What is wrong with Harvard?

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

<p>A lot of people applied to Harvard at my school - and all of them were deferred. Not a single one was rejected. </p>

<p>One girl who got deferred has strong extracurriculars (NHS President, plays LAX, etc.) but got a 1500 on her SAT and has a GPA of about a 3.3 (ranking her 90/400) -- even she was shocked that she wasn't outright rejected.</p>

<p>Meanwhile, our Valedictorian and Salutatorian were both outright rejected from Cornell, UPenn, and Brown. </p>

<p>What's up with that? Is this prevalent at other schools?</p>

<p>Like, kids who'd have a hard time walking through the door at NYU or even Boston University made it to the RD pool for Harvard.</p>

2

<p>It’s all a crap shoot. Harvard has the lowest acceptance rate of any college in the U.S (probably amongst the lowest in the world). With such a small sample pool, your experience doesn’t really say anything about Harvard other than they noticed something in those students that you or other schools may not have. Basically, they’re unpredictable and it’s a crap shoot.</p>

3

<p>I didn’t apply to Harvard or any other Ivy League for that matter - but I was expecting that at least one or two of the 15+ kids at my school that applied to be rejected - Northeastern rejected more kids than Harvard did, here</p>

4

<p>Maybe Harvard just defers a lot more kids than the other Ivys. Deferment does not imply that they have any chance at all of getting accepted later.</p>

5

<p>Really? I thought deferment was basically - “you have a solid shot, you just weren’t spectacular enough to be snatched up in the first round.”</p>

6

<p>

I thought it was more like “your application is not excellent enough for us to admit you confidently regardless of how competitive the regular applicant pool is, but it is not awful enough for us to reject you regardless of how competitive the pool is.”</p>

7

<p>Harvard usually defers way more applicants than some places like Stanford.</p>

<p>“In addition to the 992 admitted students, 3,197 were deferred and will be considered again in the Regular Action process, while 366 were denied, 18 withdrew, and 119 were incomplete.”</p>

<p>[992</a> admitted under Early Action | Harvard Gazette](<a href=“http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/12/992-admitted-under-early-action/]992”>992 admitted under Early Action – Harvard Gazette)</p>

8

<p>Doesn’t Harvard think lots of things are awful - worthy of rejection? Like a sub 2100 SAT, sub 5% rank, etc which would constitute more rejections?</p>

9

<p>

Not anymore. They don’t even have the most applicants anymore. -looks at Stanford-</p>

<p>But in general, Harvard defers A LOT of applicants…so not really surprising.</p>

10

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