How (not) to Get into Harvard

The conclusive guide on how (not) to get into Harvard, and for that matter, any Ivy League college.

Each applicant to Harvard College is considered with great care. While there is no formula for gaining admission, we hope you will explore the information in this section to understand what we look for in our holistic admissions process.

This is true.

Well, sort of. The “considered with great care part” probably is, but not the “no formula” part. Allow me to explain.

After being reminded about the college admissions game almost daily, I’ve personally become so acquainted with the entire process that I’ve managed to derive an easy-to-follow formula that will almost certainly get you into the holy grail of higher education: Harvard College.

Memorize, regurgitate, and repeat the three simple steps you are about to discover. Can’t be too hard, right? It’s what you’ve been doing the whole time anyways.

1. The Numbers

The first part of this formula is quite well known and relatively straight forward — maximize the number of AP or honors classes that will fit into your schedule (even if you don’t like the subject), minimize the number of non-GPA boosting classes you take, get all A’s, get a 2400, get a 36, self study and ace as many SAT subject tests as you can, and do the same for AP tests.

This might be high enough

If you add up all your scores from all these tests and your GPA, you get what I call the Part 1 Transcript Constant (P1TC for short). To put this on a scale, you should be aiming for the Part 1 Transcript Constant Maxima, 8881. If your P1TC falls anywhere within 10 of the P1TCM, you should be fine.

You know as they say — if at first you don’t succeed, just pay for a tutor. Because after all, the College Board themselves did show that those with more money (and presumably those who spend more money on getting help) get higher scores.

2. The Personality

But as you may know, you’ll need more than just perfect test scores to get into Harvard. And so, let me introduce to you the second part of the formula: You have to somehow satisfy the “holistic admissions” approach that all these colleges seem to glorify.

To do this, you have to be interesting. You have to be real and unique, not just someone defined by a number. What the heck, right? But fear not — while you may be wondering how you can possibly get a perfect transcript AND be “interesting” (whatever that means), the trick here is that you don’t actually have to be real, unique, or interesting as a person. You just have to make yourself seem so.

All you have to do is explicitly adhere to the following A/B tested advice. Doing so, believe it or not, will make you seem like a perfectly well-rounded applicant, even if you honestly don’t give a crap.

Extracurriculars

This is a term that is thrown around excessively — many try to strategically choose the right extracurriculars in hopes of it “looking good” on their application. In reality, it’s a lot simpler. All you have to do is show that you’re a unique, well-rounded individual interested in a variety of things. Here’s what you should do:

• Join some sort of community service club. This makes you seem like you care about your community and want to help others. Eventually, get a leadership position and “plan” some sort of heartfelt, genuine-looking volunteering event that you can later write about in your essays. (More on this in Part 3)
• Of course, you should be doing some more community service than just a club. If you have any interest in pre-med, then volunteer at your local hospital and learn as much as you can while spending hours filing papers that were probably printed just so you have something to do. If you have no interests, volunteer at your local library and hope that you will eventually find something you’re interested in after spending hours re-filing books back in their shelves in complete and utter silence. Literally.
• Join a business-y club. Competing with thousands of other high school students at large scale “leadership conferences” is a great way to show your unique interest in entrepreneurship and potential to become the next Steve Jobs. Because you know, wearing your dad’s baggy, 20 year old suit along with 5000 pubescent kids and answering “business” questions is the new path to innovating and starting a company.
• Join humanities type clubs. These types of club offer too good of an ROI to pass up, considering that they never actually meet. Sometimes people refer to them as “filler” clubs, used to fill up that extracurricular section on the Common App.
• Play a sport. The purpose of this is solely to show that you are physically active. If you can, play for all four years of high school and try to become a captain so that you can add to your never ending list of leadership positions. However, playing more than one sport not only is not needed, but also can be extremely time consuming and hurt the amount of time you have for other more important activities.
• Start a club. Honestly, it doesn’t even matter what the club is. Even if your school has practically every club idea you can think of, start a club for the sake of a title — Founder and President sounds pretty good. Don’t worry about the time commitment. Just put in some effort on club day and get as many signups as possible. Then for the first couple of months, follow the FF acronym: Lure your friends and freshmen to you bi-weekly (and most of the time cancelled) club meetings by providing free food. After that, who cares, because you just “led a club of 50 students with the mutual interest in ___.” Then, just make the club like 80% of all the other clubs at school: inactive and founded for the same reason you just had.

