HOW TO GET INTO HARVARD: 7 Tips That Will Actually Get You Accepted

hey guys i'm sanna and he stumbled across this video you're probably wondering how to get into Harvard I know I was I applied from California which is statistically one of the hardest states for most and college and no one legacy wasn't a captain of the sports - you didn't play an instrument but what I did do was spend hours researching how to craft my application and best market myself and my story in the process so hopefully this will be helpful to you guys first this is some of the best advice I got if you only take away something from this video let it be this colleges don't want well-rounded students they want a well-rounded class so that means if they have for instance 2,000 acceptances that they're giving out which is typically what Harvard does between early admissions and Regular Decision they're looking for a class that is well-rounded they're gonna be looking for both racial diversity socio-economic diversity students from different countries students of different backgrounds students with different interests and so if they made up the class with 2,000 people who practically look the same on paper that would be a very boring class okay so the second thing I want to talk about is buckets so a college admissions book I read once said that colleges sort students bucket says specifically think this is true of Hartley - so everything from the race your nationality your gender your main interests your actual voters your SAT your economic background everything is sorted into a bucket and so colleges want to take students from as many buckets as possible so within each of those buckets there's going to be a lot of people the fewer people in your bucket a caring like the more the more unique you are the better you have in Texas and for instance if you are from Oklahoma that's probably a state that Harvard doesn't get too many applications from versus like someone from California so Oklahoma would have a bucket and then you're a neuroscience major from Oklahoma so then that would be another bucket and then your family makes only sixty grand a year so that's another bucket in itself it is important to open or to distinguish between factors you can change versus those you cans and those you can't are pretty obvious like erase your nationality where you live how much your parents making you're not sort of thing your financial status you can't change those things don't spend time stressing about them the things you can change are your stats your essays your letter of recommendation your extracurriculars and your transcript and those are things you have control over so with those factors you're going to try to make yourself stand out within your bucket no matter which bucket that is your application should have a story which is a centered around to your hook which is basically you in a nutshell this is the one thing about you that it's really special and most people's hips can be summed up in like a sentence in two and so your whole application should reflect your story and especially your hook for media I crafted my application based on this idea I as a writer so for test scores I had you know my SAT and my AP English scores to back it up and an SAT Subject Tests so with scores I was good and then with extracurriculars I had the fact that I had written a novel and I had won national awards for my body short stories and then I had also written a screenplay I had the scores to back it up and I had the extra figures and I had the classes in my common FSA I also explored my identity as a writer and kind of my journey throughout high school so me and a nutshell was this self directed girl from California who did high school her own way who really was passionate about her writing got published to explore lots of different opportunities at that and then also had this kind of entrepreneurial streak which led her to seek out the best mentors possible and the my stats and essays were also pretty good so that they backed up my whole narrative I made myself unique I made myself stand out in a way and that's what you have to deal with your stories okay so if you're still with me this leads me to my third points fourth point not really sure I think it's a third point and that is snaps the biggest myth of all is that you need perfect slapstick in a carpet you absolutely don't at all so if you are ever thinking of not applying because you don't have a 23 or you don't have a 1550 on your ass or you didn't get all fives and your keys stop 30 bill applied just do it you never know if you're gonna get in scores aren't what get you in but they are a qualifying benchmark so basically as long as you meet the benchmark you're fine each College has a different benchmark and it's usually not unpublished statistic but you can usually figure it out by looking at the 25th and 75th percentiles select the interquartile range for anyone who's like taking shots so for Harvard the 25th and 75th percentiles that's between a 14,000 D and a 1600 SATs for a 21-10 and a 2390 on the old scale so basically as long as your scores are above a fourteen seventy on the new scale and a 21-10 on the old scale you're fine and this can change too it's kind of it changes by here so that is also a t32 and thirty five ATT and round a three point three to 4.0 GPA unweighted so as long as you meet those minimum requirements you shouldn't worry about yourself yeah I actually only took the SAT once because it seemed pointless to take it again when I had already met that benchmark and honestly if you're in the same situation please put your energy into something else if you get an SAT score that is within Harvard's range you don't need to worry about taking SAT if you get rejected I'm not going to be because of your SAT score Harvard looks at so much more than stats your scores are just what they need to look out to see you oh can you handle the level of work but do you meet the minimum requirements and if you do they won't reject you based on that oops it's just a benchmark it's not what gets what this leads me to my next