<p>Sorry I've been out of touch for so long, I had a a pretty beastly paper this weekend and a retreat for an EC group. Anyways, a few points.
1) It is indeed true that once you submit the common app you can't change it. However, almost every single school still accepts paper apps, so what's to prevent you from previewing the app (or whatever the current term is) and then printing it and sending in a paper copy, then altering it for the next school and repeating. A little more work but a LOT more personalization from the ad-officer's point of view.
2) I have no idea if it's a factor in admissions, but there are definitely kids here who are OK with Cs (usually because they have something else they're killing themselves on). This brings me to
3) There's a total mix of prioritization here when it comes to ECs vs. academics. Most kids strike a happy medium, some go to one extreme or the other. Pre-i-bankers and premeds usually are incredibly GPA oriented with ECs that will bolster their apps (but not hurt their classwork). Kids interested in journalism, however, tend to go almost full-bore for their ECs. Papers, magazines, and TV news could care less what your grades were at Harvard, they want to know what you've published and what you've reported on. As such, many of the upper-level editors of the Crimson are in serious academic trouble (some on probation, some having been suspended once), but they still pull amazing jobs in the business.</p>
<p>I disagree. My application wasn't harvard specific in any way. In fact, the exact same application got me into three different (equally competitive) colleges. I tried to convey some of my important qualities indirectly through narratives of two of my life experiences, neither of which had anything to do with why i would be happy at harvard (or yale for that matter, where i am now). I thought that made for a stronger essay than anything i could have said about why i would love harvard or why i'm "more perfect for the slot than anyone else."</p>
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<p>Thanks for joining the discussion. Your participation introduces a useful degree of what a debate coach would call "clash" on one of the issues. </p>
<p>What I read h-bomber as saying (he of course will correct any misunderstanding I may have) is that it is more useful to write an application that says "Here's how I'll fit into a college environment" rather than "Here's what a great high school student I am." That's what I find plausible in his original post. I too have no fears that a student who doesn't customize applications in detail for each college will lack acceptances to great colleges, possibly including Harvard. For a student who has some meaningful commonality among all colleges on his application list, the student can simply write about good fit to any college with such-and-such set of characteristics, and that should be enough. But it sounds like the Common Application people may be changing their software to allow more customization of applications, because a lot of applicants like that.</p>
<p>H-bomber:</p>
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Pre-i-bankers and premeds usually are incredibly GPA oriented with ECs that will bolster their apps (but not hurt their classwork).
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<p>I thought many students who work in crimson tend to apply for I-banking jobs also. As an EC, the Crimson requires an umpteen time commitment. I heard few kids coming from top executive family of I-banking big wigs are involved with crimson. Similarly kids who are involved with IOP, music, sports and other ECs, require a big time commitment that drains a lot of energy. </p>
<p>One of my friends whose kids graduated from Princeton told me that H has very big grade inflation among all Ivy schools. At Harvard, most of the student graduates with 3.75 GPA. Is this a true statement or just a rumor?</p>
<p>A rumor. As far as I know, there have only been two students (siblings, attending several years apart) who have graduated with straight As (4.0) in living memory. To achieve a 3.75 would mean achieving only a few A-minuses and only As. </p>
<p>Back in 1997, when the issue of grade inflation came up, Princeton had (very slightly) higher GPA than Harvard. It cut down on the number of As that could be given out by mandating a cap. Harvard has not. So, currently, Harvard gives out more As and A-minuses than Princeton. I don't know about other schools.</p>
<p>Note: this post will only address grade inflation, I'll get to the other questions in a little bit</p>
<p>I'm not sure where the 3.75 stat is coming from (it could be from the same year a while ago where half the class was graduating 'with honors' which has since changed). In general, the Harvard math and science courses are curved to a B-/B, which means that half the class is getting a 3 or below (once you get past intro, which are curved to a B+/B). The ec classes are similarly curved.
If you get over to the humanities (or Gov), however, that changes and most classes have about a B+ average. It would be difficult to believe, therefore, that 'most' of the students are 3.75 or above students (A-/A).
Also, one of my friends has a father who works in the Brown Medical School Admissions Office, and he explained that BMS keeps a record of what the average GPA is for every student they have accepted from the 'top' schools. The <gpa> for a Harvard premed accepted to BMS was around 3.45 two years ago, which when compared to the national average of around a 3.69 would indicate that we are not, in fact, grade inflated.
