Harvard Rating Scale- Do I have a chance at Harvard?Answered
Hi!
So I recently saw Harvard admission's rating scale and I tried to place myself into the four different categories, based on my ratings, do I have a chance at Harvard? Thanks! (My current CV chance is 22%) (no hook or anything)
Academics- 1520 SAT, 3.9 UW GPA, IB Diploma Program (I think im a 2 but idk)
EC's- National-level achievement in two ec's, international-level achievement in two, two international-level awards, four national-level awards (I think i am somewhere between 1 and 2, maybe closer to 1?)
Athletics- 4, I play no sports aside from tennis recreationally
Personality- Somewhere between 2 and 4, depending on how good my essays are, I think I can maybe pull of a 2, but def not a 1 on Harvard's ranking scale
Thanks so much!
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4 answers
Hi @dev8!
On first glance, it looks like you have a competitive profile. You have excellent grades, test scores, and very strong extracurriculars.
However, I'd like to note that we generally don't accept "chance-me" questions (Rule #3). We instead recommend using our Chancing Engine, which is much better suited to this sort of task. You can find our Chancing Engine in the side bar or through this link:
https://www.collegevine.com/admissions-calculator
With that in mind, I'd like to address one last thing. I understand the appeal of converting your profile to Harvard's ranking scale, but we do not recommend that. Everything we know about that system comes from a 2018 lawsuit (where the rankings were challenged as arbitrary), so the rankings themselves could easily be out of date. Moreover, the underlying data behind these scores was never fully revealed. Trying to convert your profile to this ranking system would be, at best, poor use of time, and at worst very misleading.
I would instead take our general advice for Harvard (or any other school): check your grades, test scores, and extracurriculars against admitted students. The first two should be pretty easy. But for extracurriculars, you'll want at least one or two Tier 1 activities for Harvard (which it looks like you have). You can find more information on all that here: https://blog.collegevine.com/what-does-it-really-take-to-get-into-harvard/
Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any more questions.
I disagree with your self assessment because you are basing your scores on CV profile tiers which have little to do with Harvard specifically. CV tiers are for all college chancing and are not as rigorous as the Harvard Scale.
1. Academics you would be a 2-,3+ because the scale they used from the Harvard Lawsuit case is now 4-5 years old. From the '20-'21 CDS your 1520 does put you in square in the middle SAT range but 76% of admits has a perfect UWGPA of 4.0/4.0. I don't know if you would get a 2 or 3 based on your intellectual vitality/curiosity endeavors or course rigor.
2. National level or Tier 1 achievement on CollegeVine is not the same thing as Harvards scale of 1 through 5. It's CollegeVine's proprietary scale that is used across all the colleges, not Harvard's scale used for Harvard. To get a 1 on the Havard EC, honors, award, talent scale, you will have to be US Presidential Scholar, Nobel Peace Prize Nominee, or Conduct the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. 1% of Harvard admit has a score of 1 which is 20 people max. Here you most likely a 2-,3+
3. 4 in Athletics, probably.
4. Personal Character is not only inferred from your essays but your personal alumni interview scores, and from them validating your impact and contribution to your school and community and greater good of the world. Your 3 avg score is probably in the ball park. Your Parkland HS survivors who went on a National tour to promote gun control are your 1 and 1-s. 3 of them now attend Harvard.
There are certainly admits to Harvard that get in with a 3+ but those are most applicants who are ALDCs or Hook applicants.
Hey, you got downvoted because one of the guidelines of CollegeVine is not asking "chance-me" questions, says it right next to your post. All I will say is if you want to go there, you should apply.
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I read the Amicus Brief for the current Supreme Court docket for the Harvard lawsuit and the class suit attorneys stated that the Race criteria is arbitrary. I don't see anything in the suit about anything else being arbitrary. In the 2018 lawsuit, the judge ruled in Harvard's favor regardless if the rankings were challenged. So why would an outdated table of ranking criteria serve no purpose? Clearly Harvard still uses most of it as score card template. Maybe the academic index is harder now.