How To Get Into (Your) Harvard

Beginning school as a freshman the following fall, you will have the distinct advantage of maturity, additional education, a rested mind, and increased social confidence. Often self-growth is the process that occurs in the background of life, while we aren’t paying attention. As a result, it tends to be ignored or devalued. The self, especially during times of transition and growth, should instead be prioritized. During this phase of your life, little is more important than understanding who you are and what you want from the world.

With self-awareness and confidence also comes success in academics and work. Unfortunately, other pressing priorities overwhelm this subtle necessity. It usually takes decades to fully know yourself—in fact, most people never get to that point. It’s best to begin early and practice the art of reflection often. If you do, you will have more success and less stress—while saving tuition money in the process.

If our anecdotal authority is not persuasive enough, the following excerpt from “Time Out or Burn Out for the Next Generation” by William Fitzsimmons, Harvard College Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, should bolster the argument for a gap year:

For over thirty years, Harvard has recommended this option, indeed proposing it in the letter of admission. Normally a total of about fifty to seventy students defer college until the next year.

The results have been uniformly positive. Harvard’s daily student newspaper, The Crimson, reported (5/19/2000) that students who had taken a year off found the experience “so valuable that they would advise all Harvard students to consider it.” Harvard’s overall graduation rate of 98% is among the highest in the nation, perhaps in part because so many students take time off. One student, noting that the majority of her friends will simply spend eight consecutive terms at Harvard, “wondered if they ever get the chance to catch their breath.”

During her year off, the student quoted above toured South America with an ice-skating company and later took a trip to Russia. Another interviewed in the article worked with a growing e-commerce company (in which the staff grew from ten to a hundred during the year) and backpacked around Europe for six months.

For the full article, please visit the Harvard Admissions Website.

Rather than dwell on the potential downside of a year spent exploring the path less traveled, we should all consider its benefits. So, once you’ve finished getting into college, do yourself a favor and pause to consider setting aside some time for getting into yourself. You’ll be happier that you did. You do not have to follow the crowd Saved by the Bell-style from Bay Side High School directly to the College Years. College is about becoming your own person. So, take a moment and consider the best course of action. We trust you to make the right decision, and so should you. Just don’t be afraid to ask for help or advice from others.

The Argument in Favor

The concept of a gap year (often up to 15 months including two summers) is almost always misunderstood. Parents and students fear the onset of lethargy and mental atrophy and wonder what to do over that seemingly interminable span. To those people, we always stress a multi-faceted approach. Imagine the opportunity for personal growth inherent in the following timeline:
 
June: Graduation

July – September: Summer employment

September – January: Travel abroad to learn a foreign language and culture

February – June: Work, intern, take a course or two, and visit with friends

July – September: Continue study, work, and connecting with friends

Right here, right now, imagine your theoretical gap year. If you had the months in between graduation and the September that marks the beginning of your college experience, what would you do with it?

Common mistakes students make while preparing:

• working on strengths rather than weaknesses
• not spending enough time reviewing
• not anticipating real testing conditions
• learning too little and practicing too much
• not asking for help when it’s needed

Here’s a list of some things—books, periodicals, essays, and so on—that we recommend reading:

Stuff you can find online

MONTAIGNE

Montaigne, a sixteenth century Frenchman, is generally credited as the inventor of the essay. It is safe to assume he knew a few things about writing.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

The staff writers at the Times are some of the best journalists in the entire world.

THE NEW YORKER, THE ECONOMIST, THE NEW REPUBLIC, AND THE ATLANTIC

Ditto for these magazines. Read anything in them that intrigues you.

Other print resources:

STRUNK AND WHITE’S THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

BIRD BY BIRD BY ANNE LAMOTT

ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY BY DAVID SEDARIS

IN COLD BLOOD BY TRUMAN CAPOTE

REPORTING BY DAVID REMNICK

WHAT THE DOG SAW BY MALCOLM GLADWELL

MFK FISHER’S FOOD WRITING

HUNTER S. THOMPSON’S SPORTS WRITING

The truth of the matter is that the college application process closely mirrors the writing process—this is no coincidence, since the application process requires a great deal of writing. You’ll have to take the information from the surveys you’ve answered and translate them into clear, useful prose. What better time than the present to begin to learn how to do so?

