obviously my got me into harvard um [Music] hey guys today we are going to do something very very exciting we are going to look at my hovered admissions file honestly it's a little bit existential for me because i don't really know why they picked me but every now and then i do like to look at this because it reminds me that these people thought really nice things about me and said really nice things about me and we all know that it feels really nice to be complimented for a little serotonin boost so let's get right
into it when you actually get your admissions file you have to schedule an appointment and you go into this room and there are other people there as well and they just have your file on the table and you go and you sit and you just read through it and you're allowed to take pictures of it but you're just not allowed to take it out of the room and you get given the sheet of paper and it kind of looks like a medical exam sheet there are all these numbers and letters and acronyms and it doesn't
really make any sense i ended up using this blog to help me decipher what some of these codes meant and i found it really helpful so definitely check it out down below and i will be putting pictures of the admissions files here as we get the biggest takeaway i got from that blog was that there are four main categories that they rank you on on that cover sheet these are i think off the top of my head academics personal rating like your personality and that kind of stuff there's an athletic rating interestingly enough then there's
an extracurricular rating as well and then all of that goes into one composite like overall score these ratings are from one to six one being the best and six being like the worst not the worst but like the lowest because we're hashtag inclusive over here one is apparently impossible to get and if you read that blog that i mentioned before it basically says like one is very rare like unless you are like a nobel prize winning like person or like you ended up getting your article published in some huge channel and then sex is just
like the lower end of the spectrum so i remember seeing these numbers and thinking what the hell does this mean two plus two minus three plus one like what is what does all of this mean and that's basically what it correlates to so in the academic rating i was rated two and then the other person gave me a two minus i feel kind of flattered that i was giving a two like i feel like that's pretty nice and i think that checks out because i did try really hard in school i worked really hard i
got really good grades i wasn't slacking in any way so that makes sense to me that checks out for the personal rating i was given a two minus and i think the minus sways more towards the three than up to one so i guess i was good but perhaps not the best which is fine i think at that time i was very shy at the time of the application in the interview so this completely makes sense to me the thing is like this whole athletic racing thing i feel doesn't really make sense to me so
on the blog it said that they have this athletic rating so that athletes who are applying who might have like lowered other rankings would still be given a fair weight but like i'm not athletic and i feel like a lot of people i know weren't athletes i don't know i still feel like it's a bit weird that they have that ranking in that so i got a four i'm actually really flattered that they gave me a four i don't really do any athletics i like to go on the elliptical i don't know if that counts
as a form of athleticism per se but i i think it's nice that i wasn't given a six i don't even know what would six even mean i know one means a full-on athlete but what does six mean did it seemed a bit weird they both gave me fours checks out and i got twos as well on the extracurriculars which again kind of like my academics makes a lot of sense i did a wide range of extracurricular activities so it completely checks out for me overall just talking about these different rankings i think it's nice
that they're so diverse like the personality is really taken into account the overall score is a composite of the four things it's not that the academics are more important there's also like a school score something like that i'm not sure what that is and then they have two from the references of the exact same rating so they read the references and they make a decision based on what they said so let's move on to the next part of the application for me the most interesting part of the application was the pros they have basically one
two three pages of just straight writing two of these chunks are from the people who read your application in your essay and then the bulk of it is from your alumni interview so the people who read the essay there were two of them like i said the same people who gave me those rankings to begin with they kind of just gave some general comments which i found really interesting to read because this was purely what they got off of all the stuff that we submit really interesting to see what they got from it and it
might be helpful if you guys are applying to see how things translate so the first person they kind of commented on how i made it seem that i wasn't doing that many extracurriculars but according to them they think i did and they said i sound very involved from the references i feel like i was very shy at the time so i didn't really go like oh my gosh like i'm amazing like you guys should really take me like i do everything i wasn't like that i was just kind of like harvard like i'm gonna try
