Harvard Rejects 91% Of Student Applications

I opened my Friday newspaper and was reminded again that
life is full of rejection.

Take Harvard University for example. No less than 22,955
eager applicants applied for admission to Harvard this fall
and only 2,058, or 9%, were accepted. A whopping 20,897
applicants came up short of admission.

Actually, Harvard University calls its undergraduate school
Harvard College. Nonetheless, all who were admitted are
certainly among the chosen few.

According to the Bloomberg News, students fared a little
better at Brown University, which admitted 14% of its
applicants, and the University of Pennsylvania, which
admitted 15%.

The article said that "Harvard's undergraduate tuition,
room and board and other mandatory fees will rise to
$45,620 and financial aid will increase to the highest in
the school's history, $103 million. About 26% of the
incoming class is eligible to attend free of charge or at a
reduced rate."

Students from households making less than $60,000 annually
can attend free, and students from families below $80,000
can get a reduced rate.

According to the Harvard University Gazette Online, just
over half of the incoming class are women (50.5%), and
records were set for minorities, including African
Americans (11% rounded), Asian Americans (20%), Latinos
(10%) and Native Americans (2%). Students from 79 countries
are represented in the Class of 2011.

All of those statistics are good news if you were admitted.
Here are some interesting facts about some of those who
were not admitted:

1) Harvard admitted 2,058 students and nearly 2,500 of the
applicants scored a perfect 800 on their SAT verbal test,
almost 3,200 applicants scored a perfect 800 on their SAT
math test, and more than 3,000 applicants were ranked first
in their high school class.

2) If every student that scored 800 on his or her SAT
verbal or math test and there were no duplicates, then more
than 3,600 students did not get admitted. At least 900 of
those students graduating No. 1 in their high school class
also missed out.

It is a good thing I did not have my heart set on a Harvard
education.

I never took a SAT to get into Michigan State University. I
did not need to take a foreign language, trigonometry,
calculus, statistics and probability, algebra, physics or
chemistry to graduate from high school, and I did not take
those courses, but I did graduate.

To all of the rejects of the world, I have some good news:
you can make it in the game of life anyway.

A Harvard education might open more doors to success on the
job, and you may or may not feel better about yourself,
after all, the competition at Harvard looks pretty stiff.

I got into Michigan State because if you lined all of the
incoming Class of 1966 at Harvard for a middle distance
race and fired a gun, I would have been first across the
finish line. So there you have it, talents differ.

While the tree was talking big to a squirrel about how
unimpressive he was, the squirrel replied that maybe he was
not as big and strong as the tree, but neither could the
tree crack a nut.

Here are three facts about Harvard that impress me and I
believe them to be true:

1) Harvard is recognized as the oldest institution of
higher learning in the United States. Harvard was founded
in 1636 and celebrates its 371st anniversary this year.

2 Harvard was the first organization in the country to
become a legal corporation. This fact really surprised me
because I thought it would have been a business, not an
educational institution.

3) Harvard has an endowment of $29+ billion (not million,
billion). That is a lot of cash invested that allows it to
help a lot of students who would not otherwise attend
Harvard even though they might qualify.

I graduated from Michigan State University 41 years ago
this June. Had I paid for my college education it would
have cost me approximately $12,000, and I graduated without
any student loans.

The cost of an education for the Class of 2011 at Harvard
will be more than $182,000. Someone will pay that cost. I
sure am glad it is not going to be me.


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Ed Bagley is the Author of Ed Bagley's Blog, which he
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