<p>i've met lots of brilliant people and competitive applicants who are totally happy going to their state school, don't even consider the big H.</p>
<p>a LOT at my school for sure.</p>
<p>There are more competitive applicants who don’t apply to a single competitive school than those that do</p>
<p>Thousands of students here in Canada, and hundreds of thousands more throughout the world.</p>
<p>I dunno, but it does seem that if one is sorta competitive, he/she will apply to harvard for fun.</p>
<p>In the US, probably a few thousand due to low self-esteem or the student needing to stay at home to help out a family member. Also, plane travel is getting reeeeeeeeally pricey, so that could be a deterrent (because that could be a couple grand a year depending on where you live).</p>
<p>We heard a lot of off-putting stereotypes about the place, so it wasn’t even on my D1’s radar. Then, in response to one of a number of e-mails my D1 sent out seeking advice about how to simultaneously pursue academic and artistic passions, she got a very enthusiastic, encouraging response from a faculty member. She decided, almost reluctantly, to check it out further, and everything and everyone she met seemed the antithesis of those stereotypes. She’s currently wrapping up her junior year at Harvard.</p>
<p>Since I continually read the same stereotypes being expressed in posts on CC, I’m sure that there are many other potential Harvard acceptees each year who are disinclined to apply.</p>
<p>^ well, for me at least, those stereotypes about Harvard (lack of undergrad focus, overly cutthroat environment etc) steered me away from applying.</p>
<p>Well who knows if they would be accepted. Most brilliant kids are rejected since there is only a 7% accept rate. All who are accepted should acknowledge that luck played a part in it. This is not to diminish the talent and hard work of the admitted students, I am the parent of one. Older S had the credentials to apply, but it was not even on his radar. Probably due to stereotypes. In addition, there is probably a portion of the applicants who just applied as a lark. Especially in this age of the common app. Harvard is not the goal for every brilliant high school student. It was one of my younger son’s applications due to very specific reasons and offerings. Those same attributes that lured my son may be meaningless to another.</p>
<p>Tens of thousands who could be accepted don’t apply. They may not be interested in Harvard. For instance, they may want to go to a single gender college, a historically black college, a liberal arts college, a college affiliated with their religion or to a college whose sports team they love or where their parents went to school.</p>
<p>They may not know about Harvard (This could include, for instance, stellar first generation college students from weak high schools). They may think it’s a school only for academically perfect or wealthy students. Their guidance counselors may erroneously discourage them from applying. They may accept an early, unsolicited offer of a free ride from a mediocre college. </p>
<p>Not every stellar student knows about or aspires to Harvard.</p>
<p>Many think that only the ultra-rich can go to Harvard. My math teacher told a kid that they don’t accept anyone who makes less than $100,000.</p>
<p>Probably a lot of underrepresented minority students or students from inner city schools. They probably don’t believe they’d fit in at Harvard or that they could pay for it or even have a chance.</p>
<p>Now’s the time to put up this link I just found this week: </p>
<p>[Cost</a> Should Be No Barrier: An Evaluation of the First Year of Harvard’s Financial Aid Initiative](<a href=“http://works.bepress.com/c_kirabo_jackson/12/]Cost”>This work is no longer available) </p>
<p>(which leads to the link below) </p>
<p><a href=“http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1080&context=workingpapers[/url]”>http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1080&context=workingpapers</a> </p>
<p>Harvard’s search file from the College Board identifies more than 60,000 United States high school students have some likelihood of being admitted to Harvard, based on test scores and self-reported grade averages of those students revealed to college board. Harvard’s number of applicants is less than half the number of students in the search file.</p>
<p>Lots…IMO more than the numbers of half the applicant pool, if not more than the whole applicant pool…</p>
<p>I didn’t apply only because i’ve heard such bad things about the undergrad experience there and so i decided that it would be better to apply as a grad student. Additionally i want the option of a solid engineering education, something Harvard is relatively new at. I think it’s impossible to say that I or anyone else would’ve been accepted since the admissions decisions often defy the CC expectations. I do, however, think that it’s a great accomplishment to be accepted to Harvard and respect those that worked hard to get there.
Just wondering, has anyone read or heard anything about the book “Ahead of the Curve”? It’s the true story about a journalist from cambridge university who decides to try out Harvard Business school, and he is apalled by their ethics, or rather lack of ethics and needless to say he writes about it.</p>
<p>There may be plenty of people out there with IQ’s above the Ivy League median who don’t apply, but of those who also have credentials comparable to the admitted population — SAT, ACT, AP exams, grades, etc — most are probably aware of Harvard or its peer schools. Getting high test scores already puts you on the mailing list of hundreds of schools, including those at Harvard’s level.</p>
<p>There probably are not too many environments in the USA of 2009 where an enormously intelligent and academically inclined student can be on track to avoid college altogether, and of those who do go to college and display their abilities, faculty will typically direct them elsewhere either as transfers or for grad school.</p>
<p>The larger source of lost potential students (in both senses of that phrase) at top schools is, I think, smart but poor students who don’t have the financial resources to sustain high academic performance while at college, due to work requirements, lack of money for books or housing near the campus, supporting children, etc. They go to some level of public institution, or a local non-selective school, but drop out or don’t make it through the process with the kind of grades and faculty contact to support placement into graduate (or transfer) school more suited to their abilities.</p>
<p>Also, a lot more people would probably apply if Harvard still had ED, or even EA like Yale. I’d imagine a lot of top applicants who get in EA at Yale don’t bother applying anywhere else.</p>
<p>^ Yup. I didn’t apply after I got my Yale EA decision…</p>
<p>^mhm same deal w/ stanford for me</p>
<p>I agree with the above posters…</p>
<p>I know some AMAZING kids at my school (perfect 36 on ACT, perfect GPAs, millions of awards and ECs) who didn’t apply to a single competitive college. Just our local state universities. It’s always for the same mixture of reasons that the above posters identified. I would like to emphasize one mentioned reason: counselors deter some students from applying to uber-competitive schools. This is so true! Maybe they don’t mean to do it, but it’s something that happens (a LOT at my school) nonetheless. </p>
<p>Personally, I didn’t apply to Harvard because of the “undergraduate sucks!” stereotypes… especially after getting into Yale early. But I’d love to go there for grad school if I could make it. I still think it’s a pretty great place (don’t get me to admit this in person next year amidst all the Yale-Harvard rivalry! 
)</p>
<p>there are also a ton of myths about harvard…like you have to have lots of money to apply</p>