like that kind of thing try to get teachers and other references who will really put their best foot forward for you to help you put your best for it if that makes sense so teachers who can really kind of corroborate what you've been doing and also add to the conversation instead of just reiterating what you're saying they also said i like her never say never attitude with a bit of a bieber reference for you guys yeah so this person really was just going in on school rex she goes school racks really bring her alive as
someone who has a lot of spunk got a lot of spunk on me you know they really took me on for the spunk i don't know what it is about the word spunk it sounds a bit weird like i've had it using a bit of a different context actually but i'll take it i'll take it if i like my spunk then i guess that's what i have to thank for everything she actually sounds just great well i'm really glad you thought that jli and then because i did that certain trust program they ended up talking
to one of the ladies from there who said i was quieter in crowds but a strong voice in intimate settings a leader in a behind-the-scenes way which is kind of cool given that i want to be a film director so i guess i want to be a leader in a behind-the-scenes way if that makes sense the biggest thing i took away from this person's comments was that it's good to have supporting stuff because if you don't mention it yourself then it's probably just going to get lost in the application like it won't really turn up
then we can look at the second person so the second person literally wrote one two three four five six lines i'll put all of this on but it's so little there's not a lot of stuff there the first thing that they said was well what's going to happen to bubbles if she comes to the us for school question mark exclamation question explanation clearly the essay was a hit clearly they really liked my cat obviously my got me into harvard um this is the importance of the essay like i said in this other video that i
made that i would really really highly suggest you guys check out because i spent a lot of time trying to break down what i think a good common app essay is and it left an impression like they even remembered my cat's name which is amazing you know both of these people were really into the essay they both felt that they got a lot from it about who i am and also how i would use the american kind of education system it was really nice to read that the reader literally said i'd be comfortable making her
an ea early action choice let's see if the rest of the docket agrees how many really just read my application and said yes you know i wish dating were that simple i wish that it was easier to apply to other things because it all kind of went downhill from here for me try to really make sure that you jam pack your application with a lot of things that are memorable so that they can comment on that so that's just a little tip that i'm throwing in there for free so yeah let's go to the alumni
interview i'm in between a move right now so i'm kind of just like slipping and sliding all over the place literally and also metaphorically but well i guess literally in the other sense too anyways back to what's at hand here the last part of the file is the alumni interview and this is actually the biggest chunk i remember my interview like it was yesterday it was so great i really feel like i got to know the school and also the interviewer they took the time to get to know me we sat in a cafe in
london for like over an hour chatting away they rated me on a personal scale extracurricular scale academic scale they didn't rate me on my athletic performance thank god because no i was not going to be running around that caffeine heels trying to prove that i can do like flips and towns all over the place let's have a look at some of the details of what they said daddy strikes me as an unusually mature confident young woman at ease with herself and the world around her boy did i have him for interviews interviews are really stressful
people get really stressed out and i kind of knew that the american interview is very different from oxbridge interviews in the uk because i was really lucky that i got to do the certain trust so i went in knowing that i was going to have this casual conversation when you're going into the interview just try and be chill try to act like you're talking to a friend a mentor type figure and make sure you ask some good questions so that it feels like a conversation and not just you being really nervous and scared about opening
your mouth they also had to sum me up in a number of descriptors and i got open confident warm and curious which is really nice throughout this little personal rating description there was a couple of things what kinds of things i talk about books politics school subjects london and more apparently it had clear leadership skills which again was reiterated by one of the reader comments too i had a quiet sort of confidence i also asked questions that were relevant the key here is just to not be a douche i think and to show genuine interest
those are things that you don't really need to be told if you're interested in applying to a school you should be genuinely interested you shouldn't just be going for the name brand or anything like that anyways moving on to extracurricular athletic oh my gosh i lied there is a small athletic but extracurricular athletic community employment and family commitments so my interview talked about model u.n for me also refugee crisis the syrian refugee crisis was really big at the time i was applying i wasn't naive about these issues i did private tutoring and i was really
