Those that get rejected don’t know why. Those that get accepted, other than recruited athletes, don’t know why.
4 Likes
I just posted what she wrote. She was legacy, had a serious passion for ballet, had trained at a high level – dedication usually helps. And I assume her scores were good, since if she had a 1200 SAT she would have said that. She just talked about how the interview went very bad and she didn’t get in.
I am sorry to hear that. It sounds like that young woman was disappointed, but she will probably do fine.
The majority of candidates with Harvard lineage (defined for undergraduate admissions purposes solely by having a parent who Harvard/Radcliffe colleges) are waitlisted or rejected. Most who are waitlisted or rejected have fine to excellent alumni interviews.
Obviously, if any aspect of an applicant’s candidacy is “very bad,” that is not helpful to the overall case.
Generally speaking, the Harvard lineage “tip” doesn’t occur until the application has cleared the subcommittee and passed a majority vote on of the full committee. The full committee usually initially votes yes on more candidates than it will be able to admit on that cycle, so a “lopping” process beings, and it is in that process where most of the “tips” for those not on the Dean’s interest list can come into play. So, many Harvard lineage candidates are out of the running even before their lineage status can make a potential difference.
When my kid saw their file, BOTH admissions officers said essentially, “Looks great, can’t wait to hear what the interviewer has to say.” One of the things that the interviewer told them was that the kid was not thrown off by unexpected questions. Well of course kid wasn’t! Kid had prepared by looking up everything kid could find about what Harvard wanted from the interviewer, including recommended questions. That is why, in this thread, I posted some links to articles about Harvard alumni interviews, and urged people to do their own research, too. The evidence in my kid’s case was that the interviewer’s feedback was extremely important.
Be prepared to talk about these things: What was most important to you in your high school experience - academically, socially, ECs. What Harvard might have to offer you, that other schools don’t. Why do you want to be there? What particular activities, majors, profs to study with, labs, anything you can focus on that says that your desire to attend Harvard is well thought out, not just a desire to attend a prestigious institution. Books you’ve recently read, what they meant to you, how you felt about them. What you do online - read the news? social media? engage with others across the world who share your precocious special interest in the resurrection of extinct Native American languages? Also, if you have particularly outstanding achievements, be ready to mention them, but in a tangential, non-bragging manner. My kid was too modest to do this, and apparently, neither the interviewer nor anyone on the admissions committee noticed these international level achievements. Still got in, but kid should have tangentially managed to bring these up in the interview, given the opportunity.
You might be asked what your worst experience was in high school. Personally, I think this is as rotten a question as the work interview question, “Tell me about your worst trait”. The right answer to that work interview question is, “My worst trait is that I am too conscientious, and I will work too hard to fulfill your expectations of me in the position.” I remember being asked this in my residency interview - I didn’t expect it. I told them the truth, that I had a bad sense of direction, and that it was probably going to take me a little bit longer to learn to find my way around the immense multi-hospital medical complex than others in the class. Harmless deficiency, not relevant to my work, easily corrected with a little time. In any event, if asked this, do NOT tell them about the bullying classmate or teacher, or the racist/anti-semitic/misogynist graffiti in the bathroom that the school did nothing about or {insert true terrible experience of your choice}. It’s a rotten question, shouldn’t be allowed. But if you’re asked this, you have to turn it around into something positive about you, and not something uncomfortable or awful about the school, or your experience there. "I think the worst thing that I encountered in high school was that I couldn’t find an outlet at school to continue my intense, unique interest in local political activity. The student council just didn’t seem relevant to the issues in my community at large. That’s why I sought out my State Congressional Rep’s office when I was in 9th grade, and have been working there and in my State Senator’s office ever since. I’ve had opportunities there that my high school just didn’t offer me blah blah blah. Turn the question into a positive, that allows you to share more about the reasons that Harvard should want you, and that you want Harvard. Be prepared, so you won’t be caught off guard.
Assuming you are offered one, the interview is apparently a very important component of the admissions process. Don’t go in blind.
2 Likes
Congratulations on your child’s admission, especially if Harvard was your child’s first choice.
Certainly, spending effort to know a school, how your talents and hopes fit into that school’s culture, and being able to present your talents and capacity for growth are important for any admissions interview, including for Harvard. Fortunately, most candidates are able to do this just fine, but unfortunately, a very small percentage those who have great interviews get admitted.
