How to Get Into Harvard as a Science Intellect

Colleges & Universities Harvard University
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<p>This thread would be optimal for middle schoolers, or parents of middle schoolers that want to force Ivy acceptance. If you’re in high school but not yet applying to college, and you’re interested, then try to do as much of this as you can. (Particularly, take up a sport.)</p>

<p>1) You must get a 4.0 in high school, or something very very close. Make sure you get all A’s at all costs! Don’t slack off in a class if someone tells you its easy. Don’t underestimate, don’t be lazy. Just do your best to get all A’s and you will already be ahead of much of the competition. Take as many AP courses as possible, and be at the highest math class possible. You need to show academic rigor.</p>

<p>2) Go to a Hakwon, or an SAT Cram school. Make sure you can consistently get 2300+ on the SAT. Take it at the end of sophomore year, because you need all of junior year to play a perfect endgame.</p>

<p>I find that the general science intellect mold is the easiest way to force your way into top tier schools. The rest of the points deal with this:</p>

<p>3) You must get rid of some SAT II Subject tests in freshman and sophomore year. I suggest that you should take Bio, Chem, Physics, Math 2c, and one humanities (Literature is probably your best bet).</p>

<p>4) Now, you should know that there are 5 major science olympiads that you must EXCEL IN!!!</p>

<p>USA Math Olympiad - [United</a> States of America Mathematical Olympiad - USAMO](<a href=“American Mathematics Competitions | Mathematical Association of America”>American Mathematics Competitions | Mathematical Association of America)
USA Chemistry Olympiad - [Chemistry</a> Olympiad Competition for High School Students](<a href=“American Chemical Society”>American Chemical Society)
USA Physics Olympiad - [U.S&lt;/a&gt;. Physics Team - program and history](<a href=“http://www.aapt.org/physicsteam/program.cfm]U.S”>Program and History - U.S. Physics Team 2010 - AAPT.org)
USA Biology Olympiad - [USA</a> Biology Olympiad (USABO) | Center for Excellence in Education](<a href=“http://www.cee.org/programs/usabo]USA”>http://www.cee.org/programs/usabo)
North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad - [NACLO[/url</a>]</p>

<p>All of these are national competitions. They all also have international counterparts - the international math, chem, physics, bio, and linguistics, olympiads. The US has 4-8 spots for each team. </p>

<p>Seek opportunities to take ALL of these. These are what you study for during the breaks and summers, or when you have free time. I know it seems like a lot, but trust me, if you can get even three of these olympiads, you are more well off than most of your competition.</p>

<p>To study for the USA Math Olympiad:
This requires some background in mathematics. If you’ve done Mathcounts, great. If you haven’t, then its not the end of the world: you can still improve. Start with [url=<a href=“http://www.artofproblemsolving.com%5DArt”>http://www.artofproblemsolving.com]Art</a> of Problem Solving](<a href=“http://www.naclo.cs.cmu.edu/]NACLO[/url”>http://www.naclo.cs.cmu.edu/) Order Art of Problem Solving Volume 1 and 2 and take some classes. Look at practice AMC’s. What you should do is take the AMC 10 freshman year, study well for AIME and make USAJMO. From there you can decide what to do: either pursue a heavy mathematics-supplement to aim for USAMO the year after, or try to make USAJMO again sophomore year and study math later to make it into USAMO. You should also know that there are math trips you should go to like ARML, and some random college-hosted math tournaments.</p>

<p>To study for USA Chemistry Olympiad:
Most of this will come with the taking of the chemistry SAT II subject test and AP Chemistry. Take this whenever your school offers, and make it to nationals. From there, just study past national exams (multiple choice + open ended + lab) and make sure you get in as much lab experience as possible. Then try to make the camp by the end of whatever year you take AP Chemistry (before senior year so you can put it on the Harvard app)</p>

<p>To study for USA Physics Olympiad:
Unfortunately I never made it to the quarterfinalist or semifinalist round so I can’t help you here. But I assume it comes with the taking of AP Physics C / B and a bit of practice with past physics olympiads. </p>

