<p>JHS wrote:
“Some can’t-miss candidates do apply everywhere, and I can be critical of that. Two classmates of my daughter’s applied to seven or eight other colleges AFTER having been accepted early at Harvard. Ostensibly, it was supposed to be a way to get more financial aid out of Harvard, but it didn’t work.”</p>
<p>Well, you “can” be critical, but it doesn’t mean that you are right. My son kept his other options open after being accepted EA to Harvard (class of 2011) because he wasn’t really sure that he wanted to go to Harvard. Yes, it was a very nice Christmas when he knew he had somewhere to go, but he spent most of April deciding if he wanted to go to a large school famous for not coddling its students or perhaps going to Dartmouth or Williams, which he liked very much. In the end, he (and his adviser and some friends already at Harvard) told him that he would basically hit the ceiling at the smaller schools, and that his research abilities in physics at Harvard would never run out. I was really on the fence about it (I went to a small school), but Harvard WAS the right choice in the end. His good friend and valedictorian of our high school) knew from the start that she wanted to go to Harvard (legacy on one side), accepted on December 18th, took her college senior year off, and really questions whether it was the right place for her. She’s going back in September, but is living off-campus, and never had any house pride at all (unlike my son).</p>
<p>People sometimes change their minds over their senior year, and just because the mention of Harvard starts bells ringing and choirs singing doesn’t mean that Harvard is the best place for everyone. Maybe the people you are speaking of were “being jerks to their classmates”, but that wasn’t so for my son (or my daughter’s good friend who got in EVERYWHERE, but decided to go to MIT and not Harvard in the end).</p>