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30,489 Apply for 2,110 Spots at Harvard = 6.9%

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silverpig said:
A friend of mine is trying to get into med school right now. He did engineering physics for his undergrad, so his grades are depressed compared to the bio majors he's competing with. He did well on the MCAT but is having a really tough go at med school applications.
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A simple bio major isn't going to get you into a top med school. You need 2-3 majors, usually, to stand a chance. plus publications, real research experience, etc.

trying to get in with "Pre med" is just a big joke. I'm surprised Universities still offer that major...lol.
 
silverpig said:
A friend of mine is trying to get into med school right now. He did engineering physics for his undergrad, so his grades are depressed compared to the bio majors he's competing with. He did well on the MCAT but is having a really tough go at med school applications.
Click to expand...

That why you basically need to pick the easiest major possible to met the requirements for acceptance.That also means you have worse doctors then what would have otherwise been possible. There is nothing wrong with accepting people only to kick them out if they do bad relative to what the university wants.
However doing that last method kills school rankings, which most universities don't like doing...
 
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zinfamous said:
A simple bio major isn't going to get you into a top med school. You need 2-3 majors, usually, to stand a chance. plus publications, real research experience, etc.

trying to get in with "Pre med" is just a big joke. I'm surprised Universities still offer that major...lol.
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He doesn't care about a top med school. He's applying to a bunch of schools in Canada. He just wants to be a good doctor, not some all star.
 
zinfamous said:
Harvard is damn good about helping you out if you get in (undergrad). Their endowment is ridiculous: neighborhood of 30 billion (dropped a lot with the economy). I think a larger percentage of undergrads at Harvard than anywhere else get full rides.

...I suppose it helps to have money to get in, but you generally don't need it to attend.
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A guy I knew went to Harvard for his undergrad. He apparently graduated top of his class in biochem or whatever his pre-med was, and came to my school for med school.

He said that his first year cost his parents over $100k. That was tuition, books, living expenses, food, airfare, etc.

He got top-notch grades and got scholarships the next three years which gave him a free ride plus compensated him for the first year's outlay.
 
I wonder if it's gotten harder to get in to Harvard, or that there's more people with unrealistic goals applying.
 
Tsavo said:
I wonder if it's gotten harder to get in to Harvard, or that there's more people with unrealistic goals applying.
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Honestly that doesn't sound that bad to me. Odds are the some portion of those applying, perhaps not a small portion, don't have a chance and are just wishing. So let's say that raises the percentage to at least 10-15%. That doesn't sounds that crazy for one of the better universities in the world.
 
silverpig said:
A guy I knew went to Harvard for his undergrad. He apparently graduated top of his class in biochem or whatever his pre-med was, and came to my school for med school.

He said that his first year cost his parents over $100k. That was tuition, books, living expenses, food, airfare, etc.

He got top-notch grades and got scholarships the next three years which gave him a free ride plus compensated him for the first year's outlay.
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Yeah, The Harvard grads that I've met don't seem to have paid anything for undergrad. None of them seemed to have come from lower middle class, either.

I seem to recall that every student gets at least some sort of compensation.
 
moshquerade said:
numbers.gif
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That's a terrible graph.
 
zinfamous said:
Yeah, The Harvard grads that I've met don't seem to have paid anything for undergrad. None of them seemed to have come from lower middle class, either.

I seem to recall that every student gets at least some sort of compensation.
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Harvard doesn't offer merit scholarships, so they'd have either gotten scholarships for some other reason or from some other source.

Your recollection that "every student gets at least some sort of compensation" could refer to one of two things -
1. Harvard has a massive endowment and gets a ton of donations that they use to cover a portion of the cost of running the school, so every student benefits from that. The same could be said of pretty much any college - you're never covering the full cost.
2. 100% of every student's financial need is met. Financial need is determined by the government, and it can be met with loans or grants.

* I believe the information in this post was accurate when I was applying to colleges, and it's probably still accurate.
 
TruePaige said:
If you don't make the grades why should you get treated like you did?
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Affirmative action doesn't mean YOU GOT A B BUT YOU"RE GETTING IN OVER EVERYONE ELSE WHO HAVE A's CAUSE YOU"RE BLACK.

Affirmative action means that if you have 2 qualified applicants who are roughly equal in ability, you may choose to accept one over the other on the basis of race
 
tenshodo13 said:
Affirmative action doesn't mean YOU GOT A B BUT YOU"RE GETTING IN OVER EVERYONE ELSE WHO HAVE A's CAUSE YOU"RE BLACK.

Affirmative action means that if you have 2 qualified applicants who are roughly equal in ability, you may choose to accept one over the other on the basis of race
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Roughly equal is not equal.

4.0 vs 3.6 the 3.6 shouldn't have a chance.

Judge people on their merits, not their race. Anything else is racism.

Remember seperate but equal? It's bad in a similar way to way AA is bad.
 
TruePaige said:
Roughly equal is not equal.

4.0 vs 3.6 the 3.6 shouldn't have a chance.

Judge people on their merits, not their race. Anything else is racism.

Remember seperate but equal? It's bad in a similar way to way AA is bad.
Click to expand...

Colleges don't go strictly by the numbers even when comparing two people of the same race.
 
tenshodo13 said:
Affirmative action doesn't mean YOU GOT A B BUT YOU"RE GETTING IN OVER EVERYONE ELSE WHO HAVE A's CAUSE YOU"RE BLACK.

Affirmative action means that if you have 2 qualified applicants who are roughly equal in ability, you may choose to accept one over the other on the basis of race
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Certainly, but the B individual will be compared to other B individuals. The Black B individual gets a foot up over the Asian who gets a B. So while the Asian gets thrown out, maybe the Black guy has a chance.

The point is you get a foot up, and hypothetically, if all the other B students of the non minority races get thrown out, the black guy remains, then it's like he's competing with the A students. So maybe you don't get in over other A students, but you're more competitive with them. Perhaps Affirmative Action helps so much that you could get in over some A students. Who knows? Effectively it's like saying you get a handicap of a +200 SAT score for example. How much of a handicap you get, I do not know. You would have to ask the admissions board.
 
DLeRium said:
Certainly, but the B individual will be compared to other B individuals. The Black B individual gets a foot up over the Asian who gets a B. So while the Asian gets thrown out, maybe the Black guy has a chance.

The point is you get a foot up, and hypothetically, if all the other B students of the non minority races get thrown out, the black guy remains, then it's like he's competing with the A students. So maybe you don't get in over other A students, but you're more competitive with them. Perhaps Affirmative Action helps so much that you could get in over some A students. Who knows? Effectively it's like saying you get a handicap of a +200 SAT score for example. How much of a handicap you get, I do not know. You would have to ask the admissions board.
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But you're characterizing it wrong. Its just a weird line of logic that makes assumptions that just aren't there. You keep putting Aff Action on a pedestal. The two people compared for acceptance essentially have an equal chance of getting in. Roughly equal means that they both have similar GPA's, extracurricular, etc etc or difference GPA"s and extracurriculars, but the sum of them combined is roughly equal. Its impossible to make exact comparisons in an admissions process.
Thats why the comparison between a 4.0 gpa vs a 3.6 is idiotic. Its quite possible the 4.0 GPA has done nothing in the way of extracurricular, while the 3.6 has put in 20 hours of community service a week and does all manners of sports.

Aff action literally is, if you have 2 roughly equal applicants, and if you had to submit a report saying why you chose one over another, you can say because he was a minority. There are a million reasons why you can reject one applicant over another even though they had roughly the same ability. This is just another one of those reasons,
 
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