Remember when the Harvard kids had their acceptances rescinded for posting offensive memes in a facebook group? About two years ago?
An NPR podcast about one of them came on when i was driving recently and it made me feel a little differently - sympathetic even - toward the kid interviewed.
https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=758281834
Yes, I heard it a week or two ago, the kid is very well spoken and the pod presented him in a very good light, and I am glad that he seems to be doing well. I hope other kids of the same group could learn from this experience and move on.
He still seems to be thinking of “what if”
Interesting. I felt sorry for these kids and didn’t think they should’ve had their admissions rescinded. Humor/“meme culture” was misunderstood. The kids should’ve been warned, asked to delete the page. Rescinding was an awfully harsh punishment. Glad to hear this kid is doing well, and I hope the others are, too.
I listened to it also. It helped me understand why the kids were posting these memes, and I did feel like rescinding admissions may have been too harsh.
The kid was well spoken and sympathetic, but I also sensed that he still feels that he was denied Harvard’s unique magic. I hope someday he realizes that you get what you give in college, and that YOU matter a lot more than the name of the college.
I really felt for his dad.
The students put Harvard in a very difficult position. The easiest thing for admissions to do was rescind admission. This action upsets a much smaller number or people. Understandably, there would have been upheaval if Harvard allowed the students to attend considering the content of those memes. Life lessons.
I don’t recall learning what the kid did for college, in the end, or if he hadn’t gone yet? I might have had to stop driving before it totally ended.
Sounds like a wonderful kid. Feel for his parents. I am disappointed Stanford rejected his application.
@OHMomof2
He took a gap year reapplied and got into a good college (didn’t specify), he even took a class on social media and during that class, the Harvard Meme was the topic, he told the class he was one of the kids involved…pretty interesting ending to the pod
@makemesmart I will track down the podcast and listen to the end - thanks!
It is interesting that many offensive memes were sent by kids who were members of the groups that would be (justifiably) most offended by the memes. I can see insecure kids who felt like outsiders doing this. This backstory is very different from the story presented in the news at the time.
I’m glad he’s in a good school, but I don’t feel sorry for him one iota. He learned a hard lesson. He will probably be a better person for it.
He was accepted to UCLA and Penn State! And his odds of getting into the others second time around were crapshoots anyway. He’s obviously ended up somewhere really good.
I’m sure all those kids were great kids. But they knew that the stuff they were sharing was horribly offensive. They were smart, but perhaps they weren’t smart enough to remember that once it’s out there, it’s out there forever.
Meh. I read nothing compelling in that interview and I didn’t find him particularly well spoken. “Like” every few words is the opposite of articulate. He didn’t sound particularly apologetic either, just sorry about what it cost him.
Harvard wants perfection and that’s hard to get from 16 year olds.
Well the other 1900 or 2000 kids Harvard admitted did not participate in that subgroup, it’s not a question of perfection, those kids knew better. I try not to judge 16 or 17 year olds as well, but when adcoms of the other 15 universities also don’t admit, they probably agreed with Harvard, it was not a one time error in judgement or kids having fun.
That’s a brushstroke statement that has no basis in reality as a glance at any incoming Harvard class will tell you.
I love Shankar Vedantam.
From a College Confidential perspective, that’s a great portrait of someone who gets accepted at Harvard EA – just an amazingly accomplished, thoughtful, completely inner-directed kid. It’s really easy to see why Harvard accepted him, and why the chair of the physics department at his college begged him to come. It’s also easy to see some of the cracks all that self-imposed pressure leaves in his personality. And how merciless and simplistic the world is in dealing with mistakes that become public.
I am unmoved by this piece. He sounds like a great kid, but dumb.
Harvard can pick anyone from a ridiculous list of candidates, thousands of brilliant, creative, talented kids that do so many things that set them apart from most people on earth. This kid showed really poor judgment in posting this sort of stuff in this day and age, and there’s nothing at all in this piece that shows he wouldn’t have continued such destructive approval chasing in the future if he hadn’t been punished here.
This entire saga didn’t make anyone look good. Harvard was caught somewhere between virtue signalling and afraid what people would say if this were made public, knowing they’d face some sort of music at some time and picking the easiest way out. The kids were dumb and punished harshly. But how would their lives at most schools have looked if they enrolled and were later outed as posting this trash? You think their peers would forgive, that there’d be some thoughtful discussion across campus, that they’d finish the semester? Every day most people recognize how dumb this type of thing is before posting, so public reaction isn’t always very understanding.
My biggest take-away from this very minor tragedy is that kids that are qualified to get into Harvard are special and will make their way forward no matter where they actually go to school. This one is doing fine. He’s learned something about himself and the world, he’s getting a good education, and he sounds great. No sympathy required.
For sure he was given a lesson, hopefully he learned it.
But what if he, or one of the others, had committed suicide over this? He said he contemplated it. He had applied ED so had no other options for school that first year and I’m sure others were in the same position.
Harvard wants all its accepted students to think that the acceptance is the ultimate award, but then takes it away without making sure the accepted applicant is okay. I can imagine that more than one of these 11 teenagers was suicidal. All may not have had families that were supportive or able to handle it alone.
A few years ago the Harvard soccer team members had posted derogatory FB and social media items about women. Harvard didn’t expel them. In fact, there were warnings given before the season was cancelled. For YEARS.
@twoinanddone I think there is some legal difference in what it takes to rescind an acceptance vs kick out a current student, the latter being much more difficult.