financial aid). Money comes to the institution based on the statistics of the students and is administered by the institution.</p>

<p>Of these, the fourth is not available to international students (including most loan programs). If the institution is “need blind”, that means that the admissions department is not given input to the first two of these, i.e. they are blind to the applicant’s financial need. That leaves only the third, institutional funds, as a source of guaranteed financing for an international student. The need-blind institution must be prepared, then, to cover all costs for an international student with 100% institutional funds, whereas a guarantee of meeting full need for a US citizen student will have some of that need met through loans and grants (external financial aid- external to the institution) that have their source as the federal government: the fourth source listed above.</p>

32

<p>These things that get transmitted verbally from “somewhere in the stream” tend to take on their own life. </p>

33

<p>I feel vaguely like post #31 was an insult directed at me. To be clear, it was not “somewhere in the stream,” it was, specifically, John Smith from Ivy University. I am not comfortable revealing the names of either John Smith or of Ivy University. “tend to take on their own life”? Not sure what that implies. In any case, my comments are worth at least as much as you paid for them. You are welcome to believe them or discount them. It doesn’t matter either to me or to the outcome for the OP.</p>

34

<p>I don’t know why anyone questions that there is a cap on international admissions at the handful of colleges that claim to be need-blind for international applicants. Everyone has a budget, and I am sure that the VPs of enrollment (or whatever title they have) at each of those colleges can tell you to within a few thousand dollars (or ten) what the financial aid cost will be for any particular level of need-blind international admissions. They’re not THAT different from the need-aware colleges. They tend to admit a lot more international applicants, because they are richer and can afford more aid, and because they invest more in their international profile. But they aren’t indifferent to the cost of admitting more students. (And, as mini used to demonstrate repeatedly, something similar clearly holds true for domestic admissions. They don’t take need into account, yet magically from year to year the financial aid budget varies hardly at all relative to overall cost and class size.)</p>

35

<p>The tussle is over soft vs hard quotas. I don’t see how we can assume intls are richer, especially with need blind. There are lots of bright kids with hard luck stories. Lots of first-gens of struggling parents. Some of us feel the target % of internationals is a result of many factors.</p>

36

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<p>@ItsJustSchool: Need-blind colleges, such as Harvard, DO NOT receive financial aid money from the US Government for US students. Not sure where you got that information, but it’s wrong. Money, in the form of Pell Grants, is available to low income US students from the US Government, but that money goes directly to the student to help pay the costs of their college education.</p>

<p>Every year, Harvard Admissions is given a budget from the President and Fellows of Harvard University (the governing body of the university) as to what money is available for them to spend for financial aid the following year. As Harvard enrolls half their students in the SCEA round, they have a pretty good idea of how much money is remaining in their budget for FA.</p>

37

<p>I have heard a lot about international student quotas and US universities preferring int. students who pay full fare rather than people who need financial aid. If anyone has any more information on that, it would be really helpful if they commented below!</p>

38

<p>^^ That’s only true at universities that are NEED-AWARE for international students (i.e. all US universities except Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Dartmouth, and Amherst which are NEED-BLIND for international students). See: <a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/education/international-students-pay-top-dollar-at-us-colleges.html?pagewanted=all”>http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/education/international-students-pay-top-dollar-at-us-colleges.html?pagewanted=all&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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</p>

39

<p>@gibby, financial aid based on the FAFSA is distributed from the US government, in the form of a block grant, to each university, and administered by the university. The gatekeeper is the US government and these programs are only for US citizens who have registered for selective service (if male).</p>

<p>The information is not “wrong.” That is a pretty strong word. I defy you to TRY to get your hands on Pell Grant money. Let me know how that works out for you. :slight_smile: Enquiring Minds want to know!</p>

<p>It is an offset to university costs- it is NOT distributed individually to the student. It goes from the government accounting system to the university accounting system and is applied to the student account.</p>

<p>It is beside the point, as well. The point is that financial aid that either the student is not bringing with him (outside scholarships and personal money), or is is not provided by the US government to US citizens, must be made up from institutional funds. The institution has a sort of “guarantee” from the US government of a certain amount of funding that will be available from either the family or the US government for a US citizen, based on the EFC from the FAFSA. No such safety net is available to the school from international applicants. Therefore, the worst-case cost of a domestic student to the institution is, by definition, lower than the worst-case for an international student. I don’t know what it is, but people on here do, something like $5,500 for Pell + $7,500 for loans; or EFC, whichever is greater, becomes the basement (for non-loan places like Princeton, the basement is just federal grants).</p>

<p>There is the second point, that <em>I believe</em> US institutions that receive federal money may have a duty to educate a certain percentage of US students. With the expansion of US universities into Dubai and other places, I don’t know if/how this works, or if it is true. Since registering for selective service is required for males to receive federal financial aid, it is plausible that the institutions also have some requirements levied on them to benefit US citizens.</p>

40

<p>^^ Currently there are only six US colleges that are NEED-BLIND for international students (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Dartmouth, and Amherst). Those institutions have huge endowments (Harvard just received a $150 million gift just for financial aid: <a href=“http://harvardmagazine.com/2014/02/an-unprecedented-gift-for-undergraduate-financial-aid”>http://harvardmagazine.com/2014/02/an-unprecedented-gift-for-undergraduate-financial-aid&lt;/a&gt;). Those six colleges have the financial means to do things differently than other NEED-AWARE colleges. They don’t need to look at the income of US students or international students when deciding to admit them. They can have soft-quotas that bend and flex with the admissions pool; they can admit as many students, or as few students, who can pay the full fare as they want. That’s why 60% of Harvard students receive financial aid from the university (not from the US Government). The system you are describing in post #38 applies to all other colleges – those that are NEED-AWARE for International students. Those colleges don’t have huge endowments, and therefore need to recruit more full-fare playing students to balance their budget and DO LOOK at income levels of international students when admitting them to the university. Harvard is not one of those colleges – they, along with Yale, Princeton, MIT, Dartmouth, and Amherst – march to a different tune.</p>