Can a 3.6 get into Harvard?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Great EC's?

How great? Did they?

- compose an opera being produced by the Met?
- write a novel on the short list for a national book award?
- qualify for the olympics?
- build a horrifyingly lifelike robot?
- find a cure for cancer/AIDS/heart disease?
- start a Fortune 500 company in your basement?
- star in a major Hollywood tent pole franchise?
- perform solo on their instrument at Carnegie hall?
- create an app that solves world hunger?

That great? Than maybe.

Oh stop it. DC (who refused to tour Harvard, let alone apply to it) got into a different 6% acceptance rate school with a tiny solo at the Strathmore and 3rd place in a state composition competition. Don't scare people.

That said, DC had a 3.9 unweighted GPA from a big area public, and pretty high SATs.

You never know, OP, about the EC link. Harvard's Music department may have told the Admissions office to find them a new harp player because the old one is graduating. Maybe the Language Department needs Romansh speakers to give its tenured Romansh professor something to do. But it's definitely a long shot, even with perfect grades and test results.

[Anonymous]

PS. The book Crazy U had a funny chapter about touring Harvard and watching an admissions video about a lobster fisherman kid. So that's an EC to consider.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unhooked science kid with 3.6, 33 ACT....great ECs....would he have a chance? Wondering if grades and stats alone mean he is a no-go?

Yes, if he/she is a top athlete or from a less represented region.

Or an underrepresented minority (possibly), or award-winning violinist etc....

Just in case you are wondering what a hooked candidate might look like, my AA daughter was accepted a few years ago with unweighted 4.0, 2380 SATs, and several school leadership positions.

And very well may have been the highest scoring AA applicant in the country. There are only a couple hundred AA students that score above 750 on any of the sections; I can't imagine that there are more than a handful of AA students with perfect/almost perfect scores on all three sections. With those scores she obviously is qualified for any school out there, but she is far from typical of the average "hooked" candidate.

[Anonymous]

Yes, it's a much different story for AA kids. Most of the Ivies take kids from Africa because they generally have better grades/scores.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Great EC's?

How great? Did they?

- compose an opera being produced by the Met?
- write a novel on the short list for a national book award?
- qualify for the olympics?
- build a horrifyingly lifelike robot?
- find a cure for cancer/AIDS/heart disease?
- start a Fortune 500 company in your basement?
- star in a major Hollywood tent pole franchise?
- perform solo on their instrument at Carnegie hall?
- create an app that solves world hunger?

That great? Than maybe.

Oh stop it. DC (who refused to tour Harvard, let alone apply to it) got into a different 6% acceptance rate school with a tiny solo at the Strathmore and 3rd place in a state composition competition. Don't scare people.

That said, DC had a 3.9 unweighted GPA from a big area public, and pretty high SATs.

You never know, OP, about the EC link. Harvard's Music department may have told the Admissions office to find them a new harp player because the old one is graduating. Maybe the Language Department needs Romansh speakers to give its tenured Romansh professor something to do. But it's definitely a long shot, even with perfect grades and test results.

Your kid sounds like such a loser.

[Anonymous]

URM harping wrt Ivy admissions always fascinates me, because it is clear to me that most people don't fully understand or appreciate the pool of applicants. Just doing a little bit of math can actually illuminate things dramatically.

Harvard being Harvard has their pick of any and all applicants, black, white, latino or asian. Now the US Dept of Ed estimates that there are about 12 million college students in the US, of which about 15% are black. So there are roughly 1.8 million black college students. Of those, the College Board tells us that the 99% for college bound black SAT takers is a score of 2100. That means that there are 18,000 black college students in the country with a score at least 2100, if not higher.

According to the Princeton Review, 2110 is the 25th percentile for admitted SAT scores, while Harvard self reported a mean SAT score for the class of 2017 of 2237.

So taken at face value, there are at least 18,000 black college students with SAT scores at Harvard's 25th percentile or higher. Which I would deem to be standard minimum qualifications.

However, Harvard has an undergraduate student enrollment of about 7200, of which 12% is black. Therefore, there are about 1080 black students at Harvard, which is 6% of the 18,000 black college students with minimum standard qualifications for enrollment. And it cannot be farfetched to assume that these are the absolute cream of the crop, with an expectation that their test scores would be significantly higher than the 99th percentile of SAT scores for black college students.

So stop it with this undeserving URM nonsense already.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:URM harping wrt Ivy admissions always fascinates me, because it is clear to me that most people don't fully understand or appreciate the pool of applicants. Just doing a little bit of math can actually illuminate things dramatically.

