<p>Another Harvardian! How many “people” are on your planet anyway?</p>
<p>That is an interesting perspective, though. Thanks for that.</p>
<p>Honestly, Harvard admissions is screwed up. (So are admissions process at many other elite colleges besides Harvard, so I am not just picking on Harvard admissions)</p>
<p>I think that admitting sub-par students into top schools while denying those true intellectuals is seriously doing our nation a disservice. What good is it for the society, for our corporations, or for our people’s good if those dumb-as-a-rock sports athletes or URM’s get into Harvard while those with perfect scores are getting rejected? Those athletes can go to Ohio State or Florida State and play whatever sport they want to play. Don’t take those spots away at top colleges from truly outstanding individuals with high intelligence and high academic potential.</p>
<p>Talking about elite colleges from other countries such as UK, France, Germany, Japan, or wherever, they don’t give huge undue admissions advantages towards ‘minority race’ groups or due to one’s god-given athleticism. </p>
<p>There is social or racial discrimination that exists in other countries, too. Think: Jewish people in Germany in the past, etc. Yet, top schools in countries outside U.S. don’t automatically accept these ‘URM’ race groups, cutting huge slack regarding their qualifications. </p>
<p>Truthfully, anything is better than the Harvard (or many other elite U.S. colleges’) admissions system based on bull$hit criteria such as race, legacy, or sports, ‘volunteering’ at soup kitchen, ‘personality or character’ only evidenced by 500-word application essay, etc. A country that makes these things its top criteria is just gonna get raped in the long run by the countries that value actual intelligence like England (Oxford or Cambridge), Japan, South Korea, India, Germany, or France. </p>
<p>American economy, American corporations, and trust in American system is declining in record-alarming rate. We should be allocating resources efficiently: let those true intellectuals study and grow at an amazing academic institution such as Harvard. Let those football sports recruits enjoy their sports at Oklahoma State or Florida State. </p>
<p>Harvard is the leader of American higher education. If Harvard admissions modifies its criteria for admissions and adopt more meritocratic and rationale process, I am sure many other elite U.S. colleges will follow the trend.</p>
<p>Now I think you’re just trolling.</p>
<p>I agree with DwightEisenhower. LazyKid, you just showed your ignorance with your last post. I suggest closing this thread. This thread is going no where.</p>
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<p>pretty sure this has been refuted already, so i’ll leave it be as far as that goes</p>
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<p>then obviously something is going right</p>
<p>Asa dad of someone in Math 55 and other who is a recruited athlete (although someone who did not want to follow her brother but strike out on her own) I can say from first hand experience that there are multiple ways for a college such as Harvard to evaluate who they feel will become leaders in society. My D’s thousands of hours in the pool while being an excellent student, but who is not academically my S doesn’t make her any less worthwhile as a member of any college–including Harvard. Indeed, there are many indications that people with my D’s background will actually be more successful by almost any measure other than his being an academic.<br>
Should Harvard only admit potential summas? No–it would fail in its mission. Also Harvard would be a far more boring a place for everyone.</p>
<p>In the end admission to Harvard is not a REWARD or a IMPRIMATUR-- it is a guess on the part of the Ad Com that this group of students have something to offer both each other and the world while they are in cambridge and after they leave. Thus it is about the future not the past.</p>
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<p>If you don’t like what I am saying, fine, don’t read. No one is forcing you to read my viewpoint. And, you don’t have to participate in this thread.</p>
<p>And, no, I am not ignorant. I would gladly match my academic credentials or intelligence against yours any day of the week. I graduated with 3.8 GPA at an Ivy college and now attend a top 6 law school. In fact, I suspect you may be an URM or one of those sports recruits that may find my post a bit offensive. Remember: “Truth hurts”.</p>
<p>@LazyKid Hi there. As an unbiased observer(international student with no interest in Harvard) I find it hard to believe your justifications for your intelligence. In fact your arguments lack objectivity and are frankly IMO insulting. I think as the adult you claim to be, you should sit back and have a moment of reflection.</p>
