Customer Reviews

How They Got into Harvard: 50 Successful Applicants Share 8 Key Strategies for Getting into the College of Your Choice

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This book is filled with very remarkable biographies of fifty successful applicants and what they thought got them into Harvard. However, there is nothing brilliantly original about their strategies; the students followed standard procedures such as good essay writing skills, extracurricular activites, the norm. "How They Got Into Harvard" makes for a good read, but there is no real emotion in it.

I normally am annoyed when people use the word 'elite' to describe the Ivy League. But this book makes it seem like everyone has to win an international competition or have a parent who writes for the NYT about education (as one person did), to get in. Many people interviewed in the book are from prominent families with parents Ivy League educated themselves. Unless your one of these people, and even if you are, this book is probably not for you. They need to write a book for everyday people with advice, not just information.

Very informative and helpful guide for parents and students in planning for college. I have bought several copies to share with friends and relatives in Europe who have kids who plan to attend college in the US. However, AMAZON did not allow me to purchase more than three copies for my first order but, was allowed after the second order.

This book is very helpful in applying to Harvard. It helps to dispell the myths that all Harvard students are inhumanly brilliant and shows the variety of students that Harvard admits. I would suggest that any student considering applying to Harvard or similar institutions should read this book, or at least take it out from the local library and browse through a few of the profiles.

This title is well structured and packaged in layout to attract potential applicants of Harvard and the other Ivy League schools. However, precisely because of its narrow focus, it lacks the substance about the core reason behind college application -- the pursuit of a good education where teachers and students share the space of knowledge making and devotion to the promotion of the knowledge which drives the growth and development of any society. This is particularly evident in the depth of each interview, the unit of the argument for the 8 strategies identified by the Crimson staff, as they claimed. A simple word count, the number of pieces of information "packed" under one heading and the absent of insightful analyses support the observation. The selection of interviewees poses a major question of concern: Exactly what is the mission of the project? Even though one is provided in the front of the work, but the information contained makes one wonder why this book was conceived at all if not for the sole purpose of self fulfillment only. It is obvious that all students at Harvard were once successful college applicants, but then why the 50 profiled and not the others? The explanation given in the mission statement is simply too feeble. It appears as though the book is yet another window-dressing of the chosen ones rather than a comprehensive look at the admissions process at Harvard.

The student writers claimed that their "goal [was] to show how students used tried and true strategies to get themselves noticed and show off their individual talents," But as another reviewer noted, and I echo, that there need not be a classification of 8 categories of successful applicants. The main "sales pitch" of the book is only a gimmick -- solid academic records, high standards of personal development outside of school and good essay writing are the basics of what it takes to succeed in anything in life after school and especially in the context of college application. This is common knowledge to all of us who are still studying in college/university. In other words, another format focusing on the reader rather than the presenters can make a world of difference and render the book truly helpful, if not educational. If another similar project is to be prepared, then the focus should be on analyses of interviews and the potential application of such results and not the presentation of raw application information only. The reader simply is expected to do too much work to gleaned relevant information for his/her own knowledge.

Originally I purchased the product with the intent to gain access to what some accomplished students such as the ones who possess the "right" application materials to "get into Harvard" do in their lives, which sounded worthy of the time and investment at the time of acquiring the work based on the nature of the book and the standard content expected of such a project. However, it turned out to be a disappointment and a waste of resources, whether it be mine or the ones involved in the publication process. Another manifestation of excessive materialism and social degradation it seems.