Harvard Admission Rating System

Data10
Wed, 01 Aug 2018 18:44:52 +0000

and this sums it all up - we’re all making assumptions.

While we all know that a “1” in athletics is a recruited athlete, none of us knows what 2-6 means. So, my assumption is that a “2” is a nationally ranked athlete, perhaps in sport that Harvard does not have. So IMO Nathan Chen is a “2.” Therefore, a “2” is still going to be very rare. The vast majority of applicants will be a 3 or below.

While the lawsuit does not spoon feed every detail, it provides enough detail to draw conclusions. It specifies that a “1” indicates a recruited athlete and 5+ indicates “there were special circumstances that caused the applicant to have fewer athletic accomplishments, such as significant family commitments or a physical disability.” Together these groups only compose ~1% of applicants. The other ~99% of applicants receive ratings of 2 to 4, with 2 being best and 4 being worst. The distribution among applicants in the 6-year sample group of nearly 200k applicants was as follows (ignoring +/- modifiers):

2 – 9% of applicants
3 – 51% of applicants
4 – 39% of applicants

The lawsuit also mentions that 33% of applicants said their primary EC was playing a sport. 22% said their primary EC was playing a sport at the varsity level, yet fewer than 10% received a 2 or better in athletic. This indicates that only a minority of applicants whose primary EC was playing a varsity sport in high school get a 2. The vast majority of this HS athlete group instead gets the more common 3 rating. Given that 9% of applicants receive a 2, it also seems unlikely to me that it would require playing at a national level since it seems unlikely to me that 9% of non-recruited athlete applicants would play at a national level. So I’d conclude that 2 requires more than just being on a HS varsity team, but does not require playing at a national level. My guess would be it indicates being likely to make a contribution to Harvard athletics as a walk-on. Walk-ons compose a large portion of many Harvard teams and are a key component of Harvard athletics.

This leaves distinguishing between the 51% of applicants who receive a 3 and 39% of applicants who receive a 4. My guess would be a 4 simply means not listing athletic participation on the application. A large portion of applicants do not list athletic participation on the application, and participating in athletics is by no means a requirement for admission to Harvard.