point which is super important believe it or not but many people get in who have very low SAT scores they've got some B's in high school they have pores on their ApS even less I know people who have like twos or threes on their things and they got in like never never let yourself fall into the pattern of thinking that just because you may have messed up in one area or you weren't able to take advantage of something that because of that aspect of your application you're not gonna get in you can make it up in other areas it is so easy to fall into that pattern of thinking quick please don't if you were fine you do not have to be perfect in every area really you just have to find the areas where you shine and then just make sure you take advantage of those make sure that you have your hook make sure you have the thing that makes unique and then kind of sprinkle elements of that in throughout your application so always try your hardest of course but never feel that Harvard is out of your beat just because you might not have scored so well on any exam for instance one of my friends who got it was very stem focused and she did really well in all her stem classes and her AP classes and obviously the math portion of the SAT but when she took AP English she got like before or she might have even thought to read I forgot but she didn't do very well on her AP English exams I think she might have wanted me in the course and then she didn't do so well on the writing portion of the SAT fighter but that didn't matter so much because her story was about her being a woman instead a woman in science and so she didn't meet fives on the AP English exam in order to back her story yeah she did need to get a good score on the math section of her SAT and in her AP chem and ap BIOS APs but she didn't need to ace the English part so of course she tried but that wasn't her strong suit so it didn't take away from her application because that fit with her narrative for me I was the opposite you know I didn't need to get a perfect score on my SATs exam in order to back that up ringless made sure I got thighs because that's that's where I shine and same with the reading and writing scores on the SAT I focused on those areas my math I just had to make sure it was benchmark as long as it was that I was good the reason I say this is because it gives you a little bit of wiggle room in which to focus on the aspects of your application in which you really shine and where your interests lie and instead of trying to squeeze in an extra AP in a subject that you're probably not even good at and don't even like trust me so what number 5 extra extra current that extracurriculars can't even think that way anymore I just say activities I like that out of saying extracurriculars as much as possible because I would stumble through that word anyway but activities for easy OOP okay so these are the fun ones but they can become really stressful when you're trying to get involved in like ten different things and become a president in each of them all of this stuff like stop so you don't have to do that with activities I say go wide he got involved in a variety of things to show that you're not one-dimensional like for me I had the story of me being a writer but I also did marine biology internships every summer because it was actually something I was really interested in and I studied dolphin communication so that was like a go wide I particularly for me go deep is where you choose the ones where you really shine and not swear your interest lies and then you make sure that you're doing as much as you can to get involved in that and if you're interested in it that will come pretty naturally for me that was writing that was getting involved in startups that was starting companies like that was really interesting for me into that's where my go deep was so yeah really choose like one or two extracurriculars to dive in deep and these should definitely back up your hobbies really should be your they should make up the most significant part of your application okay the next essays so many people freak out about essays but use essays to be the most personal that you can beat visions officers are people they want to feel something they want to feel what you've gone through it's your time to speak directly to your admissions officer it's your time to write about really what makes you so passionate about the things you're interested in to explain your background really to write about a significant portion of your life and of your story that you can't really get across other ways in your application so for me that was my really neat background this is my story of like self-directed learning and taking all these constants and having a stick kind of my identity through that and I like really poured my heart into this I say I think I have probably 220 different jobs saved on it I started writing it in the summer and you didn't finish it until the night of the deadline like that I worked on this essay like I poured my life into this essay my English teacher I sent it to her and was like this actually sounds like me is this is this me is this a good reflection of me and she said she's talking to crying because she actually felt what I was going through and not not that that's your goal but like you don't have to have a sob story you can make your thing like your essay funny I remember someone saying to me if you make your admissions officer laugh like you got a urine if you make your admissions officer cry your whole family's in if you can actually take them out of their day to day job meeting thousands of applications you can just take them out of that for a second and actually make them feel that like split second human emotion and connect with them if there's a really good chance than you're getting because they want to feel something they want to they really want to get to know you and I think that's especially true of Harvard admissions officers you know I talked to mine I talked to the Dean of Admissions Fitzsimmons and I learned how they do the process and they they pour everything into