Also, it's a myth that only two students have graduated with a 4.0. The Crimson did a piece about it last year, it happens every once in a while, the current registrar didn't remember any but the last one remembered a few, as did the one before, and so on down the line.</gpa></p>
<p>In response to the EC questions raised by parentny, many kids who work at the Crimson do go on to I-banking jobs, just as many of the kids at Harvard overall do go on to banking/consulting jobs. E-recruiting, however, relies on GPA cutoffs to limit the pool, so most of the kids going to top banks (Merryl, Morgan Stanley, JP, Citi, Credit Suisse, etc), are coming out with very strong GPAs, which also means they were very smart in building strong resumes while still achieving good grades. In general, most of the people in the highest positions at the crimson struggle to balance the time demands (and keep in mind, hearing that someone's an editor at the crimson doesn't mean diddly; I'm an editor but I finished my comp and didn't do anything else afterwards, EVERYONE is an editor).
Along those same lines, banks/med-schools love to see someone who can do a massively time-demanding EC and still thrive academically.</p>
<p>When I googled, I found this for yale.</p>
<p>Results show median GPA of 3.6-3.7 from the following link</p>
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Last year, the cutoff for summa cum laude, which goes to the top 5 percent of the class, was 3.91. The cutoff for magna cum laude, which is awarded to the next 10 percent, was 3.82, while the cutoff for cum laude honors was 3.72.
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<p>From same article above</p>
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In February, the Harvard Crimson reported that 23.7 percent of all undergraduate grades in 2004-’05 were As, which was the highest proportion since 1999-2000 and the second highest in the past two decades. The A-minus, which accounted for 25 percent of all Harvard grades in 2004-’05, has been the grade most frequently given to students since 1989-’90. Failing grades accounted for only 0.4 percent of total marks last year, a 20-year low.
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<p>Here is the link for H
Link for H. </p>
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Over half of the grades awarded to undergraduates last academic year were As or A-minuses, according to data released by Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71. </p>
<p>The percentage of “A” grades awarded in 2005-2006 did not increase significantly from the previous year, when 48.8 percent of grades were As or A-minuses. </p>
<p>But the percentage of A-range grades has risen considerably over the past two decades: only a third of grades were As or A-minuses in the 1985-1986 academic year. </p>
<p>The mean of all grades awarded—which is not the same as the mean of all student grade point averages—for the 2005-2006 academic year was 3.45, and the median was 3.67. </p>
<p>The median grade point value has remained constant and the mean has increased slightly from 3.42 since 2002-2003. </p>
<p>Gross wrote in a cover letter to Faculty that the slight rise in the mean grade in undergraduate courses indicates “that grade compression continues to be a concern.” </p>
<p>Gross used the same wording in his January 2006 cover letter to Faculty on the same issue, writing that both the rise in the mean grade and grade compression are are concerns “best addressed through ongoing discussion at the departmental level.” </p>
<p>The grade data provided by Gross does not provide a grade breakdown by department. </p>
<p>The relatively recent change to calculating grade point averages on a 4.0 scale has “reaffirmed the value of B range grades,” according to Gross’ most recent letter. The College went from a 15-point grading scale to its current 4.0 scale following a 2002 Faculty vote after a media flurry targeting Harvard’s grade inflation. </p>
<p>Harvard came under fire for its grade inflation after a 2001 Boston Globe article reported that 91 percent of graduating students received honors. The Faculty voted to cap the overall number of honors given at 60 percent at the same time that they changed the GPA to a four-point scale. </p>
<p>“We hope this will make the full range of grades more available, and ease the pressure on the top end of the grading scale that many faculty members report,” Gross wrote in the letter. </p>
<p>In March, Gross downplayed attention given to grade inflation at Harvard. </p>
<p>“I haven’t pressed too hard on this issue since I’ve been dean,” Gross told parents during the question-and-answer portion of his speech at Junior Parents’ Weekend. </p>
<p>“One reason was that I felt it was more important that the Faculty concentrate more on what we were teaching, what the curriculum was for the students, what we were trying to have them learn, than how we were evaluating them,” he said. </p>
<p>Interim Dean of the Faculty David R. Pilbeam wrote in an e-mail yesterday that he had not yet seen Gross’s report. </p>
<p>Professor Harry R. Lewis ’68 wrote in an e-mail that he has “no fresh observations to offer” on the issue, after devoting a chapter to it in his book, “Excellence Without a Soul.” </p>
<p>Other Ivies have also felt the effects of grade inflation. In the spring of 2004, Princeton voted to cap their A-range grades at 35 percent.
