In its admissions process, Harvard scores applicants in five categories — “academic,” “extracurricular,” “athletic,” “personal” and “overall.” They are ranked from 1 to 6, with 1 being the best.
1. Academic: This is a weighted number of GPA if such exists, class ranking, again is it exists, and SAT or equivalent scores. The weighting is often based on what type of secondary school one went to. Thus if it were Exeter I suspect one would have a strong position whereas if it we Robert Wagner HS on Staten Island you may be somewhere down the pile.
2. Extracurricular: Curing AIDS in Uganda perhaps could get you a few points as would be having been elected as a State Senator, Democrat of course. In the old days a VP on the Student Council would work but today when everyone gets a prize one wonders how this works.
3. Athletics: Now here is a real quiz. People fall into three categories. No sports at all, perhaps most Nobel Prize winners fall in this collection, team sports, the prep school winners are here as are large public schools, and the individual sports. The latter is where we get entrepreneurs. I did boxing and was a lifeguard, both required individual singular performance, and in boxing it was real time. So how does Harvard weight these?
4. Personal: Oh yeah, try to do this one folks. MIT used to have alumni do interviews but they disbanded this. I did it for 25 years and saw a large swath of students, and a few, who were accepted despite my concerns, all left before graduation. That personal contact is important but, well it is personal.
5. Overall: Just what this means I cannot tell despite a few readings. The selection used to be based on Faculty reviews, now there is a politically correct admissions committee. Thus the applicant must play to their biases rather than the facts.
It will be interesting to see how this litigation ends.
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