it they are so committed to this they really try to get to know you so yeah use your essay to speak directly to the admissions officers and to right about your story really bu and don't don't rely too heavily on other people's opinions I would say get one person to read it who knows you and then get one person to read it who doesn't know you at all and if they both can come away with the essay with the same thing then you've made your point okay so interviews you're not as important as you think so don't worry for harvard specifically it isn't so much the content of your interview that is a factor but whether you interviewed at all so make sure that you are reaching out that if you're on campus you try to get it on campus interview that you are responding quickly to your alumni if they contact you you know that you're taking the initiative to get the interview as long as that happens you're good you don't really have to stress if you're contacted by an alumnus soon you make sure you respond immediately and set up a time to meet like coffee shops are always good or over Skype which was what I did with a couple of them because I wasn't within driving distance as long as there aren't any glaring red flags the fact that you've did the interview is more important than what you actually spoke about in the interview basically so this is how interviews and alumnus will contact you about meeting up or setting up a Skype phone call and then when you do the interview you'll just talk for a little bit your interviewer will probably take some notes because after they have to write up the summary which they then send to the college and they will put it in your folder when the time comes through applications should be reviewed by the entire admissions committee pull it all of your files up on a screen as well as the notes from your interviewer so basically you want your interviewer to advocate on your behalf when writing to Harvard and you want them to back up everything that's in your application especially your hook so make sure you talk about that and what makes you unique because they will come away from the interview with that in mind and they will write it down and then the admissions officers will read it and say wow okay someone else thought this was a really neat person - okay this has got this backs up the story how well you feel in an interview is not a determinant you whether you get in or not trust me play I actually applied to you funny enough and I thought that was the best interview I've ever done and I didn't it and it wasn't because of my interview but you know I've walked away on cloud not and I was like wow this person really got me but in the end it didn't really make that much of a difference so you know my Harvard interview actually was three hours long which was the longest interview I've ever had and I don't think that's necessarily isn't a determinant of whether it's going well or not either because I think my guy was just very slow with writing and he approached it like a conversation so I had some interviews where they just asked questions rapid-fire and then I just like responded and then I had other ones where it was like a lot more like a conversation and we talked about like Harry Potter so they're going to be very different try not to compare them for the Harvard one specifically just make sure you are stressing your hook you're just talking about what makes you unique and then just you know be be personable be a portion base the interview is not going to make or break your application it's just going to back up that's pretty much it for this video I hope this video has given you some hope and inspired you a little bit when I was applying I dreamed that there was a video out there somewhere like this that really explain all the different parts of the application and specifically how to get in and specifically for Harvard to because they didn't have those type of videos it was kind of like this big mix and oh what goes on behind the screen leave comments down below with anything about the college process and Harvard student fee and I would be happy to answer them and finally just remember to breathe everything's gonna be okay don't I know you probably like from your position everything does look okay but honestly after you apply you kind of just get the sense of clarity that you're going to be okay where I'm gonna end up and you know College does not define whether you go to an Ivy League school or you go to Community College it doesn't make you a better person or a lesser person you are yourself you're great you are worthy of everything and college is just one little thing in your life so I hope you get in I'm like rooting for all of you guys and you know if you do maybe I can meet you a visit ah so you can come say hi on campus I would love that please like and share this video if it's been helpful and make sure to subscribe because I'm gonna be posting a lot of Harvard related videos like moving logs and dorm tour and stuff so when I get on campus comment down below video requests too if you want so yeah that's all I have for you guys this video is probably 25 minutes long by now or more so I'm sorry about that thank you for watching all the way through I hope this helps you I love you guys I'm rooting for you I hope you get in so yeah I'll see you in my next video bye [Music] yup fail it's okay you can apply that would be weird because they're their enemies I don't know yuck fail or apply I don't care go to yeah it's good so it's all good here don't worry

Channel: Sienna Santer

Views: 1,983,139

Keywords: how to get into harvard, how i got into harvard, harvard, how to get into stanford, how to get into college, how to get into princeton, how to get into an ivy league school, how to get into harvard 2017, how to get into harvard business school, getting into harvard, how to get into yale, how to get into an ivy league, how to get into ivy league, harvard university, how to, how to get in, harvard college

Id: XUfBTUEi8ck

Length: 18min 24sec (1104 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 11 2018