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<p>So majority getting 3.75 is not true at all and it is rumor based on crimson report. But still 49% student receiving A or A- is big number considering the average in math and science course for pre med are being reported only B+ or B. I wonder if government or other social sciences such as economics departments, philosophy or language departments are really inflating the grades to go from B (3.0) to 3.5.</p>
<p>They most certainly do, and it's one of the most common complaints of science/math concentrators here. When the test is quantitative there are right and wrong answers, so it's easy to set the curve. It's more difficult, however, to decide which papers should be B+s, Bs, and A-s, since pretty much everyone here writes well, so a lot of the TFs who do the grading just don't bother to distinguish.</p>
<p>On straight As:</p>
<p>I don't remember more recent Crimson articles about other students graduating with perfect As.</p>
<p>brilliant original post. I think you have hit the nail right on the head. From my years of experience and from what people have told me, that is exactly what admissions is all about.</p>
<p>holy crap - her AND her brother got perfect GPA's... that's one heckuva gene pool</p>
<p>I wish I had a 3.75 GPA. First, at Harvard, we don't talk about grades at all, but for the GPAs of the friends that I know, most fall within the 3.0 to 3.5 range, which makes sense, considering the median GPA is around 3.4 at Harvard. </p>
<p>As a humanities concentrator (but also pre-med), I think I can comment on both the humanities and the sciences at Harvard. Just so that people don't have a negative view of the humanities, it's definitely hard to get a true A on a paper. TFs are more than willing to give you a B or a B+ on a paper when you have a good argument and examples to back it up -- however, a true A is hard to get, and it requires a thesis and examples that are above and beyond just a pure analytical level; it has to be very sophisticated and argued at an angle that would otherwise be hard to do. In my two years thus far (I'm a junior now), I have yet to receive an A on a paper here at Harvard, with the exception of one "gut core." However, I do agree it is definitely easier to realistically get an A in humanities classes than science classes.</p>
<p>Grade comparisons are sort of meaningless here, since each professor determines how his/her grade scale will be. Therefore, an A in one class would not necessarily be equal to an A in another class, and as h-bomber points out, science concentrators usually get the short end of the stick.</p>
<p>here is how LUCK is invovled, for those that deny it is relevant</p>
<p>where you are in a pile, who is reading it, what other appications are like yours, etc</p>
<p>I have read some of the books about by admissions people, and you can't say that the human nature doesn't factor in</p>
<p>say you are a class pres, great ecs, and are being read by an admin person</p>
<p>if your reader has read 10 people that day similar to you and needs to meet a goal of rejecting 5 that day, it could just be your turn</p>
<p>if your reader reads you first and accepts you, some one being read later that day may not make the cut because he has met his "quota"</p>
<p>to deny that some luck is involved in naive...sure they would deny it, to even admit there is some look would show they are not perfect</p>
<p>of course they will gripe when people talk about luck, because that would be an admission that the system isn't perfect, that some great kids get rejected who should be there, while some kids who shouldn't get through</p>
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<p>I'm quite sure that's an inaccurate description of the admission process at Harvard. Let's hear from some knowledgeable people who are reading this thread what the process is really like.</p>
<p>a) No one is ever just 'taken' without being either rated as a definite admit by two ad-officers or being discussed in committee. This is precisely to adress the issue raised by citygirlsmom about one the subjectivity of one's small sample of applications.
b) There is NO SUCH THING as a quota for the Harvard admissions office. Officers do not go in with the 'goal' of rejecting people. They look for reasons to accept, not reasons to reject - a very important distinction.</p>
<p>"They look for reasons to accept, not reasons to reject - a very important distinction."</p>
<p>All admissions officers say that, and it's only logical that it's true - at harvard, stanford, etc they go in knowing that they will have to deny 9 out of 10 applicants. So the default decision is to deny - it is logical that they need to find something in the app other than 'well-qualified bright student' to change the default outcome to an acceptance.</p>