In my time, I’ve interviewed my share of candidates who seemed over-rehearsed, unnaturally emphatic, and a bit full of themselves. This seldom harms them in my evaluations, however, because adults should be as kind as they can be to youth who find themselves in a high pressure situation, and really, if I’m doing my job as an interviewer, I’m trying to get past the superficial LinkedIn layers anyway. To approach things differently would make the job of interviewing quickly tedious, at least for me.
For any candidates reading this thread, be yourself, try to relax, and see if you can generate some rapport with your interviewer on something that you mutually find interesting. Keep things in perspective, whether you are admitted to Harvard or not, you will be fine.
6 Likes
Some countries which offered interviews in the past are not doing so this year:( So, it’s a waiting game till decisions are released…is there a fixed date for Early results?
1 Like
Has anyone’s child received a second AO interview?
But if approx the same number of legacy are admitted, it seems strange that it is blind on the first pass. But what about athletes? About 85% get in, even with lower scores. So they must have a different process.
I’m not sure what you mean about Harvard lineage candidates. A majority are not admitted. The first reader isn’t blind to lineage status since it is he/she/they who records/confirms that fact on the first read. It’s just not something on which they concentrate at that stage of the process.
As for athletes, there are athletes, there are varsity athletes, and then there are “recruited athletes.” The admitted percentages like 85% that you see for recruited athletes are almost self-explanatory when you think about the word “recruited.” Recruited, in this case, refers to an active personal process, not just receiving a contact flyer or general email.
Harvard fields varsity teams in a wider variety of sports than any other school. A subset of these sports are Ivy League sports, the sports league from which “Ivy League” schools derive their popular name. The Ivy League follows strict protocols for athletic recruiting for its sports, developed partially because Ivy League schools do not offer athletic scholarships. I am not sure how COVID has changed things, but pre-COVID, everything revolved around computing the average Academic Index for each Ivy League team. There were several methodologies, but the most common was a formula that derived a total value one third from the SAT, one third from the an average of SAT subject test scores, and one third from value computed from GPA/class rank.
For each sport, the average of all that sport’s recruited athletes could not be outside one standard deviation of the AI of all students at the school. No individual recruited athlete could have an AI two and half standard deviations out from the all-school mean. Each school reports their numbers to all the other schools annually. Schools with higher mean school-wide stats need to hit higher average AIs than schools with lower mean school-wide stats, so Harvard has a different target than, say, Dartmouth.
Consider what this means. If a football coach recruits, say, an amazing running back who has an AI at the low end of what is acceptable, that coach then has to find another candidate for the team who is at the high end…these candidates who are recruitment-caliber athletes and who have high academic index scores are often called “boosters” and are highly, highly desired and aggressively recruited. Recruited athletes typically receive likely letters early on in the admissions process.
A coach for an Ivy League team seeks out athletes and when they are found, attention turns immediately to grades and test scores to see how a potential recruit fits into the jigsaw puzzle involving the average AI. If that athlete fits that year’s puzzle, they are recruited, that is, actively sought by the school. It is entirely a different process than for non-recruited athletes or any other admission category.
A similar process operates for NESCAC LACs, I believe.
For Harvard, the numbers shift year by year. There are about 1200 varsity athletes, and approximately half of these were recruited (obviously, one can expect these proportions to vary greatly by specific sport.) The other half who are varsity athletes were not recruited and do not contribute to the denominator for the recruited athlete admissions statistics people have been seeing recently.
Do you know, approximately, the total pool of legacy that apply per annum? There are estimates of about 1500. And you said that there are 1200 varsity athletes at any one time. About 250 are recruited per annum. So wouldn’t it make sense that more than half are recruited athletes of that pool of 1200.
I do not know how many legacies (descendants of someone who attended Harvard/Radcliffe colleges) apply. I’m not even sure that is tracked for admissions purposes. The number of Harvard/Radcliffe college lineage applicants (one or more parents attended Harvard/Radcliffe colleges, which is the specific admissions tip) is about half your estimate, around 700 to 800, with around 250 give or take admitted. Not all Harvard lineage admits choose to attend. The difference between the general term “legacy” and the specific Harvard admissions term “lineage” confuses many…including Harvard students who reply to polls by the Crimson. Being a legacy for any reason other than having a parent who attended Harvard gives a candidate zero advantage.
