You know your FAS account has been deactivated when ...

... The hourly flow of redirected spam ceases flowing to your Yahoo inbox!

Seriously, I won't be missing Harvard's FAS email system, or, for that matter, Harvard's computer services for students. The spam, the 1990s-style UIs, the constant prompts to log back in to the Harvard PIN server, the weird password policies ... this was the reality of using Harvard's student-oriented computing systems.

I have better hopes for Post.Harvard, the alumni website. So far, no spam, I appear to remain logged on even after several weeks of inactivity, and I see they just updated the interface.

A Korean recipe for admission to the Ivy League

Today's New York Times takes a look at the Daewon prep school and the Minjok Leadership Academy in South Korea. Both schools have perfected a system for admissions to Harvard, Yale, and top-tier colleges in the United States, which includes a regimen of non-stop cramming, instruction from foreign teachers in writing and other subjects, and an enormous amount of pressure from parents and administrators to succeed. Naturally, there is little time for personal interests, suggests the article:

Both schools suppress teenage romance as a waste of time.

“What are you doing holding hands?” a Daewon administrator scolded an adolescent couple recently, according to his aides. “You should be studying!”

But the administrators at the other school, Minjok, appear to be a little less heartless -- the school recently deactivated the dormitory surveillance cameras used to prevent students from dozing off in late-night study sessions.

According to the article, Korean society grants great social status to people who graduate from Ivy League colleges in the United States. This certainly helps explain why parents and students are willing to accept the Daewon and Minjok lifestyle, and may also explain the Azia Kim episode at Stanford and a recent string of scandals in South Korea involving high-profile figures who lied about their U.S. academic credentials.

I don't agree with the methods and attitudes at the two Korean schools, but students have to be admired for being able to do so well on the American SATs, coursework, and especially their writing skills, considering English seems to be a second language for most of them, and they are growing up in a Korean-language environment. They're not getting into Harvard based on legacy status or the Z-list ...

Rules for Harvard freshman: 1741 edition

Spotted on the Boston 1775 blog, operated by writer and historian J.L. Bell: A list of rules that Harvard frosh had to follow in 1741. A sample:

... 18. No Freshman shall call or throw anything across the College yard, nor go into the Fellows’ Cuz-John.

19. No Freshman shall mingo against the College walls.

20. Freshmen are to carry themselves, in all respects, as to be in no wise saucy to their Seniors.

21. Whatsoever Freshman shall break any of these customs, he shall be severely punished.

"Mingo" is a piece of street slang that passed out of usage long ago, and while rule #20 no longer holds at Harvard, it is alive and well in our nation's military academies.

The remaining rules can be seen on Bell's blog, or in the book that I believe Bell says it originally came from, John Patrick Diggins' biography of John Adams.

(Ref: Universal Hub)

An open letter from a disillusioned Harvard KSG acceptee

I was just cc'ed on a letter to President Faust from someone who has a big problem with Harvard's graduate student financial aid policies (my own commentary follows the excerpts):

A few weeks ago, I received the wonderful news that I have been accepted to study at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government (KSG), but my initial euphoria was soon stamped out as a second KSG email arrived announcing that I would only be offered loans as financial "aid." KSG suggests that I take out more than $130,000 in loans to pay for my two-year Master's program. $130,000? I want to attend KSG to get the best possible preparation to enter the public sector. How am I supposed to work in the public sector strapped with $130,000+ of education debt? Being accepted to KSG has turned out to be a pyrrhic achievement indeed. So, I write this letter to bring attention to my dilemma in the hopes that future KSG acceptees do not have to face the choices currently before me.

At first, I thought KSG must have made a mistake in calculating my aid, considering my limited financial resources (I have spent the last two years as a volunteer in a developing country) and considering Harvard's much publicized push to increase financial aid, even to upper-middle-class undergrads. But no - KSG considers my financial need "met," by offering loans only. The KSG Financial Aid website says, "Financial assistance is a partnership." I have kept my end of the bargain - I live frugally, I do not have much consumer debt, and I applied (in vain) to a number of external funding sources. I do not feel like much of a partner in this relationship, however, as KSG is not offering me a single penny of assistance.

