How to get into Harvard University? I get this question all the time, so I will now share my top tips! I have attended workshops around the world to talk about admissions and replied to countless messages from aspiring students and now I am excited to make my insights more widely available so you can maximize your chances of getting into Harvard or any highly-selective school.
I am studying at Harvard College, and the admissions process is different from the graduate school application process, but nevertheless, it is crucial to keep these tips in mind when you want to maximize your chances of getting that “Congratulations!” letter to your dream school.
In 2022, a record-low 4.59 percent of 42,749 applicants earned acceptance to the Harvard College Class of 2022, making it the most competitive admissions cycle in Harvard history. Following these 7 tips, you can make the best out of your college application journey and have the best possible shot at your dream school!
1. Think about what makes you stand out
As I said above, Harvard gets over 40,000 applications for roughly 1,900 spots. That’s an insane amount of applications! That inevitably means that admissions officers will not remember most of them, because that would be impossible. However, in order for your application to survive that massive pile, you need to have something for them to remember you by. Now the question is: How are they going to remember you?
Standing out does not mean that you need to be a superhuman with unbelievable achievements no one has ever achieved. There are not that many things in life that no one is better at than you. Standing out in college applications can be much more simple than that. It can be about your special talents, characteristics, or background. Think of the following questions:
-Are you the first one in your family to go to college, or is going to college seen as a default in your family?
-Do you have a special hobby or interest?
-Has anyone else from your high school got accepted into this college, or would you be the first one?
These are just some sample questions to demonstrate what I mean. For example, by no means you do not have to be the first one in your family to go to college, but if you are, it shows a special kind of ambition. Having a special or unusual interest shows that you are able to make your own mind and not just simply do what everyone else is doing for the sake of it. But if you have a more common hobby, you can think of ways you are making special sacrifices for it. Maybe everyone in your friend group plays soccer, but you wake up even earlier than them to practice.
The main point here is that if you have nothing special about you, your application is going to be forgotten right away. There are going to be so many people similar to you, that you would have to get incredibly lucky to get accepted.
2. Grades are important, but not everything
By far the most common misconception about getting into Harvard is that you need to have the highest possible grades at school as well as a perfect SAT score. This is not true. It is indeed essential to have solid grades to show that you can handle college, but Harvard is not only full of geeks who spend all their time alone in the library to achieve perfect grades in every course. Harvard wants to educate future leaders and change-makers, and frankly, you cannot change the world by just reading.
Harvard is not going to reject a remarkable person with incredible personal achievements simply because their GPA was lower than average. Grades are also such a bad way of measuring academic ability, and Harvard admissions officers are smart enough to understand this: grading varies within schools and even among teachers in one school.
Standardized test scores arguably are a more objective way of measuring academic ability than just school grades, but by no means a near-perfect result is required here. Some schools may have some cutoffs for standardized test scores such as the SAT score, but you should not be discouraged if your scores were lower than you had hoped.
Never let lower scores stop you from applying!
Harvard could admit only those with perfect grades and test scores, and they still would not have enough spots for all of those students. At the same time, most students they actually will admit do not have the highest possible GPAs.
3. Be a great community builder
Alright, what do I even mean by that? As I said in the previous point, your spot at Harvard is not guaranteed by perfect grades and test scores. Why is that? Because you cannot spend 24/7 with your nose in a book, you also need to think about how you impact the people around you.
Harvard has educated presidents and other great leaders, and imagine if they had spent their lives never trying to serve other people? Imagine if they had rejected Barack Obama from Law School simply because his GPA was not 4.0? Luckily, that was not the case, because the admissions officers saw their potential to impact the people around them. And that is what you should aim at too.
Good news – you don’t have to be a future president to be impactful. Have you ever done volunteer work, or perhaps were elected to the student body? Maybe you have written and published pieces about important topics in society. Maybe you have not done any of that, but still are an incredibly kind person to all your peers. Part of your college application is letters of recommendation from your teachers, and it will not be a good thing if you are rude in their class or never talk to your peers there.
4. Think from the admissions officer’s perspective
You know yourself the best, and of course, you know all the reasons why you should get into Harvard. You have awesome accomplishments, you work super hard, and you would definitely be so grateful and happy to get in. And that’s all true for sure!
The challenge here is to realize that the admissions officers don’t know you at all yet, so you need to create your application with their viewpoint in mind. They want to get to know you as much as possible, so make sure that each of the parts of the application (letters of recommendations, essays, extracurriculars, grades, honors, etc.) all add value and something new to the application.
The best applicants share really personal aspects about themselves and are not afraid to show their emotions. You should try to evoke emotions from your readers, and many of the best essays have made the admissions officers either laugh or cry, which is the goal here. When you can emotionally connect with them, you will be more memorable.
After reviewing your application, the admissions officers should have a solid understanding of your background, skills, interests, and motivation to go to the school, so make sure you cover all that.
5. Be genuine
This is probably the most overlooked aspect of the whole admissions process. Too often I have met people who live their lives just based on what would look good on their school application. They take classes they are not interested in, they play sports or instruments they hate, and they do volunteer work that they could not care less about. But building your resume is so important for college admissions, right?
This is wrong for multiple reasons. First, the admissions officers can sense your fakeness miles away. They are highly experienced with having applicants who are trying too hard to impress.
Also, you likely will not enjoy your life that much when you don’t allow yourself to do things you truly enjoy doing. It might sound appealing for college admissions, but soon you will be stuck with a miserable life. You might get lucky and get into your dream school by lying about your true self, but soon in that college, you will notice that your true self does not enjoy the experience. Do things based on your interests and passions, not on what you think would look good in an application.
6. Be realistic
Harvard is tough to get into, and luck also plays an important role. The steps given above are helpful to make your application stand out and not become so easily rejected. There is an insanely huge amount of applicants, and a lot of them are really competitive. It will depend on the other people who apply the same year as you: maybe you would have had better chances of getting accepted the previous year or the year after, but in the same admissions cycle there was someone too similar to you who got the better end of the stick. That’s why it is important to be realistic and prepare for a possible rejection.
Almost no one has a guaranteed spot in any of these kinds of colleges with a super low acceptance rate. I had zero belief I would get in, so preparing for rejection was all I did. When the results came, I just repeated to myself “check the rejection letters and go to sleep, it’s going to be okay.” I got lucky, but it would have been okay eventually even if I didn’t. Rejection hurts, but it is part of life.
7. You’re going to love wherever you’ll end up in life
At the end of the day, Harvard is just a school like any other. Going there won’t give you magic powers or make you a billionaire automatically. You can succeed elsewhere too! Wherever you end up, you need to believe that it is where you belong, and it is all a part of your own journey to success.
I encourage you to apply to Harvard and see what happens. Even just completing the application will teach you many things from writing essays about yourself, acing interviews, and asking for letters of recommendation. You will very likely need those skills later in life, so it will all help you in the future. You will always find your place at the end of the day.