<p>I’m sure a thread like this has been made, but I’m just very curious.</p>
<p>What do you think was the deciding factor in your acceptance to Harvard? What were your stats, and what kind of things did you do?</p>
<p>I’m not looking for a guide to how to get in, I just would like to see the kind of people who are attending Harvard.</p>
<p>My son decided not to attend Harvard, but he was accepted last year. He had stellar stats, was in the top 2% of his class and was a legacy, but I believe what pushed him into the accept pile was the fact that he had taught himself enough computer science to take the Comp Sci AP AB as a freshman get a 5 and then went on to do a number of other interesting things in computer science. These included participating in two research projects (one in biology, one in chemsitry) that resulted in being acknowledged in a couple of published papers, working for a computer software company which included projects for the World Health Organization and the Oxford Dictionary and also had time to play around and become lead programmer on the most popular mod for Civilization 4. Harvard is looking to do a major expansion in it’s engineering department and I think they hoped he’d contribute.</p>
<p>if you don’t mind my asking, where did your son matriculate?</p>
<p>He went to Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science and so far has no regrets.</p>
<p>Hmm sounds like some pretty heavy competition, haha.</p>
<p>Anyone focusing on life sciences? Anything would be great, but I’ll be majoring in life sciences (neurobiology).</p>
<p>anyone else?</p>