<p>Lets say you send Harvard an update mid March of a significant award. They have already looked over your application at this point, so if they decided to reject you, would your application get another look? Or would they only give it another look if you were waitlisted? Thanks.</p>
<p>The latter.</p>
<p>If waitlisted, this may help. If rejected, nothing happens. It’s final.</p>
<p>rejected = not close
waitlisted = close and still in consideration</p>
<p>Rejections are FINAL. period. </p>
<p>I don’t ever recall this many threads from rejected candidates wanted to reverse decisions before–I hate to be blunt to them all, but they need to move on.</p>
<p>Just to be clear:</p>
<p>This is a hypothetical where Harvard still has not released decisions yet. For example, if the adcoms began to meet up at like Feb 5th and they already looked at my application. On March 15th they decided that my app would go into the reject pile. But then I send in some big updates on the 16th. Would they give my app another look on the 16th?</p>
<p>My questions is what would happen in that situation in which they haven’t “officially” rejected me?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>The only honest answer except for someone who has been in the Harvard committee room is dunno–I would speculate-- and that is all it is-- that if it was an amazing piece of news–you were selected for the USAMO team they would re-open the file. esp if the decision was controversial/difficult. If it was just higher GPA or boards–no.</p>
<p>I was thinking the same thing =p</p>
<p>Bioguy, let me give you a tip on life. Don’t listen to these chumps who say that rejections are final. Consider the opportunity cost of your objective and proceed accordingly. If you’re content resigning to rejection, then give up. But if that isn’t enough for you and you’re willing to accept the risks, don’t let these people discourage you from pushing. To quote Colin Powell, “Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity.”
Shortly after I turned 20 years old, without any college education, my application for a prestigious contract (six figure paygrade) in one of the world’s most competitive industries was rejected, and rightly so: I had nowhere near the required qualifications - it was a dreamshot. But did I give up? No. I called up one of the company’s secretaries, spoke as if I were a company insider and politely requested the manager’s cell phone number, which she gave me without reservation. I proceeded to call the manager. The conversation didn’t last long. Shortly thereafter I saw the department head (above the manager I had called, and at the absolute top of his field) outside his office building, and took the opportunity to introduce myself and shake his hand. The conversation lasted seconds. A few weeks later the manager called and offered me the contract. I fulfilled it, learned tons along the way, and he and I are now great friends (even though he’s twice my age.)
If you have considered the potential costs of being persistent and tenacious and found the possibility of success to be still of greater value, do whatever it takes. Write a cover letter and update your portfolio; call them on the phone; fly over and visit them in person; never surrender. Don’t let anyone tell you what you incapable of.
If you know what you want, and you know where it is, then go get it.</p>
<p>Hey, it’s your psychological health. Note well that #Ziltoid did not address the facts on the ground re:Harvard. It is a lesson in futility and it will harm you in not closing this chapter and moving on.</p>
<p>As for have no other cost (other than the cost of not getting emotional resolution) there are other longer term possible repercussions–you WILL develop–if you haven’t already–a bad reputation within the Ad Com. If ever you entertain an idea that you might wish to transfer, they WILL remember and they will not remember that this was the fellow who was so tenacious, no, they will remember you in a very very much less favorable way and you will sink that chance too.</p>
<p>But–its your life–you want to waste it trying–go ahead but don’t be surprised if you get a less than pleasant reply to knock it off from the Ad Com. More than likely they will just place your emails in the trash and hard copies it the recycle.</p>
<p>Oh, yeah, I just remembered. Harvard immediately takes the rejected files and shreds them and sends them to the recycle service, So as for your file? It no longer exists. I know this because I met one of the Deans at a party one year and during our chat I asked what happened to the files–the admitted ones go to Freshman Dean’s Office and rejected get shredded immediately to clean things out for the next year’s files. So they have nothing from which to ever base an appeal–even in the best of cases for you.</p>
<p>MOVE ON.</p>
<p>Etondad, notice that I repeated the necessity of considering consequences. You most certainly could risk serious damage to your academic future. I don’t need to address the dangers relative to a specific instance - that’d be both an inefficient use of my time, and an insult to those who can figure it out for themselves, which, seeing as we’re on a Harvard-related forum, is hopefully just about everybody.