I started the Fathers and Daughters Club of the United States of America. It was just me and my dad. Actually, the first year it was just me. Dad didn’t really want to join. It was a bad year for the Fathers and Daughters Club.

If you successfully do all these things, you will have proven that you care for your community, have grand ambitions to be an entrepreneur, have an intellectual and serious side to you, are athletic, and a natural born leader. What else can Harvard ask for?

Summer

What you do during the summer is crucial to your application. Play your cards right, and you’re on your way to Harvard. Play them wrong, and well, then just pay them right and you’ll also be on your way to Harvard.

There are a few recommended options here:

• If you don’t really have any interests, you can show your knowledge of the world and drive to help those less privileged than you (this will help later in the writing step) by joining one of those overseas youth “expeditions”. You may have to pay a substantial amount of money to attend, but just think of it as a prestigious selective financial application process. It’s basically like being invited to a minors-only economic forum.
• If you’re into science, try to secure an “internship” under a university professor at a prestigious local university. The more complex the topic the professor is researching, the better. While you may just be cleaning beakers and occasionally doing something more productive, the key here is to emphasize the complexity of the research you “helped” with.
• Last resort, just ask your parents to hire you as a summer intern for their high tech company. If you’re parents can’t do this, then just ask if they know anybody. This is bound to work, especially if you live in particular suburbs. The added benefit of this is that you don’t actually have to know what you’re doing — just get people coffee and look like you’re being productive. Come up with an interesting job title for yourself and impress Harvard while hiding how you got the position.
• If needed, focus on raising your Part 1 Transcript Constant because even though it doesn’t really matter that much in the admissions process after a certain threshold, the higher your number, the more you can trick yourself into thinking you are better.

Once you do complete everything mentioned above, you will undeniably be exactly as interesting as the rest of your future Harvard classmates. Exactly as in the same, that is.

3. The Writing

The last part of the formula involves writing. This may seem a little tricky at first, but fear not — simply follow the tips and examples provided and your creative literary prowess will naturally show.

Essays

Did you take that trip over the summer that helped you understand the world? Here is where that whole life-changing experience can come to use. Take a look at this perfectly written example essay about this exact topic. Explain how you traveled somewhere, and let your senses take it from there.

It’s sad, but some people don’t realize what a big world it is. They don’t see how much there is to learn from other cultures. Me, I’ve never shied away from exposing myself to foreign ways of life: From drinking margaritas in Key West to riding the teacups at Disneyland, I’ve been a lot of places and seen a lot of things. But when I took a trip to the Great White North last month, I had no idea how much it would broaden my horizons and open up my mind.

Have you ever been to Canada? If you look for it on a map, you’ll realize it isn’t far from the United States. But once you cross the border from America to Canada, you’ll immediately know you’re in a foreign land.

Case in point: the food. While I was in downtown Toronto looking for a place to eat, just something simple like a McDonald’s or Hardee’s, I came across a restaurant I’d never seen before called Mr. Sub. I figured, “Hey, when in Rome…” And you know what? My open-mindedness paid off! It was a sub shop, but it had a breaded-fish sub. I’d never seen anything like that in a Blimpie or Subway. I guess those Canadians really like their fish. In the end, I got a “Great Canadian Sub” so I’d get the full Canadian experience. And guess what? It was great. Just goes to show what can happen when you leave yourself open to new experiences.

Something else that’s a little strange about Canada is how they don’t use pounds or miles or inches. Everything is metric. I remember learning about the metric system in chemistry class, but this is an entire country that measures everything differently. That’s the sort of thing you only learn by actually going out there into the world.