Harvard being Harvard has their pick of any and all applicants, black, white, latino or asian. Now the US Dept of Ed estimates that there are about 12 million college students in the US, of which about 15% are black. So there are roughly 1.8 million black college students. Of those, the College Board tells us that the 99% for college bound black SAT takers is a score of 2100. That means that there are 18,000 black college students in the country with a score at least 2100, if not higher.

According to the Princeton Review, 2110 is the 25th percentile for admitted SAT scores, while Harvard self reported a mean SAT score for the class of 2017 of 2237.

So taken at face value, there are at least 18,000 black college students with SAT scores at Harvard's 25th percentile or higher. Which I would deem to be standard minimum qualifications.

However, Harvard has an undergraduate student enrollment of about 7200, of which 12% is black. Therefore, there are about 1080 black students at Harvard, which is 6% of the 18,000 black college students with minimum standard qualifications for enrollment. And it cannot be farfetched to assume that these are the absolute cream of the crop, with an expectation that their test scores would be significantly higher than the 99th percentile of SAT scores for black college students.

So stop it with this undeserving URM nonsense already.

Actually, if you look at the statistics it's not anywhere close to that number.

"If we raise the top-scoring threshold to students scoring 750 or above on both the math and verbal SAT — a level equal to the mean score of students entering the nation's most selective colleges such as Harvard, Princeton, and CalTech — we find that in the entire country 244 blacks scored 750 or above on the math SAT and 363 black students scored 750 or above on the verbal portion of the test. Nationwide, 33,841 students scored at least 750 on the math test and 30,479 scored at least 750 on the verbal SAT. Therefore, black students made up 0.7 percent of the test takers who scored 750 or above on the math test and 1.2 percent of all test takers who scored 750 or above on the verbal section."

So, there are probably a few hundred Black students who scored at or above the mean score for Harvard.

[Anonymous]

NP here. Thank you 16:59 for reporting the statistics - very informative. There is no doubt there are many qualified applicants from many racial, ethnic, socio-economic, religious, international and other unique backgrounds. I think the frustration often seen on these boards from parents of self-described otherwise unhooked white students is that the within the overall elite group of students applying to these colleges from which admissions committees look to find standouts, being of any race other than white (or probably Asian these days because of the high number of applicants) "counts" as one standout factor. I don't believe that is seriously in question, yet I do believe that is exactly the point that aggravates some unhooked parents. Race will not get anyone into a highly selective school, but it is a plus factor if you are an underrepresented minority -- including AA -- and not if you are white.

In a world where white people - as if there is some monolithic group like that -- had all the breaks and advantages by a huge margin over people of color (as if that too is a monolithic group), this may be -- or at least in years past by may have been -- a rationale tool to consider in admissions. There are many aspects of an application a student can control or at least influence - grades, test scores, ECs, etc, and some they cannot -- parental socio-economic status, race, disabilities, etc. I think for many people the consideration of factors unrelated to student effort seems unfair (note a student born into poverty, a poor school system, etc. who outperforms his/her peers to overcome the odds would be a student recognized for effort). At the same time, schools are committed to diversity as an inherent good itself. In a world of "all other things equal" taking factors into account a student does not control, such as race, to achieve another goal of diversity, is something that I believe would draw relatively few objections from majority/non-diverse groups (if there really is such a thing - but for simplicity, we'll call them white people). The perceived problem is that admissions decisions sometimes are made in favor of minority applicants when all other things are significantly unequal in terms of test scores, GPA, etc. This may or may not be true. But I believe most schools release no such detailed statistics about the issue so this feeds skepticism.

Holistic admissions has its benefits, but transparency is not one of them. I was a strong proponent of affirmative action in the 1970s and 1980s, but have come to conclude that at this point the societal benefits of taking race into account in college admissions in any instance other than when "all other things are essentially equal" in order to achieve diversity objectives are outweighed by the societal negative consequences. Granted, defining what "essentially equal" is will be subject to wide interpretation, but as has been pointed out elsewhere, for example, few people would seriously question that a 50 point difference in SAT scores, for example, is meaningful but those same people may view a 200 point difference as material. But absent transparency, it seems inevitable that many students of color will often feel on college campuses that many of their white peers question their right to be on campus, their academic prowess, etc. and -- as seen in the past year -- this is one of many concerns students of color have voiced on many college campuses. Diversity does have important benefits, but good policy must take into account the means of achieving it is just as important as the ends.

