SAT Scores, grades, extracurriculars?
Yup – all of those!
Harvard (and YPS) are all on record as saying “We don’t accept anyone in the SCEA round that we wouldn’t accept in the RD round.” So your SCEA application has to be so good that Admissions doesn’t need to compare you to a larger applicant pool; they feel secure in knowing you will be a good fit for the school based upon your SAT Scores, grades, extracurriculars and “character” – and that’s true regardless of your ethnicity.
Thank you! I think I was unclear on my mention. What should a hispanic applicant have in order to get in SCEA? I have a 1470 SAT, 32 ACT, 4.05 GPA weighted (highest in school is around 4.5), 5s on 2 AP tests, good extracurriculars (not amazing though, but I have leadership). I am also a National Hispanic Recognition Program Scholar, which identifies the top 5,000 performing Hispanics (in testing) in the nation. I’ve won awards for journalism and will be presenting at a state conference.
Many state colleges admit students by GPA and SAT scores – they don’t even look at essays, EC’s, or teacher recommendations.
At private colleges, such as Harvard, your GPA and test sores are a minimum threshold – everyone’s got to have that. Then Admissions will read your essays, teacher recommendations and EC’s and will compare them to all other applicants trying to choose students of good “character.” That’s an old fashioned word; it means the way you develop your inner qualities: intellectual passion, maturity, social conscience, concern for community, tolerance, inclusiveness and love of learning. Colleges learn of those things by comments made from your teachers and guidance counselor, as well as what your choose to write about in your essays and the “tone” and content of what you say.
To be admitted in the SCEA round – you need it all: A high GPA, great ACT/SAT scores, interesting EC’s, a thought provoking essay, stellar teacher recommendations and a good interview report. If one area is deficient, a student will be deferred so that Admissions can compare that student to a larger pool of applicants.
Have you watched this video from Amherst College: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-OLlJUXwKU
Prior to this Committee Meeting, about 8,000 applications were reviewed for transcript rigor, GPA and test scores. The top 1,000 students are then brought to the committee and students are either accepted or waitlisted. (The assumption is that the other 7,000 students who didn’t make it to committee are rejected.)
Notice the comments made by Admission Directors. Most of them are comments from teachers or guidance counselors, except at the end, where one Admissions Director says “This is a quote from his essay.”
That’s what it’s going to come down to with your application. Best of luck to you!
The same as any other applicant. To reiterate what @gibby said:
To put the Amherst numbers that @gibby cited for Amherst in context for Harvard, I know that for Yale in 2021, the AO had first culled their list of close to 33,000 applicants to approx. 20,000 academically qualified applicants of which 6,000 went to Committee from which they admitted 2,272. Harvard’s profile and process will be similar. Assuming your test scores and gpa pass the first hurdle, how do you compare against 20,000, then 6,000 similarly qualified students? We can also safely assume that quality of applicants in the SCEA round is significantly higher, putting aside athletic recruits and other super hooks like development cases.
For the Class of 2021, 11.6% of the admitted class identified themselves as Hispanic or Latino, or about 235 students. If we look at Harvard’s SCEA round, 8.8% of 938 EA admits were Hispanics, or about 83 students, some of which are probably athletic recruits.
For the moment, let’s say Hispanics are their own separate cohort, do you think you will be among the top 80 or so Hispanic applicants that apply in the EA round or the top 230-250 students for both EA and RD? You have already identified 5,000 Hispanic students who also have been honored as National Hispanic Recognition Program Scholars. Your test score put you towards the bottom 25% of all Harvard matriculates. Where does your weighted gpa of 4.05 vs the top students’ 4.5 put you in relative class rank? Does it put you in the top 10%, 5%?