"No thanks, Harvard. I found a better fit."

<p>Amusing article from the Christian Science Monitor, about a Pennsylvania girl who "chose" Swarthmore instead. Of course her decision was facilitated considerably by the fact that Harvard rejected her ... which the writer adds almost as an afterthought at the end of the story!</p>

<p><a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0412/p01s04-legn.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0412/p01s04-legn.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>She may be rationalizing her rejection by saying she found a better fit.</p>

<p>And I'm 99.9 percent sure that if she got into Harvard, the article would tell a different story. ;)</p>

<p>I like Byerly. He is the mirror image of me and my relationship with Harvard...except the age diff and Harvard degree which I dont have....yet. Anyways I appreciate his school spirit. Most people that go to Harvard are not rly fans of it. In other words they arent estatic about it. Its cool to see someone that likes Harvard as much as I do. And hopefully ill meet more people this summer that feel the same way. Go Crimson!</p>

<p>Go Crimson !</p>

<p>The person who wrote this article really should have found better examples. As Byerly wrote, the first girl didn't get into Harvard. Another opted for UConn over Middlebury, but UConn is much, much easier to get into. It's practically on a whole different level, so it isn't so much about "fit" anymore. And "Joshua" thinks he's blowing off Stanford, Brown, and Columbia, but these are the colleges that waitlisted him. He's not the one rejecting.</p>

<p>Don't rag on Swarthmore and the LACs--they are a different fit than Harvard, and they are too different from Harvard to be considered inferior by default. In fact, I know of several people in the Harvard class of 2009 who came <em>this close</em> to picking various LACs such as Swarthmore over Harvard.</p>

<p>Now I know that you all will now assert that that fact is irrelevant, because they DID choose Harvard in the end, but I am sure there is a countable group who chose LACs over Harvard. Or, gasp, people who didn't get into Swarthmore or Middlebury or Amherst, etc who got into Harvard!!!</p>

<p>how many people get into harvard and dont get into those lacs? i dont think too many</p>

<p>This article is laughable. If she got into Harvard and turned it down, alright, she is truly looking for fit. However, once you get into a school like Harvard, it is completely different. I thought I would be headed to Yale 100% until I got into Harvard and re-thought everything over again. Also, there is a widespread assumption that people who go to HYP and such are all about the prestige, but I would beg to differ. For me, the biggest lure of Harvard is Boston. The idea of being in one of America's most historic and dynamic cities is the "hook" that helps them decide on Harvard. Of course, other people may go to Yale for its History department, and yet others may love Princeton for its Woodrow Wilson school. People assume that students go to these schools simply for name, but for students who want to be educated by the most renowned professors in their field, it is not a matter of prestige anymore. Hell, if you told me that the #1 Economics and East Asian Studies departments are at San Francisco State University, I'd be there in a quick second. </p>

<p>Also -
"For parents who want the best for a child, an Ivy degree may still seem synonymous with success - though research tends to belie this. (Recent studies have shown, for example, that fewer heads of top corporations were educated at the eight Ivy League schools than in the past.)"
How the hell does the fact that "fewer heads of top corporations were educated at the eight Ivy League schools" debunk the idea that Ivy Graduates are successful? Being successful does not mean you have to be the head of a multi-billion dollar corporation.</p>

<p>I have known kids who have turned down Harvard. Sometimes they prefer Stanford, Yale or Princeton. I have known some top athletes turn down H for schools that could better groom them for the major leagues in a number of sports. I know some kids who turned down H for combined BA/MD programs. Afterall, H does not have a 100% yield, impressive though its yield may be.</p>

<p>The reporter was simply lazy. It would have been easy to find a student who really did turn down Harvard. There are about 400 of them every year.</p>

<p>It wouldn't help the writer to make her point, however, if - as so often turns out to be the case - the kid turning down Harvard did so in order to:</p>

<p>(1) accept a full-ride or a major "merit" scholarship elsewhere; or</p>

<p>(2) attend another top elite university, such as Stanford. MIT, etc.</p>