Held at Harvard

Well you guys are always asking me for updates, and here it is: Got my "Hold" letter from Harvard.

They basically say: "We are waiting to make a decision on your file until we have had a chance to compare you to a greater percentage of the total applicants," and the deadline for the rest of the applications is the beginning of February.

There is a new Director of Admissions this year, and it appears (compared to years past) that he is putting basically all of the non-"auto-admits" on Hold, and has said on his blog that "the vast majority of offers of admission will be made in the future," however it's hard to not feel like this is, as it was in years past, a fast track to the waitlist.

In any case, I can't stress about it, but I do feel a but puzzled by what to do next. From what I understand (I have not read the letter myself), its recommended that you send in supplemental materials, updated transcripts, and a "why Harvard?" statement.

My problem is that my application was already so full of supplements, including a "Harvard: A Perfect Fit" essay, that I don't even know what to send them. I don't think sending an updated AUC transcript where my GPA went from 3.94 to 3.97 will be particularly relevant, and I'm not sure who would write me a more glowing rec letter than the ones I already have.

I understand that there are some applications that are basically a GPA, an LSAT, an irrelevant personal statement, some uninsightful rec letters, and a resume, and that HLS and other ad coms don't have a clear idea, after reading such aps, who the student really is. That is not the case with my application. Whoever reads my application actually knows (perhaps sadly? lol) more about me than almost all of the readers of this blog, and I just don't know how to supplement something that really was complete.

As I've expressed to Pookie via email, part of what bothers me about this is that I feel like it still represents the consequences of some really poor decision making and unfortunate and sustained weakness in my last semester at Columbia, and I'm just so tired of there being so many consequences to that. It will ALWAYS have an impact on what I think of a lot of things -- how I relate to people, the Hamptons, how I feel when I hear Russian...just SO many things...and I wish it didn't also enter into this. The fact is, though, that my GPA dropped from 3.86 (autoadmit range) to 3.74 (below the median) in the space of ONE disastrous semester, and while the consequences on my GPA are the least important of all in terms of what that whole "moment" in my life means, it matters a lot (A LOT) for law school.

Yes, I'm going to go to a Top 5 law school, and yes I wanted to be in NYC for a ton of reasons, but (as I've also recently said to Pookie, so forgive me for repeating myself), I want my choice to go back to NYC to be because I've balanced a lot of factors in my head and made a positive decision to engage NYC again, not a decision made by default because I had no other option.

For the record, when I get out-right rejected from Stanford and Yale, I'm not going to bitch about it, because I totally expect that. I did NOT expect this.

And Mommy Wong, can you please stop throwing in "and when you get into Harvard and Stanford and Yale..." into your emails to me. It's not going to happen, and that's ok, but I'd rather YOU be happy with reality than happy with an unrealistic distortion of it. Not *everyone* in our family can dance, not *everyone* in our family takes great photos, and I am not getting into HYS.

For a bit of levity, here is one of the photos I mentioned before that I saved in order to use when I get bad news from law schools. This is a photo of the steps leading up to a Harvard classroom. Could it look any more ominous? No wonder people at Harvard are unhappy...




















VC