These numbers tend to be stable over time because Harvard alumni don’t suddenly produce more or fewer offspring when admissions “market conditions” fluctuate, such as the recent ballooning of total applications resulting from admissions being test-optional (it would be a neat trick if it were otherwise. 
)
As for recruited athletes, not all decide to attend Harvard (yes, great athletes will turn down Harvard, sadly, and such candidates are in high demand across all selective schools interested in fielding successful teams,) and those that do, not all end up playing a sport, and if they do, not all play all four years. Therefore, the steady state numbers for any given year are lower than simply adding all the recruit admits for the four active classes.
Class of 2024, about 330 legacy were admitted, around 250 athletes. No breakout found from last year. But it went from 900+ in early 2024 to about 750 last year. People have posted that it was around 1500, or 1 in 5 get admitted for legacy. And I say legacy as one parent who attended. And I understand about the athlete formula. But is it the level of acceptance that affects the athletes getting in? ie. I know a tennis player who got offers, Yale, USC, etc. Took USC. So since he is a good student, would have brought up the varsity team scores, Yale would have to recalculate and then maybe reject some tennis player with worst scores?
And does that work in the opposite way. Let’s say you are a sailor with top scores, but not recruited, but indicate you want to sail for the varsity team, and they recruited a sailor with crappy scores, they make sure that sailor gets in to balance it out? That is a crazy formula.
I’m not sure from where you are getting your numbers. I seriously doubt there were 330 Harvard lineage admits for the class of 2024, particularly since it is a smaller class than usual, 1420. I don’t think the official numbers are public, but about 12% of the class self-reported Harvard lineage status in a poll by the Crimson. Crimson poll numbers should be taken with a grain of salt anyway.
Your case of the tennis player who turned down Yale for USC is a good example that the yield for recruited athletes is not 100%. Serious athletes can have athletic needs, desires, and goals that do not line up with the typical desirability differences among particular schools.
Sailing is not an Ivy League sport and does not operate under the rules that I described.
Walk-ons to Ivy League sports, that is, varsity athletes who are not recruited, are not part of the AI calculations other than being included in the statistics for the entire school. So, whether you are a walk-on athlete “with top scores” or a walk-on athlete “with crappy scores,” in neither case do your statistics contribute the the league calculations for the recruited athlete AI of the team. Moreover, the target recruited athlete AI for a team is a threshold, not a limit. There is no incentive to recruit a lower AI athlete to offset a team AI at or higher than the threshold.
Keep in mind that USC offers both merit and sports scholarships while Ivies offer neither. I have seen plenty of kids take $50+/yr from USC over Ivy offers.
My point was regarding what tamenund said about that a varsity team has to have an an average grade point. Hence, my question. His point was that if the quarterback had a 3.0, then another player had to have 5.0 so they could average out at 4.0, just an example.
Just so to be clear, a varsity team in an Ivy League sport does not need to have a certain Academic Index. The need to reach or exceed threshold AI value applies only to the subset of team members who are officially recruited. This system is meant to control admissions recruiting practices, not the makeup of the teams which, depending on sport, might comprise many or even a majority of unrecruited walk-ons as members of the varsity team.
When discussing the high rates of admission for recruited athletes, this distinction between being recruited or walking on to a team should be kept in mind. Even the largest sport by membership at Harvard, which I believe is crew, has a healthy number of walk-ons.
Admissions officers handle a very small share of all the interviews done since most by far are conducted by alumni. I’ve never heard of any candidate who had two admission officer interviews. I would guess that if it happens at all, it is quite unusual and rare.
Common sense suggests two interviews for any reason signal an interesting but perplexing candidacy.
I was confused about the academic index. I thought it was calculated by the whole team, including walk ons. Then in my example about the recruited tennis player, since he dropped Yale, a lower academic candidate would be vulnerable? Another question on this: Let’s this happens, and and the coach would then have a recruiting spot open, and some applicant, with high scores and strong tennis, but not on the recruiting radar, can the coach tell admissions they want them and do on the spot recruiting? I heard a coach can tell admissions they want someone even if they were not recruited.
Sailing is a varsity sport at Harvard and they do recruit.