I’m an RD applicant for CS and in mid December an AO from Harvard’s office (not regional) contacted me requesting for any STEM supplemental materials that could show my talent.
Does anyone know how rare this is or if it is indicative of a possible acceptance? Some of my friends who worked with me on STEM projects and are very similar applicants did not get such an email and with the increase in applicants I don’t see myself being accepted.
Thanks.
A small number of students are contacted every year to provide additional materials after their application has been submitted. While it’s not done that often, it’s not unusual or rare, but it is a sign of demonstrated interest in your application.
No. While the AO was impressed with your credentials, s/he was fishing for more material to “sell you” to the full Admissions Committee. Depending upon what you provided, and what other STEM students who were also contacted provided, your acceptance/declination could go either way. Best of luck to you!
FWIW: Harry Lewis (https://www.seas.harvard.edu/directory/lewis), who taught both Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg is a member of the full Admissions Committee. So I imagine he takes a keen interest in reviewing the additional materials from students interested in CS.
It was probably not the AO that was interested in the additional information. Applications many times get sent to potential departments for review for Admissions. Admissions want to know from the department is this really a top notch applicant? So it is more likely than not it was the CS department requesting additional info to properly review your application. It is unusual but not rare for this to happen. The CS department probably has two members of the faculty who review a stack of unusual applications that deal with CS issues for the admissions office
Interesting. Do you have any idea as to what they would want to see? I sent them a lot of things, but the most relevant would probably be the research paper I am writing for a computational biology research project along with a letter of recommendation from my advisor, a Harvard alum, who thinks the paper will be published in a top CompBio journal in the next few months. I am not sure if this is something that would impress them or sway their decision.
I also would speculate that this request is made to validate claims made on the application. They would want to verify that you wrote this paper, and its quality, for instance, if you mentioned it in your application. I do think this is a good sign as long as any accomplishment listed is true and as impressive as it seems.
FWIW, I asked a Harvard admissions officer at an info session whether they prefer to receive a research abstract or full paper. They said that if I submitted an abstract, they might contact me to request a full paper or conference poster. I’m not sure if this is indicative of the frequency that they request such materials, but it indicates that it’s not uncommon. Nevertheless, the fact that they requested these materials at least means that your application is being considered.