passionate about it so and then they kind of left off by saying that there are a number of things they thought i could end up doing at halving being in debate number of clubs to do with government international relations or music film documentary filmmaker so i was really shook how spot on my interviewer was i think that he really understood what i was interested in and how diverse my interests were but i wasn't diverse in the sense that i was like oh like i really don't know like anything of what i want to do it
was more that i was struggling to like narrow things down if anything he also specifically said i had no sense that any of these things that danny was doing were resume building which is again really important don't do things just because you think that someone is going to look at it and think oh my gosh i need to take them in right now does it make sense for you because you're going to be wasting your time doing things you might not care about doesn't make sense for them because it might be really obvious that you
don't care about it if you turn up to the interview and you're just kind of like oh yeah i did do this thing and this thing and that thing try to be genuine with your extracurriculars even if that means doing one thing but doing it really well all kind of like me dabbling in a bunch of different things because i liked everything and wanted to try it out in terms of the academic rating so literally the first line says a perfect fit for a liberal arts education that's good that's a good sign from the beginning
and he talked a little bit about my bigger levels i was doing maths french history also higher maths on my own extended project about a thousand splendid signs but more from like an anthropological perspective so it kind of highlighted that i would be taking advantage of the liberal arts education system i think that was a really good thing that came across throughout my entire application that the main reason i wanted to come to the us was to experience everything and to do all sorts of disciplines without having to like commit to one right from the
beginning another interesting thing is that he commented on how i did art which is unusual for someone with my background but i clearly relish the creative and political possibilities that art has to offer so again don't feel like you have to dig yourself into some sort of specific box right like i was doing languages i was doing art i was doing maths and science do what you want and it will get you a long way not just with this kind of thing but anything in life just do what you want you know he wasn't really
commenting about how smart i was you know he was commenting on my intellectual curiosity and i think that that goes way further than just saying like oh yeah they seem really intelligent because obviously anyone can become intelligent you know people can become experts on a number of things but if you have that intellectual curiosity i personally really think that schools like harvard and other ivy leagues and just other colleges in general really value people who are willing to seek out new information and want to learn like that's the whole point of academia and uh like
higher education right you don't have to go to college but you should want to go to build your understanding of the world oh i'm getting out of breath really passionate about my admission style this brings us to the overall rating i was given a two plus which is pretty good very close to the one basically he just said i am extremely smart and gifted and self-confident but not at all arrogant this is very kind i'm sure that if my friends and family had to rate me it'd probably be closer to like a five because i
can be quite stubborn sometimes this part was so nice to read the thing that i find really interesting here though is that there is a bit of commentary on my personal background what did he say he said dan um i think that dany was talented and curious and engaged as a person as such even if she'd gone to london's best elite private school and wasn't the child of immigrants i'd be strongly recommending that the community give her application a serious consideration which i feel like spells it out pretty clearly and is a really nice thing
to have read at the end of my harvard journey and even now in hindsight i do think it's cool that he said something like i probably have an inherent pro-immigrant and pro-state school buyers i like people who have achieved against the odds i think that's really interesting too because again every interview is different and i think they try to be as unbiased as possible they don't have access to the rest of your application they literally turn up and meet you on the day they don't know your grades they don't know what you're studying or even
like what school you go to you just kind of meet them and you talk to them and then they write this report and it just adds to your file the interview comments seem to have gone a really long way for me i think that they painted this amazing picture of myself i personally believe that was a nail in the coffin but make it a positive it was the best part of the process to help me actually secure my spot that alongside with a memorable essay and obviously the support of things like certain choices meant that
my application you know had a shot that was really interesting to go back through that and read it again i think i got really lucky with the alumni interview definitely do the interview really try to see it as an opportunity for you to learn more about the school and for them to learn more about you and yeah i hope that you guys enjoyed this video it was certainly fun for me to film and if you have any questions feel free to leave them below i know that some of you might be hearing back very very
soon and i wish you the best of luck and so i will see you soon and please don't forget to like comment and subscribe bye you
