<p>wow. to beast life so…<em>jealous</em></p>
<p>Most are chose AFTER. I have a friend who knew she would get into Harvard before she even sent her application. She was an athlete, though. I also have a friend (on this board) who knows someone who is an academic recruit. But likely letters are generally sent AFTER apps. are submitted.</p>
<p>haha ok, I was getting a little alarmed at how colleges could possibly get the information to send them <em>before</em> lol…omniscient!</p>
<p>The non-reach-to-Harvard applicant:</p>
<p>He (and that he is important; women outnumber men in most elite colleges) is a first-generation student, is Hispanic or African-American (or even better, Native American), has a 4.0 GPA (and none of that funny business with weighting or easy classes like wood shop), has taken four years of the hardest possible classes in the five respective academic disciplines (math, science, history, english, foreign language), and two academic electives per year (the remaining classes are spent pursuing his love for Renaissance-era painting and writing open-source code) and has a 2370 SAT score ('cause everyone knows all those darn 2400s are just freakin test whores*).</p>
<p>He has chosen to learn a highly-underrepresented-on-campus language (classical Greek, modern Hebrew, or something Eastern European which is not Russian), rides his bicycle seven miles in the snow to another school to pursue his highly-underrepresented-on-campus favorite sport (lacrosse, crew, or curling), in which he is nationally ranked and eligible for recruitment (not that he needs it, lol), and tutors children from his underprivileged urban neighborhood every Tuesday night before doing his homework (which he does without fail, never late, never wrinkled).</p>
<p>He is highly active in his church or other place of worship, or spends a significant amount of time contemplating the universe and his atheism\agnosticism
on-organized religion\personal god, and his other extracurricular activities include his role as vice president of the student body (as a freshman; prez from sophomore on), his poetry (which consists of sensitive and insightful ruminations on the beauty of everyday life and his been published in the Kenyon Review, The New Yorker and Poetry magazine), and his research on the effects of microtubules in regulating the cell cycle and the ability of microtubules in certain species of kelp in genus macrocystis to reestablish order should something go awry.</p>
<p>He does not read college admissions magazines or visit college admissions sites except as a shyly admitted, but very rare, guilty pleasure (he’s perfect by nature, not by craft).</p>
<p>His teacher recommendations comment not only on his excellent academic work in every discipline but his politeness and rapport with almost every student on campus (except Reggie Jenkins, who’s a complete jerk-face).</p>
<p>He has faced many challenges in his life, most notably pressure to join a gang and do drugs, poverty, working to help support his parents, and asthma, but his essay reflects his determination to rise above his circumstances, mixed with gratitude for the lessons which those circumstances have taught him, with a lightly humorous tone and rhetorically ingenious use of anaphora, polysendeton, and pathetic fallacy.</p>
<p>He is one of the best and nicest people you could ever hope to meet.</p>
<p>He is the god of college admissions counselor’s idolatry</p>
<p>He owns you, me, that kid who wrote the essay about being a toaster, and any other individual who will ever apply to college in this or any other baby-boom aftershock.</p>
<p>He is superapplicant. Bow in deference.</p>
<p>^Threadjack. Sorry.
*j/k about the test whores thing.</p>
<p>Having amazing athletics and being relatively intelligent should get you in.</p>
<p>If you had very personal letters of recommendation from, like, the Dalai Lama, the Pope, all the Presidents of the Free World, all of Hollywood, and all the ceo’s of fortune 500 companies, not to mention recs from Harvard’s princpal, president, and dean, I’m sure you could easily get in.</p>
<p>Manybe if you owned Microsoft or some other huge company that has actually gone public, single-handedly saved a third-world country after it suffered a terrible disaster, discovered the cure for cancer, toured thousands of countries as a world renowned star, published a book or owned Harvard as well as have awesome grades and SAT scores. </p>
<p>Course it’s hard to image why any of those people would ever want to go to college when they clearly have it made and don’t need a degree to succeed. </p>
<p>The people who are certain to get into Harvard wouldn’t want to go. Go figure.</p>
<p>lol yea, what i said is true, and yes, i know its not a 36.</p>
<p>but i did all this while living in the states. that probably counts differently.
i plan on continuing all this in Pakistan, if that means anything.</p>
<p>First generation college student with legacy</p>
<p>100% shot at Harvard</p>
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<p>Half way through the application process (long after you’ve submitted your applications), Harvard (in addition to others) sends out academic likely letters to about 100 students. These are the students who they believe will get into every other college they apply to and who they think will choose one of them over Harvard. By letting them know a little early (February or March), they hope to “snag” them–steal them away from the others. The colleges that Harvard “fears” the most are the typical suspects–Stanford, Yale, Princeton, MIT. Of course, Harvard typically wins over these universities (I don’t think it’s ever lost), but there are applicants whom Harvard truly wants and who may choose not to attend.</p>
<p>The letter (as well as the call from the admissions office) just says you’re an awesome applicant, you’re one of a few to receive this, we want you to come to Harvard, etc. Here’s the Harvard article on it:</p>
<p>[The</a> Harvard Crimson :: News :: Likely Letters on the Rise](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=522503]The”>http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=522503)</p>
<p>Though Yale’s and Stanford’s seem more informative:</p>
<p>[Yale</a> Daily News - ?Likely letters? part of Yale?s admit strategy](<a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/20938]Yale”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/20938)
[Admit</a> yield increases by 2 percent - The Stanford Daily Online](<a href=“http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2006/5/30/admitYieldIncreasesBy2Percent]Admit”>http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2006/5/30/admitYieldIncreasesBy2Percent)</p>
<p>Google “[school] likely letter”–many other schools have it. (I don’t think Princeton does academic likely letters, though.) Also search CC forums–there have been plenty of threads and discussions about it.</p>
<p>Athletic likely letters are completely different and are sent much earlier in the admissions process.</p>
<p>cure cancer, cure world hunger, selling a best selling novel…</p>
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haha lawl roflmao</p>