Ready, Set…

Sitting all alone at a table in a small, dusty room, the writer huffs and puffs and pecks at a keyboard. (Even though he only uses the computer these days, he probably has a quill handy somewhere…just in case.) He pauses to stare into space for a while, until—aha!—his eyes widen in delight. Inspiration has hit! He huffs, puffs, and pecks anew. He works without pausing until his piece is done, and then, there it is: perfect. Flawless. Brilliant.

Right?

Wrong.

Like anything, writing requires planning, discipline, and a great deal of trial and error. It is, after all, called the writing process. If this intimidates you, take comfort: in some way, shape, or form, it intimidates everyone. Why? Because it is hard.

Like every challenge, though—many of which you have likely already faced and conquered at some or many points in your life—it can be tackled.

The single most important aspect of becoming a stronger writer is, believe it or not, reading. Reading good writing does more than enrich and expand our intellectual world (as if that isn’t enough!). When we read, we are watching someone think. Equally importantly, we are watching someone select and structure words in order to most effectively convey those thoughts to us. When you read, you should also think about how it is that the author is doing what they do, and try to emulate (not steal, of course!) that methodology.

The short answer

Yes. But they are not the be-all-end-all of college admissions.

The long answer

These numbers are important only because they indicate, at a glance, whether an applicant is ready to do the level of work that goes on at your Harvard. And, it doesn’t take but a few seconds to see that, with so many AP and IB classes, with so many As, and with such high scores on the SAT, you’re ready.

But so are the some 20,000 other applicants to your Harvard, because at this point in the admissions process, roughly 70% of the total pool is that good. Seriously. There really are that many accomplished people out there. With so many applicants with similar scores and grades, numbers are a necessary but insufficient prerequisite for admission.

This doesn’t mean you can’t get accepted without straight As and stellar SAT scores. Quite the opposite. Because schools glance at these numbers as indications, not bottom lines of your aptitude, they’ve built some leeway into the admissions process. Imagine that: there’s room in the rigors of college admissions for human input and individualized evaluation. Isn’t that what you want from a college anyway?

In fact, a list of three hundred (and growing) US colleges no longer require SAT or ACT scores. So if you have always had a palpable fear of those pink scantron sheets, you no longer need to worry. A quick Google search will reveal a long list of SAT-optional schools, some of which may surprise you. We do, however, encourage you to study and take the SAT or ACT anyway. Without all that pressure to achieve a top score, you might even surprise yourself.

The information you put into the admissions process: it’s pretty slim. Of the nineteen pages currently on the Common Application, you will only fill out the first four. The rest of the pages are for school reports, recommendations, and the like. In total, after you write your short answers and your personal statement, you’ll have distilled your complex life into no more than seven pages. So make every word count. This is not the time to be bombastic but rather to look inside yourself and find—as Coleridge said about poetry—“the best words in their best order.”

Admissions officers will read every application they receive—that much is true. How much time they take to read your application, however, is the million-dollar question. Will they glance at it? Look at it? Consider it? The relative value of attention in those verbs reflects your relative proximity to getting accepted.

It is not unusual for an admissions officer to read 1,600 individual applications in a season. Assuming 1,500 words per application, that is equivalent to reading the King James Bible cover-to-cover three times in just over three months…holy admissions headache!

• A review of Admission: Jean Hanff Korelitz’s fictional account of life as a Princeton Admissions Officer.

“I was struck by the protagonist’s struggle with the divergence between the two meanings of admissions: first, acts of admitting or entrance (such as accepting a student into the inner circle of a prestigious institution), and second, confessions or truths (like the release of an inner secret once held close to the heart).”

• College admissions books on the NYT’s Choice blog.