I Went to Harvard. You Shouldn’t. Part I
A multi-piece exploration of the rot at the top.
Note: This is Part I in a series. Part II can be found here.
“You’ll never get accepted here,” my dad told my brother in a Cambridge hotel room. “This is where brilliant kids go, kids who get 1600s on their SATs.”
My dad isn’t a person who says things to cut others down. He’s one of the kindest humans I know, so I remember thinking this statement to my brother was wholly out of character.
Looking back on that day, my dad says he was trying to manage my brother’s expectations.
My older brother Eric was and is brilliant. He works hard at it, putting more hours into studying back then, doctoring now.
Yet, he had a 1420 on his SATs, which my dad (and frankly, my brother at the time) believed would immediately preclude his chance at admission.
What we didn’t know was that there was a far more insidious process at work. Harvard is surrounded by the gates of privilege, and few who are born without money and power are allowed to pass through. Being a “legacy,” meaning that one’s parents and/or grandparents went to Harvard, awards a student a 40% greater chance at admission.