The author then discusses the contradictory messages sent by the KSG administration, which on the one hand stresses public service, while at the same time forcing students to take on hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt (if interest is included) to attend Harvard. He or she concludes with this:

I therefore implore you, KSG, and Harvard University to increase financial aid to KSG students - through fundraising, through a capital campaign, through bake-sales, or however - so that future students are indeed able to enter public and non-profit service after their education at KSG instead of having to sell themselves as private sector consultants in order to be able to pay back their loans. Otherwise, KSG is guilty of making this country and this world worse, by pushing those who are most able and motivated to serve in the public and non-profit sectors into the private sector. Crass financial calculations are not sufficient justifications for this.

The author brings up a lot of valid points. It is unrealistic to expect students interested in entering the public sector to take on such huge amounts of debt. Moreover, if Harvard can do so much for College undergraduates in terms of tuition wavers and other financial aid, why can't similar benefits be extended to students at Harvard's other schools?

Update:

The full text of the letter can be found on the Critical Mass blog, along with some comments.

Legacy admissions and the "Z List" at Harvard College

The New York Times takes a satirical look at legacy admissions at Harvard College:

Here at Harvard’s Office of Admissions, we have some very exciting news for you. While your SAT scores and grade point average fall below the threshold for acceptance to Harvard’s class of 2012, your Harvard parents’ dogged participation in our annual fund-raising appeals — including their generous contributions to Harvard’s recombinant DNA lab and IMAX theater — have gained you admission to a unique new program called LegacyPlus™.

With LegacyPlus™, you, the Harvard double legacy, will enjoy all of the perks of students who actually got into Harvard — except for the education part.

The Harvard Z-list is real!

There's more than a grain of truth here. Earlier in the decade, The Crimson's Dan Rosenheck documented Harvard College's "Z List," which the admissions office strenuously denied was a legacy list. Rosenheck did some digging, and found otherwise:

... If you talk to enough of these students whom the admissions office makes a special effort to bring to Cambridge, you’ll find they do have something in common: Their parents went to Harvard.

The Crimson obtained information about the legacy status of 36 of the approximately 80 Z-list students at Harvard in 2001-02. Though McGrath Lewis insists the Z-list is “not a legacy list,” 26—or 72 percent of the 36-student sample—were legacies, compared with 12 to 14 percent of the class as a whole.

Even if none of the remaining 44 or so Z-list students were legacies, 33 percent of the 80 students would be legacies—still well above the proportion of legacies in the class as a whole.

College counselors at Harvard’s feeder schools—high schools that routinely send large numbers of students to the College—are nearly unanimous in characterizing the Z-list as Harvard’s preferred conduit for qualified legacy candidates who don’t make the first cut.

Daniel Golden was even more critical in his special feature in the inaugural issue of 02138:

Harvard actually has different levels of legacy preference, systematically and in some ways elaborately distorting its standards on behalf of a certain group. While children of middle-class alumni enjoy a modest edge, which may be heightened somewhat if the parents volunteer to interview applicants or organize reunions, the offspring of major donors receive in effect double preference - both as legacies and "development cases," whose admission is considered vital to fundraising. They fly first-class through Harvard admissions, often enjoying personal interviews with Fitzsimmons and slots on the exclusive "Z" list, which ushers in, via a one-year deferment, well-connected but often academically borderline applicants.

(Golden also wrote a book on this topic, see Harvard College and the children of America's elite).

This is one area where the Harvard Extension School's undergraduate ALB program holds a definite edge over the College. Family alumni status and wealth have no impact on admissions, and neither do standardized tests. The only thing that will get you into the program are several semesters of dedicated study and good grades. In other words, it's a meritocracy.
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