<p>Well LazyKid, as one of those “dumb-as-a-rock” sports athletes recruited by Harvard, I must say I disagree with your ranting. Harvard simply does not recruit these idiot athletes you seem to assume us all to be. Now granted I’m sure you can find exceptions, but the majority of us are intelligent, well spoken, and I would venture to say are a much better addition to a school’s environment than someone who “graduated with 3.8 GPA at an Ivy college and now attend a top 6 law school” because you frankly just sound like you have a serious chip on your shoulder about something. </p>
<p>The fact is, Harvard does not just want pure intellectuals with 2400 SATs and 4.0s. In fact, I don’t even think those are good markers of intelligence to begin with, but thats a separate matter. Harvard wants people who are going to go into the world and make a name for themselves. People who are going to take the experience, not just the education, they gained at Harvard and use it to impact the world. Like it or not, athletes are often the ones who know how to deal with the adversity and put in the time to make things like that happen. </p>
<p>Very simply, athletes are an important part of a campus, and many of them will go on to successful careers and lives. And if you truly are the highly intelligent person you make yourself out to be, please stop speaking like such an ignorant fool. Because I frankly dont care who you are or what you say. You just dont seem like the type of person any university would want to have around.</p>
<p>Harvard College admissions is unfair for the simple reason that it receives close to 40,000 applications every year, and lacks the manpower to give each one the close scrutiny it deserves.</p>
<p>Leadership potential is a crucial factor in the admission process, and one’s past academic performance and standardized test scores do not predict long-term success, either at Harvard or at life afterward–we live in the age of grade inflation, and it is possible to succeed Harvard as long as one has common sense, a work ethic, and a strong academic and administrative support system.</p>
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<p>LazyKid, stop bragging about the fact that you graduated from a grade-inflated non-HYP institution with a 3.8 GPA, that you are paying $200,000+ and three years out of the prime of your life to attend NYU Law, a non-YHS institution.</p>
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<p>Stop bragging about your faculty brat, recruited athlete children.</p>
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<p>I apologize if I came off arrogant or condescending. That wasn’t my intention, rather, to address a series of laughable ad-hominem remarks by a particular poster. </p>
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<p>As mentioned before, like it or not, SAT scores along with academic profiles are the most objective and reliable metric of evidence that would shed light into an applicant’s true work ethic or intellectual potential. </p>
<p>The counter arguments I’ve been reading in this thread all point to how Harvard doesn’t want a bunch of people with same interest, same top SAT scores, no diverse viewpoints, or homogeneous racial/cultural composition within its student body. However, 1) individuals with top SAT scores are different and unique from each other too, and they also do have their own personality and viewpoints, 2) anyone can lie about non-academic elements of his/her background when applying to colleges and can get away with it very easily, hence implying illegitimacy of the system that places heavy emphasis on such factors as an individual’s ‘personality’, ‘character’, ‘uniqueness’, or ‘leadership potential’. </p>
<p>Seriously, how can Harvard possibly tell if a given applicant in question is: 1) being honest about his/her background in application and that the application essays which are capped at 500 word limit, along with mere two letters of recommendation and a laundry list of unverified extra curricular lists, are truly the accomplishments of that individual? Certainly, Harvard doesn’t care to check if such individual was indeed the captain of varsity basketball team at his high school or not, as that individual may claim on the application, 2) how can Harvard admissions staff clearly judge an applicant’s character or leadership abilities or ‘uniqueness’ or whatever by just glimpsing through 500 word personal statement? Last time I checked, Harvard doesn’t even conduct interviews of its applicants (aside from informal alumni interviews that aren’t even required for the process). Can they really reasonably judge an individual’s ‘soft factors’ or those non-academic credentials?</p>
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<p>Well, like I said I am done with college anyway. Trust me, I knew a fair share of people who had very disapproving views of how some top colleges such as Harvard handle admissions, and many thought that it was bull $hit that a school like Harvard would overlook an 27 ACT score for being black or possessing brute athleticism. Maybe you won’t find many people to express their disapproving views in a crude way in real life, but that may be because this is a sensitive topic and people don’t want to appear politically incorrect in real life by speaking out about this kind of topic.</p>
