Harvard Admissions Values Identity Over Ideas

On her Harvard application, my roommate discussed the linguistic theory of Whorfianism in descriptions of the color blue in Homer’s “Odyssey.”

She’d written the essay in response to one of Harvard’s supplements for the 2023-24 application cycle, which prompted applicants to recall in 200 words or less “an intellectual experience that was important to you.”

Today, my roommate’s essay would be wholly out of place. For the last three admissions cycles, breaking from past precedent, there is no supplemental essay question that asks students about intellectual experience. For each new batch of Harvard hopefuls, their first encounter with Harvard makes no mention of the intellectualism that is supposed to be present on this campus. Questions instead focus primarily on various aspects of student identity; thus directing thoughts inward rather than focusing on expanding perspective.

This year, the five questions ask each applicant about her extracurriculars, future aspirations, “life experiences,” a time she disagreed with someone, and three things her roommates might like to know about her. The holistic admissions process, with its emphasis on getting to know the “whole student,” is an exercise in packaging up not only one’s accomplishments but one’s whole identity so as to make it marketable.

By failing to include an intellectual question in the supplemental essay prompts, the College both makes it more difficult for applicants to express their academic curiosity as part of their identity and betrays its value prioritization: identity over ideas.

College admissions ask the applicant to draw attention to different aspects of her life. When identity is the focus, admitted students may place outsized importance on the identity they presented during the application process. We ought to encourage students to come into Harvard with genuine curiosity and with a hope to come out fundamentally altered — our questions should reflect a potential to grow into these roles.

In limiting the opportunity for applicants to include academic curiosity as part of their constructed identity brand, the College undercuts the values of intellectualism it otherwise expresses.

One could argue that the so-called “disagreement question” asks students to engage directly with an idea. But I’d agree with one of my peers that it’s only another question that forces students to perform a select personal virtue.

I’m not suggesting we eliminate these questions, nor that we devalue life experience and instead solely admit the most bookish applicants. Indeed, the process of answering these questions can lead to valuable self-reflection as well as give applicants the opportunity to demonstrate their non-academic strengths and valuable traits to admissions officers. It is how the College creates a campus of people instead of one comprised entirely of supernerds.

Most Harvard applicants, though, are engaged in an obsessive college admissions process by which the essays become a chance not to reflect on oneself and one’s values, but a practice in marketing one’s identity to prove they have the special sauce required for admission. If the College asks applicants to engage directly with an issue they care about, many of them will undoubtedly also try to gamify it. But for the applicant like my roommate, it serves as an opportunity to write about something that genuinely excites her.

More importantly, Harvard would thereby demonstrate a legitimate commitment to a campus that not only values who we are but what we think.

Amelia F. Barnum ’28, an Associate Editorial Editor, is a Philosophy concentrator in Winthrop House.