Good point!
I havenāt read all the other answers so perhaps youāve already decided what to do. My daughter is an international who applied to Harvard for the same reasons as yours (i.e. reputation prestige and no one has heard of Brown here either). Harvard was her first choice so she applied EA and got in. It saved her a ton of work. For the environment, in her experience, Harvard is not hypercompetitive. There are things that you have to compete for (roles in prestige extracurriculars) but classes are not competitive. (My kidās doing Gov and Psych so likely something like what your daughter is interested in.) Students often work together and support each other. She has found the profs and TFās to be encouraging. It is easy to find quant courses that are not demanding, and in my daughterās first quant class, there were literally 35 hours a week of office hours. Students having difficulty did the problem sets together in the TFās office. The level of introductory French is low and I doubt your daughter would have trouble coming from the UK where level of French instruction is high (even if she quit at 14). She has also found the level of support for summer work placements and research positions to be terrific. She has two research jobs during the term, and has had paid full-time summer positions in her area beginning after Freshman year. So Harvard is a fantastic option. I donāt know if itās the best option for your daughter. I know someoneās daughter who went to Brown, had a fantastic experience there, went to Yale for grad school and just landed a prof position. Even if the average Joe in the UK has not heard of Brown, graduate schools have and it has an excellent reputation. Both schools are extremely liberal (more liberal than anyplace in the UK) so I doubt the politics would make a meaningful difference. Good luck, whatever you decide!
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Once moreā¦you can NOT ED to Harvard. They have SCEAā¦not ED.
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Brown is not on this list eitherāitās just not in the news/pop culture for breakthroughs or excellenceā¦
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Iād like to thank everybody here for their thoughts - sorry I was locked out for a day due to having answered too many questions in a singe day.
You have given me a lot of valuable information and I have to admit to being quite overwhelmed with the generosity of spirit displayed but also the sheer volume of learning I need to do.
I do have to reiterate here that I have little to no influence on what she decides but feel compelled to be informed as best I can.
Thank You.
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I agree with what you posted on the main, but this part I believe is where the nuance lies and so is slightly off the mark IMO. Itās not, in the OPs childās case, that they wouldnāt have done everything they could do to get into Harvard, itās that they did all that, and then right before the very last step (i.e. actually applying) may choose to do something, like apply ED, which of course is binding, such that if accepted they wouldnāt even then have the opportunity to apply to Harvard. And that in turn may forever leave them wondering.
This kind of thinking and looking forward at potential regret is absolutely a thing, for better or worse. Itās what the āgame theoryā aspect of college applications has done to kids. My kids and all their friends are very much in the thick of it right now and I cannot tell you how often I hear a version of āyes I know my best shot at a T(X) school is ED, but then Iāll always wonder if I couldāve gotten into Harvard.ā
And yes I know Ivy grads who wonder this same thing, even those who loved their undergrad experiences.
I will not judge that either way in this comment. But itās very much a thing.
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Same. I tried to encourage D22 to apply ED to a particular school that she liked and that looked to be a great fit, but she refused because she just had to know whether she would get into her dream school. So she rolled the dice on RD everywhere - denied at the dream school, accepted (thankfully!) at my suggested choice and now thriving. āJust had to knowā is real thing, for whatever reason.
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A real thing and very powerful. I think the ever increasing focus on prestige lies at the heart of it. Rankings donāt help either.
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Fair enough. I canāt fathom caring quite that much, but the world is full of wonderfully diverse perspectives.
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We have one Harvard College graduate at my firm who went from 2000 - 2004 and sheās not doing anything particularly extraordinary.
But she will always have that on her resume.
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Amherst is an elite college, but it is not a University.
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I think itās fair to assume that @MYOS1634 knows the difference between a college and a university as used in American academia. However, sheās addressing a Brit who may not. āCollegeā in the UK lexicon does not have the same meaning as it does to the Yanks.
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They havenāt got that far yet.