Another thing that really gave me pause was seeing road signs in French and English. The first time I saw a bilingual sign, I didn’t know what was up. But the Let’s Go Toronto guidebook said that a lot of Canadians speak French as their first language. How odd is that? As I soon learned, the French colonized a lot of Canada instead of the English, so not only did I get some French culture, but I got a history lesson, as well. That’s why you take trips — to learn a little bit more about the world around you.

What also threw me off was that Canadian money looks completely different from ours. The bills are different colors, and instead of presidents, they have prime ministers and queens on them. I guess if you spend your whole life stuck in the U.S., you never really think about something like currency. But when you’re confronted with a bill that doesn’t have George Washington or Abraham Lincoln on it, you really start to think about how each country is unique and how that’s reflected in their money.

Seeing the Canadian money also made me think that Canadians wouldn’t understand what rappers were talking about when they used the term “dead presidents.” You see, even the universal language of music wouldn’t translate well between our two diverse cultures.

Did you know that Canada also has a space needle? I figured Seattle was the only place to have one, but Canada has one, too. Except it’s called the CN Tower. It’s amazing how you can have two totally different countries and still have a common thread that binds them. It’s kind of reassuring to realize that maybe Americans and other cultures aren’t so different, after all.

I’m really glad I got the opportunity to take in the wonders of Canada before it got too Americanized. It would be a shame to see something uniquely Canadian like the Hockey Hall Of Fame turn into our Baseball Hall Of Fame.

When I finally made it back home, I started to see things through a different lens. I no longer viewed the world as being all the same. Now I see it for what it is: America and a bunch of other places with subtle differences from us.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/that-trip-to-canada-really-broadened-my-horizons,10812/

“I know what it is to suffer. I went through a horrible breakup sophomore year. He’s now dating my best friend, so I understand the world”

Letter of Recommendations

Teacher recommendations are the one part of this formula that is a bit in the gray area, as they are generally not in your control. However, it is possible to optimize your relationships with your teachers in order to increase the likelihood of a strong letter of rec.

First, you need to identify two prospective teachers who you perceive to not hate you

Once you’ve identified two teachers who will write your letter of rec, you need to give them something good to write about. As with everything else, this is quite simple as long as you follow the process below:

1. At first, be that quiet and mysterious kid who doesn’t really participate much in class
2. Deliberately get an B+ on the first test or quiz to demonstrate that you are not a flawless student. There is an art to this, as you don’t want to lower your P1TC (remember, from part 1) too much.
3. Now is when you need to seem like a hard-working, motivated student who really does want to learn. Go to your teacher’s tutorial or office hours and “request” help so it seems like you care.
4. For the next test or quiz, get an A- to show improvement. Try a little harder and do a little better on all assignments.
5. Further show your interest in the class by asking your teacher how you can take it a step higher and improve even more.
6. This is important. Besides talking about the class itself, you must show another “human” side to you that is not academics — in a modest manner, bring up one of the many extracurriculars you do.
7. For the next test or quiz, get an A or A+ to show the long way you’ve come since the beginning of the year B+. Showing improvement trumps everything.

Scores + Personality + Writing. Easy as 1, 2, 3.

That’s it. That’s the formula for getting into Harvard. Take it as you will.

Some notes:

1. If this didn’t come off as satire, I guess that in itself shows the flaws of the perception of the whole process. Or I’m just not good at this whole writing thing.
2. This was written for a school assignment in a few hours and later edited sparingly.
3. If you actually want to know how to “improve” your chances of getting your higher education at top institutions, check out some of Cal Newport’s stuff. Some pretty interesting stuff, but as always, don’t ever religiously follow something someone else says.
4. I have nothing against Harvard or higher education.
5. After writing this, I found this: http://www.polite-unlearning.svalbardrepublic.org/HARVARD-howto-getin.html. Laughed out loud at least eight times.