<p>Even at my college (an Ivy), many people I knew (secretly) made fun of many of sports athletes or some URM students for being ‘dumb’ and believed that they should not have gotten into our college to begin with. I was shocked, when I was TA’ing for one intro seminar course during my senior year at college, one student had so many basic spelling mistakes that it honestly looked like it was written by a 3rd grader. Yet, this kid was at an Ivy, and he was black. I don’t mean to be racist, but I did think, at the time, that the only reason he was there was due to color of his skin. True, those with disapproving views of how admissions are handled at top colleges weren’t going to march into those athletes or URM students and express this sentiment directly, but nevertheless this sentiment exists.</p>
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<p>1) I didn’t mean to brag or appear condescending. I apologize if I came off that way. I mentioned my credentials only to address certain poster’s challenge that I am ignorant.</p>
<p>2) My school didn’t have grade inflation, but rather grade deflation</p>
<p>3) You guessed wrong. I don’t attend NYU, I’m attending Columbia Law</p>
<p>4) To be fair, CLS has almost as good biglaw placement record as HLS, but yeah YLS would be clearly better. There is very little difference between HLS and rest of T6 (NYU or Columbia) in terms of BigLaw placement so it doesn’t matter if I am attending a ‘non-YHS institution’ or not. All that matters in the end is that I walk away with that 200k per year salaried law firm job straight out of law school, not whether or not I attended Harvard or Columbia for law school.</p>
<p>5) In the universe of law schools, there is HYSCCN. HYS and CCN are too close in quality to be distinguished, hence this popular acronym among lawyers and law students.</p>
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<p>I will agree with you that leadership skills are important skills to possess if someone wants to be successful in life or career long-term.</p>
<p>However, does Harvard admissions really do a proper job of identifying those with true leadership skills? And, does Harvard admissions do a good job of distinguishing among applicants, and can they clearly measure who has stronger leadership skills or not? Can they really judge an individual’s leadership potential just based on laundry list of (non-verified) extra curricular/ leadership involvements in high school or 500 word application essay? (without even conducting on-campus one-to-one interviews of applicants)</p>
<p>I apologize LazyKid if you thought that my comments were an ad-hominem attack on you. I was just showing my frustration at your viewpoints. I don’t like it when athletes and URMs are stereotyped as dumb, especially when you haven’t said a word about legacies who are mostly white. I am glad you have been able to be successful in life so far, but I just feel your viewpoints are somewhat dangerous. Sure, you will find a few people who don’t deserve to be at an Ivy institution, but most of the time, the admission office gets it right when it comes to admitting people with different interests.</p>
<p>P.S. I’m whiter than sour cream, but I do play golf for what it’s worth ;)</p>
<p>[Adam</a> Wheeler: Lying Harvard Student’s Resume Claims Multiple Manuscripts Written, Awards Won](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>Adam Wheeler: Lying Harvard Student's Resume Claims Multiple Manuscripts Written, Awards Won | HuffPost College)</p>
<p>[Adam</a> Wheeler: Former Harvard Student Indicted For Larceny and ID Fraud](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>Adam Wheeler: Former Harvard Student Indicted For Larceny and ID Fraud | HuffPost College)</p>
<p>This guy, Adam Wheeler, forged his entire academic credentials to get into Harvard and nearly got away with it. He claimed he had perfect SAT scores and lied to Harvard that he was a MIT student with 4.0 GPA trying to transfer to Harvard. In fact, he was a Bowdoin student with SAT in 1200s. The only reason he was caught for scamming was because when he was applying for Rhodes, one professor caught that he submitted the work product of one of Harvard professors, claiming it as his own work, in order to secure Rhodes Scholarship. Then, his dark secrets all came out.</p>
<p>This story just reveals light into how easy it is to game admissions and it clearly seems that Harvard admissions doesn’t do crap when it comes to verifying the accuracy or validity of an applicant’s credentials. If it was this easy to forge one’s entire academic credentials with fake SAT scores and what not, imagine how easy it is for someone to fake leadership activities, extra curricular activities, or a bunch of other crap.</p>
<p>Also, I suspect that there are far more people than this guy at Harvard and many other top schools who scammed their credentials to get into top schools but didn’t get caught. Imagine, again, whether Harvard can really objectively, critically, and thoroughly evaluate an applicant’s leadership qualities or other non-academic dimensions.</p>