They have colleges rated with their level of relationship, funding etc
She has a book but itās strictly forbidden to show it to anybody - and anybody includes me.
When she goes back to the org they will start discussing that with students.
I think the thing is that they donāt want everybody applying to Harvard on REA so there is a lot of talk about fit and how strong their relative applications are.
I think they will put 2 or 3 up for Harvard and no more than 5 but Iām guessing.
One of her fellow scholars is an Olympic athlete - they have really picked some very very strong students all with A level predictions of A* A* A or higher - one is doing 5 A levels all predicted at A or above.
When she was working on her UCAS (UK Uni entry) she did a quiz type thing (donāt know where or what) that looked at grades and what she was interested in and subjects and it spat out Cambridge doing HSPS (Human Social and Political Sciences) which she thought was by far the best fit for her of all the UK courses offered (Three year degrees in UK) but all are very specific - like doing your major/concentration from day one. Cambridge HSPS is much more broad than is usual and suits her extra/super-curriculars as well as her 3 subjects at A level. Not as broad as Harvard but similar. She seems to be getting much more set on Harvard esp as it it needs blind and amazingly funded.
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Unless she falls for an American I think she will want to come back to the UK anyway.
I worked in the US about 25 years ago - no visa but did the return trip on a 6 month tourist visa a few times. Started out in demolition (no US citizen would do it as it was completely unregulated and insanely dangerous), then construction, then āhistoric hse renovationā (the Brit thing) then ended up being an IT Expert - in the land of the blind - and Florida was pretty much in the dark ages as far as IT goes at the time. Being illegal labour is pretty bad in the States - being poor is worse. We have a lot of issues in this country but being poor in Florida put life into a whole new perspective. Iād rather be poor in the UK - itās certainly safer.
But back to D ---- Who knows what she will want to do if she goes 1 year from now then four years at College then a year on a work visa. 6 years from now - who knows.
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Thank you for your perspective-- adds a lot to the narrative.
I will add that being illegal now is NOTHING like what you experienced on a tourist visa 25 years ago. Iām talking ākid breaks his arm falling off the monkey bars and you canāt go to an ERā situations. If youāve read any of the rhetoric coming out of Texas since the most recent mass shootings-- ugh. It was always hard living in the shadows- now itās worse. I would rather be poor in a blue state where at least you have access to most of the things you are legally entitled to; you may not know how to qualify, but there are educated and kind people who can help.
I am not making a political statement, BTW, before someone complains to the moderator. This is reality.
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She reads well, her handwriting is poor and her spelling is awful - inherited from me.
Dyslexia presents in many different ways and she has exactly what I have so with IT itās very manageable and not any real problem. With bad spelling though it can make foreign languages extra hard - hey ASL! Most of the time you donāt have to actually spell things out.
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Thank you - appreciated.
She is VERY straight.
Like George Washington - she cannot tell a lie - so I can assure you she will not be taking the liberties I did, itās not in her nature. Iāve worked in over a dozen countries with no right to work, visited/lived/worked in 21. My only excuse is that I always contributed to my host countries economy and with the exception of Japan hardly ever left with more money that I arrived with.
Just got itchy feet.
Hate to say it but being white and English made my life a lot easier than it was for most of the people I worked with. It was Florida, and I was working āat the bottomā but the level of racism I witnessed towards others of colour was the worst I have witnessed in any of the other 20 countries Iāve worked in. [Edit: with the exception of N. Africa which is overtly racist if you are from Sub Saharan Africa]. It really opened my eyes to the concept of āwhite privilegeā - sorry if this is too political? - just think of it as a humanist perspective myself but it might be considered political in the States because everything is. Delete if inappropriate or too far off topic. My D is lily white and very English very liberal and actively anti-racist so I think US College will be an eyeopener for her too but she will fit in to the liberal college mindset no problem.
Not intended as a political statement either but understand if this is āa bit muchā on this site.
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Yes indeed - Iām just trying to overprepare so if she wants any input from me Iām ready and informed.