[Anonymous]

No. DD had perfect SAT scores, perfect GPA with all AP classes senior year, 4 APs sophomore and junior year, 5 college classes, internships in the science labs at a local university, captain of varsity sport, leadership positions in 2 clubs, and extensive volunteer efforts (years, major projects). Rejected.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: NP here. Thank you 16:59 for reporting the statistics - very informative. There is no doubt there are many qualified applicants from many racial, ethnic, socio-economic, religious, international and other unique backgrounds. I think the frustration often seen on these boards from parents of self-described otherwise unhooked white students is that the within the overall elite group of students applying to these colleges from which admissions committees look to find standouts, being of any race other than white (or probably Asian these days because of the high number of applicants) "counts" as one standout factor. I don't believe that is seriously in question, yet I do believe that is exactly the point that aggravates some unhooked parents. Race will not get anyone into a highly selective school, but it is a plus factor if you are an underrepresented minority -- including AA -- and not if you are white.

In a world where white people - as if there is some monolithic group like that -- had all the breaks and advantages by a huge margin over people of color (as if that too is a monolithic group), this may be -- or at least in years past by may have been -- a rationale tool to consider in admissions. There are many aspects of an application a student can control or at least influence - grades, test scores, ECs, etc, and some they cannot -- parental socio-economic status, race, disabilities, etc. I think for many people the consideration of factors unrelated to student effort seems unfair (note a student born into poverty, a poor school system, etc. who outperforms his/her peers to overcome the odds would be a student recognized for effort). At the same time, schools are committed to diversity as an inherent good itself. In a world of "all other things equal" taking factors into account a student does not control, such as race, to achieve another goal of diversity, is something that I believe would draw relatively few objections from majority/non-diverse groups (if there really is such a thing - but for simplicity, we'll call them white people). The perceived problem is that admissions decisions sometimes are made in favor of minority applicants when all other things are significantly unequal in terms of test scores, GPA, etc. This may or may not be true. But I believe most schools release no such detailed statistics about the issue so this feeds skepticism.

Holistic admissions has its benefits, but transparency is not one of them. I was a strong proponent of affirmative action in the 1970s and 1980s, but have come to conclude that at this point the societal benefits of taking race into account in college admissions in any instance other than when "all other things are essentially equal" in order to achieve diversity objectives are outweighed by the societal negative consequences. Granted, defining what "essentially equal" is will be subject to wide interpretation, but as has been pointed out elsewhere, for example, few people would seriously question that a 50 point difference in SAT scores, for example, is meaningful but those same people may view a 200 point difference as material. But absent transparency, it seems inevitable that many students of color will often feel on college campuses that many of their white peers question their right to be on campus, their academic prowess, etc. and -- as seen in the past year -- this is one of many concerns students of color have voiced on many college campuses. Diversity does have important benefits, but good policy must take into account the means of achieving it is just as important as the ends.

But if 17:09's stats are correct (I have no idea where they came from), then the biggest impact of ignoring race in admissions decisions will be a very sharp decline in the number of black students at elite colleges. Are you, former supporter of affirmative action, okay with that? Is the change in "means of achieving" worth that particular end?

I find your assumption that few people would think a 50-point difference in SAT scores is meaningful to be very quaint.

I'm not in any way associated with Harvard, nor do I harbor any hope to be. I am not in a position to benefit from affirmative action, nor are my children. So I've got no particular fish to fry here. But honestly, all this protestation about the evils of affirmative action? It seems like people protest just a bit too much. I don't believe for one minute this is about relieving students of color from the burden of having white peers question their competency.

[Anonymous]

Harvard likes affirmative action because they aim to be the #1 school in America, thus the #1 school in the world.

Being the #1 school in America means being the #1 school of important communities within America, be they African-Americans or Alaskans.

Thus, the admissions office makes sure that a salutary number of students are admitted from those several communities. There are so many from Tennessee, so many from Alaska, and so many African-Americans.

Academic excellence is an important component but not the end goal. National and thus world domination are the end goal.

Affirmative action is a key part of this. Without affirmative action, Harvard is just a school for smart kids with no distinguished alumni network, much like Thomas Jefferson.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:URM harping wrt Ivy admissions always fascinates me, because it is clear to me that most people don't fully understand or appreciate the pool of applicants. Just doing a little bit of math can actually illuminate things dramatically.