<p>To study for USA Biology Olympiad:
Spend ONE summer devoted to reading the Campbell Textbook, 8th edition. And spend ONE day every break reviewing the material here. It will pay off, as 3 years of being a semifinalist for biology. You might even make camp freshman year. </p>

<p>To study for North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad:
This comes with the studying of mathematics. Many mathematicians do well on it because they have analysis skills. This is probably the easiest to get into the international team. You might even enjoy it. </p>

<p>5) You must play one or more sports at the varsity level, and do it so that you can get MVP and/or captainship. Try rare sports like crew or squash if you can. If you have access to none of these my best advice is to do track, because thats the one sport you can force victory in - through pure training.</p>

<p>6) You must become the captain or president of a MAJOR club. YOU MUST stay away from the small student-run organizations because they aren’t real. Go to the clubs based on national competitions, like math team or JSA.</p>

<p>7) Make sure you are curteous to your teachers so that you get good recommendations.</p>

<p>8) For every summer try to put in either some community service, jobwork, or a paid internship (hopefully in the form of lab research). Try to build up a theme around your summers, or at least recurring trends. It can’t just be all studying for the SAT or an olympiad.</p>

<p>*** For you I’m worried that you are the type that plays computer games. You called yourself an “immature little kid” in the original post. Well, it stops here. No more computer games. They suck up your time. After all, you could be reviewing Campbell, 8th ed. for the biology olympiad!</p>

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<p>This all feels rather artificial.</p>

3

<p>1) It’s important to have a high GPA in high school, especially for non-minorities. Most of Harvard’s class were “in the top 10% of their high school class.”</p>

<p>2) You should take classes to help your score. It won’t hurt.</p>

<p>3) It’s only convenient to take SAT II’s as a freshman. Get them out of the way early so you can study for other more important stuff later. </p>

<p>4) Read the title. It’s for the science track. If you got in through the athletic or humanities track, then bravo to you.</p>

<p>I think many smart and near 4.0 science kids apply every year - perhaps as much as a quarter of the applicant pool attempts to express science as their high school forte.</p>

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<p>From your post in the decisions thread:</p>

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<p>From your first post in this thread:</p>

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<p>@silverturtle: I have answered you in PM.</p>

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<p>This is disgusting.</p>

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<p>See this here is quality satire, because he actually took up the time to look up all this information, down to the textbook name and everything. Props.</p>

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<p>I’m sorry, what’s wrong with this? This is an overachiever’s goldmine. With those stats/accomplishments, you can probably brute-force your way into just about any college in the country (maybe not Harvard though). When the 4.0’s and 2300+'s just aren’t enough!</p>

<p>Oh yeah, that’s right. Schools are for learning. They are not trophies.</p>

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<p>I really hope that this is indeed satire.
To any naive high school underclassmen who may be reading: if you want to get rejected from Harvard, follow instructions from an internet forum when crafting your resume.</p>

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<p>Awesome advice. This is exactly what I did to get into Harvard, except I also won the Intel Talent Search 6 times.</p>

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<p>My daughter got into Harvard and recently graduated with a degree in Physics. She was definitely a science track kid. And in preparing for college she did almost none of the things listed by the OP, certainly no science Olympiad stuff. She did have near 4.0 grades and excellent SAT scores, but there was none of this nonsense about taking the tests as a freshman. Mostly she studied hard for her classes, had fun with her friends, and played her music in various organizations and venues. Her ECs revolved around music. And when the time came Harvard decided they liked what she had to offer. </p>

<p>It never occurred to her to spend her high school years packaging herself for Harvard. In fact she says she never even thought about Harvard at all until she got her SAT scores her junior year, and I pointed out to her that her stats put her in contention for high-end schools if she cared to try.</p>

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<p>^I’m a “science track”, and sadly, a lot of these “must’s” are absolute truths to people I know who want to get into a top university. Some of the pressure also comes from parents.</p>

<p>None of these students got into Harvard, though. A few are going to equally reputed schools like Stanford and Princeton, but it goes on to show that Harvard truly values individuality in its applicants.</p>