<p>While SAT and high school GPA may not be all that matter to Harvard, at least these criteria are the only reasonably objective and verifiable data to evaluate candidates on.</p>
<p>Lazykid - you were a transfer student from a very fine university (Georgetown) who got into Cornell and from there (according to your posts) successfully plotted a course toward an Ivy League law school (Columbia.) It’s fair to guess you’ve been rejected by Harvard several times over the years. Would you say, in your estimation, they were wrong in doing so?</p>
<p>I wouldn’t exactly call it easy to forge those credentials. Obviously this young man has a real talent for doing this (however misguided it may be). I will say one thing, when I applied to Harvard (and I did get accepted, but chose not to go) they received tens of thousands of “perfect applicants.” The thing that people need to realize is that knowing how to do well on the SATs is not a particularly good indicator of success in an environment like that. So few people realize that their entire world (academically speaking) will be turned upside down with what they learn in their four years that it’s no longer a reasonable measure of success. That said, many applicants make it to the second stage of the application process and are quickly weeded out at that point. Why? Because the second part is where Harvard decides if you are 1) a good fit for the academic environment and 2) can you really handle the stress of the courses. This is usually done through a series of interview with alumni, recruiters, and other officials of the university. If you are a foreign student who can’t understand the basic questions being asked to you in a phone interview, do not expect to be pushed to the next stage. They are looking beyond simple numbers and test scores, as you would in their position. Many of their applicants look “perfect” on paper and then are found to be stretched so thin in their pursuits that they really don’t know what they want to do and have a cursory knowledge of the things they have studied. </p>
<p>Is a rejection from Harvard a measurements of your worth? No, it’s a measure of how 5-6 people at Harvard view your fit in that particular environment. Trust me, that environment is definitely not for everybody and I’m glad everyday I didn’t go there.</p>
<p>Lazykid, time to recede from this thread. This is getting no where. And excuse me for this perspective, but, so what? We make 10,000 posts on here about how ‘unfair’ Harvard admissions is. Are they going to cry at our efforts and discussion and change their system?</p>
<p>pfft no way :)</p>
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<p>Damn. Talking about stalking, dude.</p>
<p>I got into Columbia Law not because I went to certain undergraduate college, but because I had rock solid college GPA on top of 172 LSAT. Also, I never applied to Harvard. It’s my brother who applied to Harvard this year, but he didn’t get in. Well, to be fair, I did apply to Harvard Law School, but never applied to Harvard undergrad.</p>
<p>Also, I suspect I wasn’t good enough of a candidate to get into Harvard back when I was in high school. And, I don’t care.</p>
<p>Lastly, I don’t really care if I get the chance to go to Harvard or not. Like I said, I am done with college and I don’t care about that kind of stuff. The intent of this thread is to question the legitimacy or fairness (or lack thereof) of the admissions procedure at Harvard College. It is a shame to observe how some posters in this thread are ignoring the original intent and purpose of this thread, yet resort to subjecting this thread into off-topic, complete non-relevant silly discussions such as asking “It’s fair to guess you’ve been rejected by Harvard several times over the years. Would you say, in your estimation, they were wrong in doing so?” This thread is there to hear people’s opinions or feedback on the topic of discussion, not there to play with others by getting into their personal stuff.</p>
<p>Not just talking about the questionable fairness of the admissions process at Harvard, but I am questioning if it is a policy that actually works. For example, I think there are many flaws in Harvard’s attempts to adopt ‘holistic admissions’ and giving much weight to someone’s non-academic dimensions, such as that individual’s character, personality, or leadership skills. But, like I have already been questioning throughout this thread, does Harvard actually successfully distinguish those applicants with true leadership skills, true character, and whatnot, all via just limited sources such as a brief personal statement and extra curricular list, while not even bothering to interview the applicants, nor bothering to check if those personal statements, extra curricular/ leadership activities, or heck even the academic credentials of its applicants are valid and true or not.</p>
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<p>You should acquaint yourself with the concept of ‘freedom of speech’. It is totally under my own judgment to be discussing or questioning this sensitive issue, and if you don’t have anything to offer in this thread, you don’t have to participate yourself.</p>