Harvard being Harvard has their pick of any and all applicants, black, white, latino or asian. Now the US Dept of Ed estimates that there are about 12 million college students in the US, of which about 15% are black. So there are roughly 1.8 million black college students. Of those, the College Board tells us that the 99% for college bound black SAT takers is a score of 2100. That means that there are 18,000 black college students in the country with a score at least 2100, if not higher.

According to the Princeton Review, 2110 is the 25th percentile for admitted SAT scores, while Harvard self reported a mean SAT score for the class of 2017 of 2237.

So taken at face value, there are at least 18,000 black college students with SAT scores at Harvard's 25th percentile or higher. Which I would deem to be standard minimum qualifications.

However, Harvard has an undergraduate student enrollment of about 7200, of which 12% is black. Therefore, there are about 1080 black students at Harvard, which is 6% of the 18,000 black college students with minimum standard qualifications for enrollment. And it cannot be farfetched to assume that these are the absolute cream of the crop, with an expectation that their test scores would be significantly higher than the 99th percentile of SAT scores for black college students.

So stop it with this undeserving URM nonsense already.

Actually, if you look at the statistics it's not anywhere close to that number.

"If we raise the top-scoring threshold to students scoring 750 or above on both the math and verbal SAT — a level equal to the mean score of students entering the nation's most selective colleges such as Harvard, Princeton, and CalTech — we find that in the entire country 244 blacks scored 750 or above on the math SAT and 363 black students scored 750 or above on the verbal portion of the test. Nationwide, 33,841 students scored at least 750 on the math test and 30,479 scored at least 750 on the verbal SAT. Therefore, black students made up 0.7 percent of the test takers who scored 750 or above on the math test and 1.2 percent of all test takers who scored 750 or above on the verbal section."

So, there are probably a few hundred Black students who scored at or above the mean score for Harvard.

I am 18:28. The above post (that went up while I was typing mine) is a statistical view of the source of the skepticism I referred to in my post. I know the counselors at my DC's school told us that unless DC had at least 750 or above on each part of the SAT (esp. on math and reading), our DC -- who was at the time likely to be one of the two top ranked students in the class -- would not be sufficiently competitive for top ivy league schools to even bother applying. Throughout the college process, we were told that unless DC was closer to 75% (obviously, better if above) he would not be a strong academic at candidate at these schools. So there you have it. The first poster above highlighted the number of AA students "qualified" because they were at or above the 25%. Our white DC was told he needed to be at or above 750 on the key SAT parts and that he should focus on that 75% number in thinking about being a competitive candidate. To put this in some perspective, at some top ivy league schools that 75% number is an SAT score approaching (or even reaching) 800. His counselors would not have deemed him competitive at 700s. Now, one can have a debate -- I don't have the facts/figures to prove it t either way -- whether there is much difference in the classroom between the 700 and 800 SAT kid on average. Anecdotally as a parent from I know of my DC's friends from high school, I would say there is a substantial difference in academic ability that tends to be associated with a difference in that 100 points but I can't prove it. So while I wholly agree that some white families spend to much time angsting about the unfairness of racial considerations in college admissions, I do appreciate the source of those feelings and telling white parents to essentially "get over it" is no more constructive than telling black parents that their kids should "get over" a building named after a former slave owner on campus. Unless and until colleges explicitly remove race as a factor in admissions or transparently explain how it will be used to promote diversity in a way that does not undermine perceived "fairness" of the admissions process. it will continue to divide students and their families of different races. I feel terrible for any minority students who feel they have any greater burden to justify their place on any college campus, or even if they don't feel it are aware that some of their classmates might not think they belong there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Harvard likes affirmative action because they aim to be the #1 school in America, thus the #1 school in the world.

Being the #1 school in America means being the #1 school of important communities within America, be they African-Americans or Alaskans.

Thus, the admissions office makes sure that a salutary number of students are admitted from those several communities. There are so many from Tennessee, so many from Alaska, and so many African-Americans.

Academic excellence is an important component but not the end goal. National and thus world domination are the end goal.

Affirmative action is a key part of this. Without affirmative action, Harvard is just a school for smart kids with no distinguished alumni network, much like Thomas Jefferson.

Did you mean to attack TJ? TJ has been around for only 30+ years not 400 years and they do have "distinguished alumni network".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Harvard likes affirmative action because they aim to be the #1 school in America, thus the #1 school in the world.

Being the #1 school in America means being the #1 school of important communities within America, be they African-Americans or Alaskans.

