<p>cya!! adios! bye............</p>
<p>What has CC (and this world) come to?</p>
<p>but w/e i know where im not wanted. i guess ill be asking "santa" for a college counselor this year. </p>
<p>It's not that you're not wanted here, geez are you so blunt you can't see through that? People are giving you advice here, to focus on your passions, not saying you don't have any. </p>
<p>Ask santa....riiiiiiiight.</p>
<p>HOLY MOFO!</p>
<p>I think I know this kid...he's in my boy scout troop...</p>
<p>OK fine- If you want to get into Harvard that desperately- here's some advice. </p>
<p>1) Stop spending so much time at CC. You're just wasting time. If you spend half as much time as you do daydreaming about Harvard at other things like playing soccer with your friends or practicing the piano- you might actually get good at something- something that shows that you're passionate about something and maybe it'll help you get into Harvard. </p>
<p>2) Instead of reading CC replies to your ridiculous, hardheaded posts that simply repeat the same (but so true!) advice you blatantly refuse to accept, go to the library and start reading. You're in 8th grade. Take advantage of the few years left learn as much as possible. Don't limit yourself to what's taught in school and learn more- ON YOUR OWN. </p>
<p>3) Look at awards and competitions like the Davidson Fellowship, The Presidential Scholars in the Arts, The Intel Competition and other accolades of the same nature and apply! I missed several of these things and now I'm regretting it. Winning any, I mean any will make your app ultra appealing. </p>
<p>4) Get out- have fun. Enjoy life. Go to the movies on weekends. Go to parties. Practice the piano but know when to stop. </p>
<p>Gook Luck</p>
<p>PS. I'm only dwelling of CC the last few days because I'm eager to find out about the latest Harvard waitlist info. I'm on the waitlist and I'm clinging on to whatever little hope there is. I would LOVE to go. But, if I don’t, I still have a great college education awaiting so its really not the end of the world.</p>
<p>holo:</p>
<p>If you want a better shot at getting into Harvard, my advice would be to become unconventional. Coupled with great academics, a long laundry list of excellent but average extracurrics (president of whatever/school paper/tutor/x varsity sport, ect.) will put you, unfortunately, in a pool with tens of thousands of other students who have the identical stats, most of whom will be showing this "passion" everyone's talking about in spades. Doing these things are FINE--but by all means, if you want a better chance of getting in, you have to do something better than <em>fine</em>. You have to do something that makes the AdCom sit up and notice you apart from the 22,000+ other kids. I'm saying from personal experience that this works--however, the things that I did throughout high school weren't part of a grandoise strategy to gain admission to Harvard. I participated in all the things I did out of a genuine love for each activity. I didn't even start considering Harvard until almost my senior year. But anyways.</p>
<p>Be unconventional in the foreign language you take. I wanted nothing to do with French, Spanish, ect. In high school I studied Sanskrit, Danish, Russian, and Japanese. I don't think many other applicants could say that. Instead of a regular sport, I chose Tae Kwon Do and got my black belt in it. My choice of an extracurricular was acting, and I got heavily involved in professional theater companies in the US as well as in movies and film. I Raised $$ so I could study abroad. Volunteered myself as an international worker for AIDS relief in Africa. Got sick of not being able to study ethnic studies in school, so I wrote my own ethnic studies curriculum, got it published, and pitched it as a pilot class to other local high schools. The list goes on and on.</p>
<p>My point is to do things that will make you unique. Great grades and great but usual EC's may or may not make you stand out, but a passion in unique/unusual things will make you shine.</p>
<p>getting into Harvard is easy as eating a piece of cake. The hard thing is paying the 40k+/year. </p>
<p>and cumon, you should know that a person who has graduated from Harvard and isnt guaranteed a better job than a person who has graduated from UF, UT-Austin, etc and in these colleges, you can get a full ride if not most with the stats you were applying to Harvard with and undecided that you'll get accepted. </p>
<p>so heres the resolution: forget Harvard, dont worry about getting into ivies and paying 40k+/year and get into a second-tier college.</p>