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<p>Hey, I think this is all very good advice. It resonates a lot with my high school career and is basically what I pursued. Not only does this help you get into a better college, but also studying for all these exams helps you to be more prepared for college. Also, these are achievements that you can leave on your resume for the rest of your life. I might add, you will also want to pursue independent research in addition to all this brute force academia, such as the Siemens Competition. </p>

<p>I think this type of a track is something an Asian overachiever would try to attempt, which I think is great. This is solid advice, and getting all at least half of these accomplishments will definitely guarantee you in at least one of HYPSM, no doubt. But of utmost importance is that studying for these exams, in particular the USAMO (AOPSV1 and V2) makes you a much smarter person in general.</p>

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<p>There is a lot of hyperbole on both sides of this. Certainly there are math and science concentrators at Harvard that fit a scaled down version of the profile directed by the OPs’ recommendations, but there are also plenty that never competed in any of these contests in high school. My daughter didn’t and she is doing a physics concentration at H.</p>

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<p>I <em>wish</em> I did a lot of these things, actually. But I didn’t know about any of those olympiads until late last year, and actually just learned about the Physics Team and Bio Olympiad (and the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad…) from this thread. Also didn’t know SAT IIs existed until junior year. Took the SAT once June after junior year. Oh well. Still got into Harvard as a biology/chemistry intent. But to be honest, studying for these things would be a good idea, not to get into Harvard, but just because they would enrich your immersion in the sciences so much.</p>

<p>To put my own twist on the satire: Study your ass off for the PSAT. Try to aim for a perfect, so you can get into TASP or RSI (both of which I also found out about after the deadlines passed). These will boost your chances of admission significantly, and you’ll also get a neat semifinalist or higher ranking research project out of RSI for Intel/Siemens. Fringe benefit is you meet a lot of strange people who share your obsessions/interests.</p>

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<p>Interesting.</p>

<p>Well hats off to Science Intellects who can pull this off!</p>

<p>I myself got into Harvard as a total science and math noob, with a very strong Humanities focus. :)</p>

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<p>I wouldn’t suggest taking these tests without AP-level science. Most people don’t finish several AP’s as a frosh or soph. </p>

<p>And most people continue to develop, especially verbally, through junior year. It’s not feasible for most people to take SATI as a freshman or soph and get their best score.</p>

<p>As for the olympiad tests, yeah sure it’ll help, but it’s extremely rare to take all of them. I wouldn’t suggest it unless you just really want to. It’s a better strategy to concentrate on one. </p>

<p>The people that I know that did well on more than one olympiad test did math & physics since those abilities/skills are related.</p>

<p>Nevertheless, the OP’s post probably would make an adcomm member cringe.</p>

<p>Push yourself really hard in class. This will make standardized tests very easy with minimal preparation. And then choose EC’s you enjoy well enough to do well enough and hope for the best.</p>

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<p>doing well on all these tests will help you get into harvard, but that’s just because harvard more generally values doing really well in stuff–whether amazingly in one or two fields, or to a very high level in several. that seems obvious but a lot of people seem not to get this–what you’re good at doesn’t matter as much as the fact that you’re really good (i know someone here who has the guinness world record for crawling some specified distance in the shortest time, others who excelled in intel/siemens/imo/etc., others who published poetry, others who were scholars of the humanities, others who excelled in music, others who excelled in ballet, some who were exceptional leaders, some with very compelling personal stories, etc.) none of the things OP detailed is “necessary” (except perhaps a high gpa, though neither of the kids coming to harvard from my school next year was valedictorian, both were barely top 10%), because there is no list of boxes harvard checks of in determining who gets admitted.</p>

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<p>this is just really messed up… disgusting advice to say the least…</p>

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<p>I think this is great advice although you should only choose your favorite 1 or 2 subjects to give it your all. If you do extremely well in one of them, you’re almost a lock anywhere. If you want to become a science intellect, you HAVE to start early. I don’t think you need to worry about doing sports or owning all those subject tests though unless you want to.</p>