My dad is a Harvard alumnus and my sister is a current undergraduate there. We don’t donate a ton but my dad is involved with the alumni network (admissions interviews) and the various clubs he was involved in back in the day. FWIW my sister is excelling there. Still deciding if I should REA or not. Lmk
Here’s a bit about me:
35 ACT
4.4/3.93 GPA
Top 10% of class ( my school does not publish class rank though)
Now for some activities!
Editor-in-Chief of our nationally recognized school newspaper
Student body VP
Legal research intern with NYU Law professor
Retail job for two years
Ran three blood drives with american red cross
Did a voter registration drive at my school
President of Sports Broadcasting Club
President of Jewish Students’ Association
Retreat leader
Awards:
National Merit Commended Scholar
AP Scholar w/ Distinction
First place in national scholastic newspaper competition
Summa cum laude
Let me know what you think. Or don’t. Have a great day
REA makes good sense to me, assuming H is your top choice. You have an interesting blend of activities, seem community-minded. Overall, I think the admission odds are in your favor. Also, thank you for running voter registration and blood drives.
Is Harvard your current top choice? Are you confident you can write your best possible application by the REA deadline?
If so, there is usually little downside to giving it a shot. The restrictions largely amount to not being able to apply binding to any other college–but that is not much of a downside if Harvard is your top choice since why would you risk binding yourself to some other college?–and not being able to apply EA to other US privates, but lots don’t even have EA and it isn’t likely much benefit if they do.
Of course as you may know, Harvard defers a lot of its REA applicants, even some it later accepts in RD. So you need to be prepared for that.
But I would say there is at least some substantial chance they will admit you. In which case you can either be done, or at least dramatically cut back your list. Assuming Harvard is indeed your top choice.
Of course if Harvard is NOT your top choice, you should perhaps be looking at other early options. But there are actually circumstances in which it would make sense to REA at Harvard anyway.
Like, suppose you are simply not sure what school will end up your top choice, or you are interested in seeing merit/honors offers, or so on. In cases like that, you may not want to apply binding anywhere. And then if getting into Harvard would at least help you shorten your list, it still could be worth taking a shot.