<p>I, for one, did not understand the point of the article at all. It seemed like the author was trying to emphasize how amazing the average Harvard student is supposed to be, and how she fell short, but never-mind-all-that-because-she's-a-Harvard-grad, and so life is good. </p>
<p>"What top colleges are mostly looking for is the answer to the question </p>
<p>"Will the faculty and students like to have this person on campus for the next 4 years?"</p>
<p>The answer needs to be an emphatic YES."</p>
<p>So true. And that's all there really is to it.</p>
<p>Who the hell cares what admission officers look for? Unless you are the admissions officer of harvard, you don't know what is going on in their minds, you can only make educated guesses. You don't know why you were accepted and if denied, you have no idea why, you can only guess. So stop worrying about what they want, give it your best shot, give your whole person to them, not just the aspects you think they want to hear. You can't crack the process, you can only crack yourself against the process. Just formulate a good attack plan, and choose from where you get accepted, and shrug off rejections, because you don't know why you were rejected and you shouldn't care. Don't waste your time trying to crack the question of what is the panacea to the application that will make you a shoe-in, because there is none. Admissions officers choose some people, and if you do your best at what you love and will make you better, SOME admissions officers will choose you, and that is what matters. Oh, and my best friend is happily in Brown after maintaining a 2.7 GPA and SAT's /2400 that look like they should be /1600, so they don't discard your apps on the basis of scores, they will still read your letters and essay. I have no damn idea what got him in, he is truly an amazing writer/speaker, perhaps that was it. The key thing is that you don't know why admissions officers do what they do, and it's not worth your time to try to crack their minds.</p>
<p>My neighbour's daughter to the left was in some no name school for grad school. Harvard hired her prof so her prof asked her and her research team if they wanna go with him to Harvard instead. She said yes and got her Phd from Harvard. Lucky SOB eh? Who needs to apply just follow the right prof then you are golden. </p>
<p>Neighbour to the right he got his civil engineering degree at the University of British Columbia with 84% undergrad average. 84% at UBC is damn hard since it is a top Canadian public school that's famous for failing out half the entrance students, most of whom entered with way higher than straight As from high school. Some programs the entrance cut off is about 93% from high school. Canadian school mentality is that if you are smart enough, they'll find all the excuses to give you money and help you educate yourself for cheap, but if you are not good enough, do trades school or something else. </p>
<p>Anyways, he's graduating from Stanford's environmental civil engineering Phd this year. So proves to you...you can either get lucky or work hard. Harvard really isn't a big deal, we got 2 on our street and 1 stanford. My gf's lab has two harvard phd and one of the phd's kids both go to harvard too and one cambridge post-doc and she bosses them around with only a honours BSC from UBC. Although she was offered to go to harvard and stanford for graduate studies, she rather stay in Vancouver and finish her M.D. Phd at UBC for free. Just like most public school harvard has its problems too, from what i hear from friends, their undergrad education sucks, large % taught by graduate students. What a big waste of money. Although their graduate programs seems pretty decent. that's my Canadian two cents. Just go there for graduate program, don't waste ur money on undergrad.</p>
<p>"Canadian school mentality is that if you are smart enough, they'll find all the excuses to give you money and help you educate yourself for cheap, but if you are not good enough, do trades school or something else. "</p>
<p>It is shocking to me how many students still don't get the admissions process at top colleges. When people see students with top stats get rejected they think you just need higher stats to get in and ignore the students without hooks and lower stats that get in. The reality is that the admissions process is a human, individualized process. The admissions officers are PEOPLE and they read your entire file (contrary to popular belief). You have to provide them a compelling reason to accept you because there are thousands of applicants with top stats and they can only accept a few of them. They don't just want students with the highest stats possible (or you would see that in their profile of admitted students). They want diversity in all its forms, they want students that show passion not just about doing what is necessary to get into a prestigious college. Yield is still a factor as well; few colleges want to accept students that they think will go somewhere else. Sometimes that means accepting students with a weaker profile so that an institution makes sure it is the best that a student got into so he/she will be more likely to go there.</p>
<p>The academic evaluation is to see whether or not a student is ready to do good college work at their school. That doesn't require a 2300, 8 AP exams with 4's and 5's, 750+ only SAT II scores, and a 3.9+ unweighted GPA, etc. even for the Ivies. That is above and beyond what you need to be prepared to do good college work at top schools. The reasons why students with these stats get in is because it shows that they are academically dedicated, smart, and driven, but it is only a bonus not a prerequisite, and students get in without this.</p>
<p>The painful truth:
Most of the students admitted by Harvard and similar schools have stellar grades and scores AND very impressive ECs.
The schools admit some students with stellar grades and scores but less impressive ECs. They also admit some students with very impressive ECs but less stellar grades and scores. They also admit some students who are weaker than most admitted applicants in these areas because they are URMs, legacies, or development cases.
What they DON'T do is randomly admit a few people with weak grades, scores, and ECs just for the heck of it.</p>
<p>I'm the valedictorian of my class of 500, with a 4.0 UW/35/7 AP 5's and 2 AP 4's/great essay and okay extracurriculars (including top 100 in the US for 18 year old chess players), and got waitlisted at Harvard. I sent back their postcard and opted out of their waitlist, however, since I got a full scholarship to Vandy.</p>
<p>It is kind of annoying that Harvard (and Stanford, Columbia, and Princeton) accepted the one black applicant from my school, however, while they all turned down me and all the other smart people from my school with good stats. I wouldn't have attended, but my friends would have. I think it's time that colleges move away from racist affirmative action policies.</p>
<p>Wow! Do you know this "one Black kid stats"? Well even if you do and even if your resume is more grande than his, may I tell you that sometimes schools do not always accept people because of their STAts? This kid is maybe has something special that makes him stand out. Given that "only well educated people go to harvard" that is maybe why they rejected you. Because a well educated person will know that she/he is not the best in the world and what you don't know is stronger than you. Just a thought. I am not trying to argue.</p>
<p>^ or maybe the fact that he was black gave him a significant edge in the admissions process. Be reasonable. There's a point when this influence becomes more or less apparent, even without having read every word of every person's application.</p>
<p>Well if you think so rrtpa..., you might be right, I might be wrong but I could not care less because I am sure that this guy is as smart as /or even smarter than the person who think that she/he was rejected because of him .
But If you guys never acceoted all this racial thing then they would not impose it on you.</p>