<p>“It seems to me as though harvard is a school where students simply do enough to get by in academics and arent overly passionate or involved in them.”</p>
<p>That’s wrong. There are plenty of people who are deeply passionate about academics at Harvard. That’s just not true of everyone. Harvard doesn’t want to produce just future PhD’s; it wants to produce the top people in the arts, journalism, politics, public service, and business, in addition to academia. It’s not surprising that future superstars in those fields are highly dedicated to them during college, too.</p>
<p>jfm: Ten years ago, a 3.9 put you within the top 5%. I don’t know if it’s changed since then.</p>