Kolegegraduaet

Harvard

Is it hard to get accepted into Harvard, because I was determinig whether to go there. --Kolegegraduaet 21:26, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Harvard accepted about 9% of its most recent batch of applicants (according to the wiki page), and has the lowest acceptance rate and highest yield (percentage of accepted students who matriculate) of any Ivy League school. So objectively, it is fairly hard to get accepted. But it mostly depends on the student. --jacobolus (t) 22:49, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean specifically on the statement " it depends on the student". Do you mean his or her grade point average or his accomplishments during high school.--Kolegegraduaet 21:49, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Some combination of the two. The Harvard admissions department doesn't really look for some particular set of achievements, but instead tries to fill up each incoming class with ~1650 of the most ambitious, most talented, most presumably influential students they can find. Students with a very wide variety of interests and goals get in, including artists, scientists, and the occasional child of a foreign president. Beyond some (pretty high, admittedly) threshold, it is my impression that they care more about students’ passionate interests than about their grade point average or test scores. --jacobolus (t) 22:07, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry jacobolus but that's somewhat incorrect. For any top college in the U.S., grades and SAT scores will almost ALWAYS be the main factor considered in admissions, followed by ECs, passions, interests, etc. There are occasionally exceptions, if the student happens to be a significant legacy (i.e. president's son) or has some phenomenal interest that overrides lower scores, but this is rare. Kolegegraduaet, you haven't really given any reasons on why you want to attend Harvard or only Ivy League universities for that matter. Why not other top colleges that are not Ivy Leagues, but that may provide an equivalent education or better? It seems you care more about prestige than education, and that is not the right attitude to have, in my opinion. --216.165.32.35 (talk) 14:53, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Kolegegraduaet