<p>SATaddict - hmm.. that kinda works if you don't plan to go to a professional grad school or go into a super prestigious job (ibanking for example)</p>
<p>lol, I'm really not trying to be rude, but holocene's mistranslation of darmani's story was hilarious!!! </p>
<p>And Byerly, great poem!</p>
<p>heh...i mistranslated? :-/ </p>
<p>well i promised myself i would never post again but i just had to thank WindCloudUltra and nattiebee. you guys rock! what you said makes a lot of sense. </p>
<p>nattie, i congratulate you on ur acceptance!!!! GO CRIMSON!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D</p>
<p>wind, i really hope u get off the wait list....you seem like a very nice person and u deserve to go to harvard. the davison fellows thing sounds really intense but im not sure if im capable of doing what they ask for, but im definetly gonna try! thanks for all the great info! :) </p>
<p>p.s., um...yeah, i am in fact in boy scouts but i don't think we know each other cuz....we just dont OK! =D really, we dont. and if we do, we don't <em>really</em> cuz for all you know i could be someone other loserish kid on the other side of the world (im not...or am i?) hehehe =D</p>
<p>ok...</p>
<p>so now i know what i gotta do....see ya at the finish line! ;)</p>
<p>edit: ps #2...what's wrong with "santa?" lol (note the quotation marks)....i meant my parents u nerds :p</p>
<p>One thing: Nattiebee and some others are making it seem that you have to do something extremely strange or professional to get noticed by the AdComs. Sanskrit? AIDS relief in Africa? Publishing a journal? </p>
<p>... Let's see... I take French. I play the flute. I run for track (gasp: no letter or awards, either!) I'm an editor of yearbook (and not even Editor in Chief!) How much more ordinary can you get than this, and I still got in. Doing ordinary extracurricular activities and not studying obscure subjects doesn't get you out of the running for Harvard acceptance. A person can demonstrate true passion for ordinary things, and they can do so without being the best in the state or country at it. I'm not going to say that true passion will always show through because sometimes they will be overlooked. But sometimes they are noticed.</p>
<p>this guy is fake he is inventing all this</p>
<p>come on</p>
<p>SATAddict,</p>
<p>I don't know if you're aware of this, but Harvard (like many very good schools) actually has very good financial aid packages and launched a major new financial aid initiative this year, which, among other things, eliminates the expected parental contribution of for kids whose families make less than 40k per year. They're not going to give anone a merit-based free ride, true, but no-one should be dissuaded from applying by the sticker price. And even some very expensive, ivy-caliber schools do give merit-based free rides--University of Chicago comes to mind.</p>
<p>Doesn't anyone else find this a little disgusting? 8th graders trying to get into Harvard presuming life will be easier? Wow... school is a place to learn - a place ignorant people go to expand their horizons and eliminate bigotry. Let me give you a warning Holocene, not because I want to be mean but because I experienced it myself: don't presume that you're Harvard material going into high school because when you get rejected and humility grabs you by the neck, as it did for me, you will feel like complete crap. But I guess since you won't listen... try your best... eat vegetables... run around in circles. My advice is the same as all others here... unless you're the son of the president or you donate a billion dollars, just follow your passions and don't be a slave to a institutions made of mortals. Good luck.</p>
<p>Find something you're passionate about and devote yourself to it. You're hyper-ambitious and the only way you can enjoy all of this hard work you're going to do is to find something you like and stick with it for all four years. Be involved, start a club, do anything and everything that relates to your passion. </p>
<p>Make yourself stick out. Like everyone has been saying, there are a lot of instances of two people with very, very similar stats where one is rejected and one is accepted. Find something nobody else has done and do it.</p>
<p>Don't start worrying about the SATs until the summer before junior year. </p>
<p>Take it one step at a time. If you feel overwhelmed, take a break.</p>
<p>ABOVE ALL, you need to realize Harvard is not the be-all, end-all you seem to believe it is. You might find out later you'd rather go to a smaller, liberal arts college or even a big state university. All I'm saying is that you should go where you truly want to go and not allow so much outside influence to tell you what you SHOULD be.</p>