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Completing the Harvard supplement questions. Complete the Harvard Questions with the Common Application or Coalition Application, Powered by Scoir*. This includes the following five required short-answer questions, each with a 150 word limit. Harvard has long recognized the importance of enrolling a diverse student body.
- First-Year Applicants
SAT or ACT - Harvard requires the submission of standardized...
- Transfer Applicants
The Harvard College Registrar's Office grants credit for...
- U.S. Military Veterans
The first thing you will need to determine is your...
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The Student Accounts Office has an online system that allows...
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- Academics
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- First-Year Applicants
A 4.0 is unattainable without a genius brain or an inhuman devotion to your academics, but a 3.5 is reasonable in the scheme of Harvard GPAs as long as you have decent time management skills. The real challenge of Harvard is balancing academics with the diverse and numerous extracurricular activities available to you.
- What’s Covered
- FAQs About Applying to Harvard
- How Hard Is It to Get Into Harvard?
- Average Academic Profile of Accepted Harvard Students
- What Is Harvard Looking for?
- How to Improve Your Chances of Getting Into Harvard
- How to Apply to Harvard
- How to Calculate Your Chances of Acceptance at Harvard
What is Harvard’s acceptance rate?
Harvard’s acceptance rate for the Class of 2027 was 3.5%. The early action acceptance rate was 7.6%.
What GPA and SAT/ACT score do you need for Harvard?
As of the 2024-2025 applications cycle, Harvard will once again be requiring all applicants to submit either an SAT or ACT score. Harvard has been test-optional for several years, so the most recent testing data available may not perfectly translate to the coming application cycle, but recently the middle 50% of accepted students had an SAT score between 1490-1580, or an ACT score between 34-36.
What kind of students does Harvard look for?
The college isn’t looking for one specific “type” of student. They simply want students who have proven to be successful in what they do, as they’re likely to be successful in the future, and their achievements will reflect well on the school. Harvard also emphasizes a dedication to improving society, as they state in theirmission: “we hope that students will begin to fashion their lives by gaining a sense of what they want to do with their gifts and talents, assessing their values and intere...
Harvard is traditionally among the nation’s most challenging colleges to gain admission to, and it’s only getting more difficult. In 2023, Harvard welcomed just 1,965 students out of the 56,937 who applied, for an acceptance rate of just 3.5%. Of the almost 60,000 applicants for Harvard’s Class of 2027, 9,544 of them applied early action; of those,...
This data is fromHarvard’s 2023-2024 Common Data Set, which is the most recent available, and it refers to the admitted Class of 2027.
At top-tier schools like Harvard, almost every applicant has an outstanding academic record, so great grades and superb standardized test scores are not enough to wow admissions officers. What can help you stand out from other applicants is aligning with their institutional values beyond simply intelligence. For example, Harvard values students who...
1. Earn a 4.0, while taking the most challenging classes available
Almost three-quarters of students accepted to Harvard during the most recent admissions cycle had a 4.0. The best way to improve your chances of acceptance is to have extremely strong academic credentials—while completing the most challenging coursework available. At top-tier schools like Harvard, you want to show you’re ready to thrive in a rigorous academic environment, and standard-level courses alone won’t demonstrate that. Selective schools like Harvard use theAcademic Index (AI)to weed...
2. Aim for a 1580 SAT and 36 ACT
The middle 50% of Harvard’s Class of 2027 earned SAT scores of 1490-1580 and ACT scores of 34-36. Any score in the middle 50% is good, but of course, the higher in the range you score, the better your odds of admission are. Harvard does not officially superscore standardized test scores, but does evaluate the highest test scores in each section across test dates. So, they see and consider all test results, including your highest, but pay attention to the low scores as well. If you took the SA...
3. Cultivate at least one or two Tier 1-2 extracurriculars
For selective institutions like Harvard,extracurricular activities can play a large role in admission decisions. Up to 25% of an admissions decision can be determined by a student’s activities outside of the classroom, as admissions officers want to see that you’ll contribute to their institution in a range of ways. While it’s true that there is no such thing as a bad extracurricular activity, some extracurricular activities are more impressive than others. Admissions officers evaluateextracu...
Application Requirements
Harvard accepts both theCommon Applicationand theCoalition Application, and requires the personal statement regardless of which platform you use. Other requirements include: 1. Harvard’s supplemental essays 2. SAT or ACT 3. Any AP, IB, or other scores from standardized exams you have taken (optional) 4. Two letters of recommendation from teachers 5. A school report and letter of recommendation from your counselor 6. High school transcript 7. A midyear report
Because no one factor will guarantee you acceptance to a school as selective as Harvard on its own, your head may be spinning as you try to figure out how all the different pieces of your application will be weighed.
This article is a guide to admissions to the top schools in the country. To be explicit, I include in this the most selective schools in the Ivy League (consisting of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia) as well as Stanford, MIT, Duke, and Caltech. Generally speaking, these are the top 10 schools according to ...
- If there’s one central takeaway from this article, it’s that most students are spending their time on entirely the wrong things because they have a...
- To fully understand my points below on how to get into Yale and similar schools, we need to first start at the highest level: what do top schools h...
- Let’s cut to the chase. Schools are looking for two main qualities in applicants: 1. Students who are going to accomplish world-changing things. 1....
- You might've often heard that school admissions for the Ivy League and other top schools is "just a crapshoot." Or perhaps you've heard a different...
- Remember my biggest piece of advice: forget well rounded. What you’re looking to develop is a huge spike.Let me repeat what I said earlier. That sp...
- I know all of this is overwhelming. These applicants have accomplished so much that it seems like only something you read about in the news, not so...
- By this point, I hope my main points are clear. To bring it all together with step-by-step logic, here is the high-level overview of what I've talk...
- At this point if you’ve been reading carefully and thinking critically, you probably have a bunch of questions. I’ll answer the most likely ones he...
The ACT (American College Testing) is a standardized test for high school achievement and college admissions in the United States. The ACT score indicates how hard it is to get into a univeristy and can also indicate the level of educational requirements. Source: university's official statistics, 2024. + Show more +.
Aug 4, 2024 · How do you realistically get into Harvard? It’s no secret that to realistically get into Harvard will require determination and a lot of hard work. What many students are asking with this question is what’s the “hack” that guarantees entry. Essentially, they’re asking if they just do X, Y and/or Z they’re all but assured acceptance.
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Aug 21, 2024 · How Hard Is It to Get into Harvard: Early Prep. Most students understand that it’s going to take a significant amount of hard work to gain admission into Harvard, starting from ninth grade. In fact, Harvard’s admission rates — among the lowest in the country — reflect how competitive it is. Class of 2025: 3.43%. Class of 2026: 3.19%.