My argument is simply that you shouldn’t let people defecate on your parade, which is precisely what you seem very intent on doing. What’s your thing, anyway? Are you just upset because the closest you got to Harvard was meeting one of the deans at a party? Nevermind, I’m not sure why I asked; it’s your psychological health.</p>
<p>No–as I teach there, graduated from two Harvard graduate schools, have a son there, advise there for the past 30 years. </p>
<p>I see college students in my practice who haven’t been able to cope with defeat and then get crushed. In cognitive/behavioral therapy, the key is to have the person reflect upon the true reality of a situation and to take stock. Over the years as a therapist I have found that you do someone absolutely no good whatsoever if you do not tell them the truth–and here your actions are cruel to him because he does not get the chance to move on and find happiness with what circumstances he finds himself. </p>
<p>Pointing out that his files don’t exist is kind, not cruel. I mentioned how I came to know this because he needed to know that such a statement was not based upon surmise or third hand knowledge but came directly from the source–not to triumph I was a some party. </p>
<p>If you want to know my thing look at the past several years of posts, in which, like many of the longer members here, I have tried give, without compensation, some perspectives I have gained from watching and being a part of this process. Not for notoriety or ego as my identity is anonymous, not for money, but because over the years, I have learned from others on this forum and I hope I can give something back.</p>
<p>" Harvard immediately takes the rejected files and shreds them and sends them to the recycle service"</p>
<p>Is this true for the applications that get passed the 1st and 2nd read and go to the committee for evaluation?</p>
<p>Etondad: I know you are trying to get the OP to MOVE ON (and rightly so), but . . . See [Don’t</a> Touch That File | News | The Harvard Crimson](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2009/4/30/dont-touch-that-file-by-the/]Don’t”>Don't Touch That File | News | The Harvard Crimson)</p>
<p>“Students who are accepted and decide to matriculate have their applications held at the Freshman Dean’s Office where they later form the “nucleus” of what eventually becomes the student’s college record, McGrath says. Once students graduate, the folders go to the University’s archives. Applications from rejected students are kept for three years before they are shredded.”</p>
<p>My conversation was with another senior administrator in the office, not Marlyn Mc Grath-Lewis-- maybe there has been a change since 2009 or this person had different information. I just know what I was told. I asked bc I knew of a transfer candidate and wondered if the Committee would go back to the original file, with the Committee’s original notes and this person said no, that they were destroyed. </p>
<p>No, thebioguy, what I have been told (and the Crim article suggests that the timing maybe different than what I was told…) only applies once a final disposition has been made-- if the file is open–and it is considered open until decision day or in the case of the WL, whenever a final decision is made. </p>
<p>When I would write House letters for graduate school for a student, I would almost always refer to their application to give a sense to the graduate school committee who the student was beyond her or his years in Cambridge–so applicants need to realize that anything they write will stay with them throughout their Harvard career, if they are successful.</p>
<p>“In cognitive/behavioral therapy, the key is to have the person reflect upon the true reality of a situation and to take stock. Over the years as a therapist I have found that you do someone absolutely no good whatsoever if you do not tell them the truth–and here your actions are cruel to him because he does not get the chance to move on and find happiness with what circumstances he finds himself.”</p>
<p>Relevantly my posts are read by people who are applying or have applied to Harvard. If they can’t independently infer the simple truth which you describe, then they don’t have much reason to be here; that is why I write about greater things than this simple notion of telling bitter truth over sweet lies.
My argument from the beginning has been that one ought to, knowing their current state, consider the risks associated with defying convention, and, if the pursuit or the possibility of success is of greater subjective value, they should be mentally capable of denying what they think they know to be true. I won’t deviate discussion into epistemology, but let me point out that what therapists have found over the years is at least equally potentially as false as saying that once a person has been rejected from Harvard there is nothing they can do to change that (which is at least equally potentially as false as everything contained in this discourse.) As this is true in everything, my position is not advocating an unhealthy denial, but rather reproaching simple-minded resignation. I agree with you that it is psychologically healthy to know and recognize the “truth”, but the “truth” is not that “it is impossible,” but rather that “it is believed to be impossible.” Another “truth” is this: it is believed that you are not omniscient.
I declare that people, clear-minded and coherent, ought to, even when they believe in their mind that something is impossible, remain open to the possibility that they’re wrong. Therefore, defiance, a paradoxical double movement, is an exercise in both humility and mental vigilance. And still greater than a recognition of the fallibility of human thought, it is a beautiful personification of the principle of faith, “in virtue, that is, of the absurd.”</p>