Thus, the admissions office makes sure that a salutary number of students are admitted from those several communities. There are so many from Tennessee, so many from Alaska, and so many African-Americans.

Academic excellence is an important component but not the end goal. National and thus world domination are the end goal.

Affirmative action is a key part of this. Without affirmative action, Harvard is just a school for smart kids with no distinguished alumni network, much like Thomas Jefferson.

Did you mean to attack TJ? TJ has been around for only 30+ years not 400 years and they do have "distinguished alumni network".

Who's distinguished? Wikipedia articles of famous alumni who have accomplished things please. Their whole approach to admissions is wrong, but probably unavoidable for a public secondary school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:URM harping wrt Ivy admissions always fascinates me, because it is clear to me that most people don't fully understand or appreciate the pool of applicants. Just doing a little bit of math can actually illuminate things dramatically.

Harvard being Harvard has their pick of any and all applicants, black, white, latino or asian. Now the US Dept of Ed estimates that there are about 12 million college students in the US, of which about 15% are black. So there are roughly 1.8 million black college students. Of those, the College Board tells us that the 99% for college bound black SAT takers is a score of 2100. That means that there are 18,000 black college students in the country with a score at least 2100, if not higher.

According to the Princeton Review, 2110 is the 25th percentile for admitted SAT scores, while Harvard self reported a mean SAT score for the class of 2017 of 2237.

So taken at face value, there are at least 18,000 black college students with SAT scores at Harvard's 25th percentile or higher. Which I would deem to be standard minimum qualifications.

However, Harvard has an undergraduate student enrollment of about 7200, of which 12% is black. Therefore, there are about 1080 black students at Harvard, which is 6% of the 18,000 black college students with minimum standard qualifications for enrollment. And it cannot be farfetched to assume that these are the absolute cream of the crop, with an expectation that their test scores would be significantly higher than the 99th percentile of SAT scores for black college students.

So stop it with this undeserving URM nonsense already.

Actually, if you look at the statistics it's not anywhere close to that number.

"If we raise the top-scoring threshold to students scoring 750 or above on both the math and verbal SAT — a level equal to the mean score of students entering the nation's most selective colleges such as Harvard, Princeton, and CalTech — we find that in the entire country 244 blacks scored 750 or above on the math SAT and 363 black students scored 750 or above on the verbal portion of the test. Nationwide, 33,841 students scored at least 750 on the math test and 30,479 scored at least 750 on the verbal SAT. Therefore, black students made up 0.7 percent of the test takers who scored 750 or above on the math test and 1.2 percent of all test takers who scored 750 or above on the verbal section."

So, there are probably a few hundred Black students who scored at or above the mean score for Harvard.

I am 18:28. The above post (that went up while I was typing mine) is a statistical view of the source of the skepticism I referred to in my post. I know the counselors at my DC's school told us that unless DC had at least 750 or above on each part of the SAT (esp. on math and reading), our DC -- who was at the time likely to be one of the two top ranked students in the class -- would not be sufficiently competitive for top ivy league schools to even bother applying. Throughout the college process, we were told that unless DC was closer to 75% (obviously, better if above) he would not be a strong academic at candidate at these schools. So there you have it. The first poster above highlighted the number of AA students "qualified" because they were at or above the 25%. Our white DC was told he needed to be at or above 750 on the key SAT parts and that he should focus on that 75% number in thinking about being a competitive candidate. To put this in some perspective, at some top ivy league schools that 75% number is an SAT score approaching (or even reaching) 800. His counselors would not have deemed him competitive at 700s. Now, one can have a debate -- I don't have the facts/figures to prove it t either way -- whether there is much difference in the classroom between the 700 and 800 SAT kid on average. Anecdotally as a parent from I know of my DC's friends from high school, I would say there is a substantial difference in academic ability that tends to be associated with a difference in that 100 points but I can't prove it. So while I wholly agree that some white families spend to much time angsting about the unfairness of racial considerations in college admissions, I do appreciate the source of those feelings and telling white parents to essentially "get over it" is no more constructive than telling black parents that their kids should "get over" a building named after a former slave owner on campus. Unless and until colleges explicitly remove race as a factor in admissions or transparently explain how it will be used to promote diversity in a way that does not undermine perceived "fairness" of the admissions process. it will continue to divide students and their families of different races. I feel terrible for any minority students who feel they have any greater burden to justify their place on any college campus, or even if they don't feel it are aware that some of their classmates might not think they belong there.

I bet you do.