<p>my regional admissions officer contact me for more information on my app...
what i am curious is what she said in the e-mail.
she said, "several application reviewers have read [my] application...they are interpreting [my] application to show more interest in the sciences ...clear understanding of this would allow us to most effectively advocate for admission."
the officer also provided me with her office phone # and e-mail. the e-mail was really lengthy...</p>
<p>that said, with nearly a week back until I get my decision, what does this mean for my admissions chances? how does the admissions process go?</p>
<p>would this mean that your being more interested in the sciences is going to be a decisive factor for your admission? the problem is that you don’t know the right answer to this question. Have you replied yet?</p>
<p>yes, i have replied back. i told that i am very interested in the sciences. i am not worried about that part. the only question is where i am in the admissions process.</p>
<p>Harvard wants to banlace the field of interests for incoming freshman class. It cannot all be pre-med or all econ ;-). The problem in this case is we do not know whether applicants with strong interests in science are underrepresented or overrepresented. Since it is a lengthy email, there are probably other clues in there.</p>
<p>Several readers review each application. At many colleges, a certain fraction of students are clear admits; at Harvard, I honestly don’t know whether anybody is a clear admit. A certain fraction of applicants are clearly not going to be admitted; Harvard gets some of these because Harvard is famous and many people say, “Oh, what the hell?” The majority of applicants are qualified; there are so many of these that the entire admissions staff meets “in committee” to discuss, debate and ultimately choose the entering class from among these qualified applicants.</p>
<p>That email suggests to me that they are going to committee soon, and you are among the huge crowd of applicants they’re going to discuss and debate in committee. It seems to mean that you are still in contention. The problem, of course, is that there will be way more applicants in contention than there are beds in the freshman dorms. Reading between the lines, I conclude that you aren’t out of it right now, but there’s no way to know what Harvard’s ultimate answer will be.</p>
<p>Getting a personal email from a Harvard adcom is a triumph in and of itself. I think you are probably on the bubble and very close. Probably the vast majority of Harvard applicants would never have received such a personal email.</p>
<p>In fact, stop worrying about this at all. All that you can conclude is that you were neither an unconditional shoe-in nor an obvious rejection, which you probably already knew before you even applied.</p>
<p>I am wondering what they are looking for in my app now that I am in the final committee. Do you think it is more focused towards my personality (essay, recs, ecs)? I think that the earlier stages were meant to accept students who were qualified (decent gpa, sat scores, enough ecs.)</p>
<p>Honestly? I think you’ll never know why they asked, and there’s no point in trying to guess what they’re thinking. (But I’ll admit, if you were my kid, the curiosity would be killing me, and I probably wouldn’t be able to stop stewing about it.)</p>
<p>I also think most applicants go to committee. It’s bad not to go–hardly anybody (maybe literally nobody) gets admitted without going through committee–but getting as far as committee still leaves a lot of competition.</p>
<p>UMR is further underrepresented in the science and engineering. So the strong interest would be a boost for the admission even for the undergraduate stage :-). Keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best.</p>