I Didn’t Deserve To Be Admitted To Harvard

Did I deserve my acceptance to Harvard?

This question immediately inspires philosophical inquiries into the nature of desert and merit. But even if we decide on that, we’re still left with the practical concerns: Can Harvard’s admissions office actually determine who deserves an acceptance letter? Probably not.

Consider the following: Last month, the College banned its alumni interviewers from including in their evaluations information that applicants share about their race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion. To be clear, this change is for the worse. Not including how students describe themselves in their own words defeats the point of an interview. What was once an avenue to promote holistic admissions and diversity will now limit them.

But this change underscores the deeper problem with admissions: Even though essentially all criteria are beyond students’ control, some are selectively treated like merits, making admitted students feel like acceptance was owed — rather than gifted — to them.

Interviews are the most egregious example because they treat students’ personalities as a meritocratic qualification. In effect, students are told that they deserve admittance, not merely because of their efforts (assuming that is a merit), but because of the very person they are, endogenizing vibes into admissions.

One might not reject this “vibe check” at face value, but there’s good reason to believe that interviews are fundamentally unfair. They inherently favor students with interviewing experience. They’re susceptible to implicit cultural bias. Some Harvard applicants may not even receive an interview if there aren’t alumni available in the area, but students at elite high schools are reportedly interviewed directly at their schools.

In fact, almost everything a student is assessed on — their academic performance, extracurriculars, and letters of recommendation from teachers and counselors — is dependent on what school they attend.

The proof is in the pudding. Students who are uber-wealthy or attend a private school routinely receive higher non-academic ratings, and they’re literally twice as likely to be admitted to elite colleges, even when controlling for test scores.

This discrepancy hardly seems meritocratic, but it belies the fact that there is no such thing as pure meritocracy. A student’s socioeconomic background, family circumstances, and quality of school attended — all factors almost wholly out of one’s control — bear heavily on admissions chances. We should recognize that admissions is not — and can never be — entirely fair, objective, or meritocratic (if we can even definitively define these words).

One might contend, nonetheless, that merit exists and students can deserve their acceptances. Even if that’s true, the practical question is whether the College can actually identify and admit all deserving students. I think not.

About 50,000 students apply to Harvard each year. Even if we assume that only one-tenth of them meet the requirements for admission, that would still mean most qualified students are rejected. Acceptance is effectively a coin toss.

That would be no surprise. There are perennial stories of exceptional students being denied admission. Thousands apply to Harvard with perfect GPAs and SAT scores. Can we really believe we are categorically superior to all these students?

Harvard has led us to believe so. Interviews and the rest of admissions implicitly tell us that we are uniquely special and deserving, instead of reminding us that our acceptance was a gift that we should repay to the world.

I readily acknowledge that there is not necessarily a better alternative to decide admissions. We must fall somewhere along the axis of meritocracy-to-holism. But regardless of how we admit students, to believe that I personally earned my matriculation is myopic.

We must appreciate the contingencies of admissions. What high school we attend, how supportive our families are, and what Harvard’s admission officers are looking for in any given year are out of our control.

I say all of this in hopes that we Harvard students will feel not less agential, but more altruistic. Once we decide whether our admission was the product of our personal merits, we can question what our rights, responsibilities, and relationships to the College are.

If students believe that they alone earned their admissions, they may understandably feel entitled to grades that recognize their greatness, rather than grades that push them further. After they graduate, they may seek to reward themselves by selling out to a high-paying job. This seems to be our present case.

However, if my acceptance was the product of societal happenstance, then I have a responsibility to society. As I see it, my spot at Harvard does not belong to me, but to the greater good.

In short, admission to Harvard is like a winning lottery ticket. The question is, are you going to splurge on yourself or donate to charity? No one can tell you the right choice, but each of us must answer that question eventually.

Matthew R. Tobin ’27, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a double concentrator in Social Studies and Economics in Winthrop House.