Financial Aid at Harvard

gadad
Thu, 03 Apr 2008 20:48:55 +0000

I originally hesitated to suggest that D1 apply there because it was (gulp!) Harvard. Surely everyone would be snobby, rich, elitist. Would they wonder what a small-town girl from the South thought she was doing there with “them?” Boy, were my stereotypes off-base. The students I’ve met there (and I’ve met quite a number now) are the most amazing, charming, open, witty, creative, “chill” (to use my Ds’ expression) kids I know. Arrogance is probably rarer there than on most other campuses because the act of enrolling at H is, as one alum told me, the most humbling experience on the planet. Whatever you thought made you a big deal back home is just the norm there. Students do amazing, brilliant, world-class stuff and then act sheepish if you tell them how amazing they are. D1 has a group of friends the like of which she never knew at home. Guys, girls, they hang out together, sing together, cheer and celebrate for one another, have each other’s back. She’s in an a cappella singing group, and it’s like an extended family. A guy asked her out for the first time last month, and a couple guys from the singing group sat down with her and said he’d be great to go out with. They’d checked him out, he was solid, nothing to be concerned about - he had their (unsolicited) vote of approval.

Ten to fifteen years ago, the Harvard Admissions staff came to the conclusion that human genius arises from all kinds of settings - humble as well as privileged - and that H had neglected to claim their share of that talent. So they adopted a new philosophy of actively seeking socio-economic diversity as well as racial and national diversity, that created something far closer to a meritocracy than a culture of privilege. The result is a microcosm of the best of the world’s population. On Freshman Parents Weekend, I watched across the dining hall as a group of young women erupted in laughter, clearly fast friends enjoying each other’s company. One was white, one or two were black, one looked southeast asian, one was wearing a burka. There’s rampant underage drinking as there is on all campuses, but particularly rampant bingeing seems lower because the student body seems pretty intoxicated with the human creative process. Having the vast majority of the applicant pool so near the top means that there’s not any meaningful difference among their academic credentials, so the adcoms then look within the mass of academically qualified for the most interesting, engaging, stunningly accomplished individuals they can find. The result, in my star-struck and admittedly biased opinion, is probably the most intense collection of diverse human brilliance on the planet. The students who live in that environment come to see that brilliance as the norm and aspire to live up to it.

OK, D1 was initially swayed to go there by the H name. But D2 visited D1, stayed overnight a couple times, and went out at night with the freshman dorm floor, the a cappella group, etc. She desperately wanted Harvard, but not for the name - she wanted the chance to have the same kind of peer group.