Official Harvard SCEA 2016 Applicants' Discussion Thread

<p>@BenLeeWhorf please explain!</p>

<p>I needed that motivation! Thanks claudeturpin!
I do have a question though, and that is: What types of things did your son do that you think got him into Harvard?</p>

<p>@claudeturpin, Thanks for the inspirational story and congratulations on the acceptance! If I may ask without sounding too forward, what factors do you think ultimately clinched your son’s acceptance? It seems to have been tacitly agreed upon on this board that all Harvard applicants without hooks need high GPAs/SATs/APs as a prerequisite, before having stellar extracurricular accomplishments.</p>

<p>@perry 772, jbazile
I’m in IB too! Guess who has one night to write the ToK essay while having anxiety attacks about tomorrow’s decision.</p>

<p>@perry, jbazile, light</p>

<p>Another fellow IBer. Which prescribed title are you doing? I chose #7. Luckily, ours isn’t due for a while.</p>

<p>@howgoesit12</p>

<p>I know exactly how you feel. Those come and go once in a while when I start thinking about tomorrow too much.</p>

<p>I think what made the difference was his personality and non-academic accomplishments. In my son’s case, he wrote an extremely popular column about teenage artists in a monthly arts magazine that’s widely circulated throughout our state. He also led a statewide initiative to bring more performing arts opportunities to rural high schools. From Harvard’s perspective, I think these leadership activities were far more important than having perfect grades or SATs.</p>

<p>^ Thanks! That’s definitely quite impressive. I can only hope my subjective qualities were valuable enough too…as an unhooked Asian, it’ll be especially tough to make it in.</p>

<p>^You didn’t tell us that! All of my performing arts achievements are local!</p>

<p>To all of the IB people, I luckily do not have to do my TOK essay until next semester, but I have Type I of my Math Portfolio due on Friday!!!</p>

<p>@perry772 are you in HL Maths? Our Type I was Shadow Functions and it was a real pain…I think I got a 14/20 on that for all my effort, haha.</p>

<p>^Got 15 here lolololol, did my type II last week. Now’s working on Geo IA, havnt started…due tmr…</p>

<p>@RealFake
I’m doing #8; probably the simplest one I could find. I am in HL Math, probably the biggest joke class of my life because I’m taking Differential Equations this year too. We had the patterns of linear equations for the type I. This time of the program sucks. IOC, ToK Presentation, ToK Essay, Extended Essay, and World Lit Final Drafts all in a span of two weeks while swamped with apps. To all fellow IBers, good luck</p>

<p>@claudeturpin: Thank you so much for your message! Now I feel relatively calm about tomorrow! :)</p>

<p>@light shining Wow. Haha I am so sorry, that sounds like torture. Each of ours for those was spaced out over the course of a few months. Our ToK isn’t due for a while and I believe our IOCs are actually in March. Good luck!</p>

<p>IB People - I’m working on my Internal Assessment for History of the Americas, and I think I may just die of boredom. Also, this thing has like 80 bajillion parts. And I need more sources. I might do that after school tomorrow to be productive/distract myself.</p>

<p>The World Lit essays are not that bad. I liked those. We started them last year, weird set up. But they can be done, and are at least better than TOK/IA essays</p>

<p>I’m actually a really big fan of the TOK IAs and the World Lit essays. I thought they were pretty fun assignments that were interesting to complete compared to the usual grind.</p>

<p>The History IA is definitely killing me though. Just reading two six-hundred page books for the assignment is a huge time commitment that I can’t really make.</p>

<p>omg… counting down the hours…
I’ve never wanted anything so badly… Pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee</p>

<p>But I heard from a friend that he already received his rejection letter like one week ago. Has anyone else heard of such a thing or experienced this??? I haven’t received anything…</p>

<p>^^^ WHAT? explaiinnnnn</p>

<p>I have no clue. He told me that he got his rejection letter through email on December 9th…</p>

<p>what does this meeannnnnn!!!</p>