Harvard, C/O 2017, Applicants Thread (2013-2014) Forum

[Quest4Knowledge]

got a JS1 today. went complete 1/30

Congrats!

If I'm remembering correctly, the latest complete date to get a JS1 is 2/6/2014 (from the poster a few days ago)?

[barrelofmonkeys]

Am I reading that right, the guy says he was waitlisted? That would be the first known WL right? Wish there was a date.

Yeah, I just don't buy it. But his LSN is otherwise pretty legit. So I don't know.

[Quest4Knowledge]

Am I reading that right, the guy says he was waitlisted? That would be the first known WL right? Wish there was a date.

Interesting, I thought early-April was typical for waitlist:

https://blogs.law.harvard.edu/admission ... wait-list/

But his profile seems recently updated, so that's strange.

[lawschool22]

Am I reading that right, the guy says he was waitlisted? That would be the first known WL right? Wish there was a date.

Yeah, I just don't buy it. But his LSN is otherwise pretty legit. So I don't know.

Yeah that's the thing, the rest of the profile seems very reasonable. The only thing throwing me off is that there is no date provided. Maybe it was an accident and should be "pending."

[selden]

Am I reading that right, the guy says he was waitlisted? That would be the first known WL right? Wish there was a date.

Yeah, I just don't buy it. But his LSN is otherwise pretty legit. So I don't know.

Yeah that's the thing, the rest of the profile seems very reasonable. The only thing throwing me off is that there is no date provided. Maybe it was an accident and should be "pending."

Interesting. Remember, though, HLS has no hold this year, so the previous year's tendency to start WL in April is not necessarily informative.

[lawschool22]

Am I reading that right, the guy says he was waitlisted? That would be the first known WL right? Wish there was a date.

Yeah, I just don't buy it. But his LSN is otherwise pretty legit. So I don't know.

Yeah that's the thing, the rest of the profile seems very reasonable. The only thing throwing me off is that there is no date provided. Maybe it was an accident and should be "pending."

Interesting. Remember, though, HLS has no hold this year, so the previous year's tendency to start WL in April is not necessarily informative.

Yeah I was just thinking that same thing. I messaged him, maybe I'll get a response.

[Quest4Knowledge]

Am I reading that right, the guy says he was waitlisted? That would be the first known WL right? Wish there was a date.

Yeah, I just don't buy it. But his LSN is otherwise pretty legit. So I don't know.

Yeah that's the thing, the rest of the profile seems very reasonable. The only thing throwing me off is that there is no date provided. Maybe it was an accident and should be "pending."

Interesting. Remember, though, HLS has no hold this year, so the previous year's tendency to start WL in April is not necessarily informative.

You're right there's no official hold, but I don't think in practice this will change much in terms of timeline.

[jdapplicant]

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzmd1 ... o1_500.gif

This thread needs moar 30 Rock

[selden]

Interesting. Remember, though, HLS has no hold this year, so the previous year's tendency to start WL in April is not necessarily informative.

You're right there's no official hold, but I don't think in practice this will change much in terms of timeline.

Maybe not, but you never know. There's no reason in particular to think that the removal of an official hold status wasn't also indicative of an internal process change regarding holds/waitlists. Maybe they decided that it was better to waitlist people who were likely to go hold -> WL earlier so that there wasn't the same issue of being in limbo while having to make life-changing decisions. Knowing you're on the WL probably leads people to make different choices than thinking they are coming up for review again soon.

After all, waiting until April for a WL is rough on applicants in a lot of ways - look at NYU's scholarship deadline of 4/4.

[barrelofmonkeys]

The other obvious problem re: this waitlist report is that there have been zero other waitlist reports.

There are usually at least handful of decisions at a time.

[Quest4Knowledge]

Interesting. Remember, though, HLS has no hold this year, so the previous year's tendency to start WL in April is not necessarily informative.

You're right there's no official hold, but I don't think in practice this will change much in terms of timeline.

Maybe not, but you never know. There's no reason in particular to think that the removal of an official hold status wasn't also indicative of an internal process change regarding holds/waitlists. Maybe they decided that it was better to waitlist people who were likely to go hold -> WL earlier so that there wasn't the same issue of being in limbo while having to make life-changing decisions. Knowing you're on the WL probably leads people to make different choices than thinking they are coming up for review again soon.

After all, waiting until April for a WL is rough on applicants in a lot of ways - look at NYU's scholarship deadline of 4/4.

That's definitely a possibility, they could have changed the process.

But if my understanding is correct, the Hold was just saying we'll review your application again once the full applicant pool is in and make a decision re admit/reject/waitlist then. I don't understand why they would waitlist people when they don't have a full picture of who has or has not applied.

Last year, people who submitted around the Feb 1st deadline reported going complete in mid-March. Shortly after at the beginning of April waitlists were reported. My guess is the submit->complete won't take as long this cycle, but because of the extended deadline the dates for waitlist will be similar.

Like you said though, there's no way of actually knowing - it's all speculation at this point.

[selden]

The other obvious problem re: this waitlist report is that there have been zero other waitlist reports.

There are usually at least handful of decisions at a time.

Yeah, you're right. I could see a set of waitlists going out now for the reasons above, but only one does make me skeptical.

[kartelite]

I don't understand why they would waitlist people when they don't have a full picture of who has or has not applied.

Isn't that common practice among other schools? Penn has been waitlisting tons of people, and their deadline isn't until March 1. And that seems one of the reasons to put candidates on the waitlist; you don't know who the other applicants are yet.

[rseaney]

I don't understand why they would waitlist people when they don't have a full picture of who has or has not applied.

Isn't that common practice among other schools? Penn has been waitlisting tons of people, and their deadline isn't until March 1. And that seems one of the reasons to put candidates on the waitlist; you don't know who the other applicants are yet.

+1

[gta]

Am I reading that right, the guy says he was waitlisted? That would be the first known WL right? Wish there was a date.

It says Harvard was last updated 3 hours ago. His last update before that was 12 days ago. So it's safe to say that it's in that window, probably sooner rather than later.

Have to say that a 172 with below median GPA getting WL'd gives me a lot of hope here... Maybe Harvard is holding onto 172s because they might need to drop a point with their LSAT median? JS... I can help you hold your 173!

[midwest17]

Interesting. Remember, though, HLS has no hold this year, so the previous year's tendency to start WL in April is not necessarily informative.

You're right there's no official hold, but I don't think in practice this will change much in terms of timeline.

Maybe not, but you never know. There's no reason in particular to think that the removal of an official hold status wasn't also indicative of an internal process change regarding holds/waitlists. Maybe they decided that it was better to waitlist people who were likely to go hold -> WL earlier so that there wasn't the same issue of being in limbo while having to make life-changing decisions. Knowing you're on the WL probably leads people to make different choices than thinking they are coming up for review again soon.

After all, waiting until April for a WL is rough on applicants in a lot of ways - look at NYU's scholarship deadline of 4/4.

You can accept scholarships without withdrawing from schools where you haven't received a final decision. Not saying that it's not stressful, but anyone still waiting to hear from Harvard in April can accept NYU and then withdraw after they hear from Harvard.

[PallasAthena]

.

[chicky]

You can accept scholarships without withdrawing from schools where you haven't received a final decision. Not saying that it's not stressful, but anyone still waiting to hear from Harvard in April can accept NYU and then withdraw after they hear from Harvard.

How common is it for people to put down deposits at multiple schools? I'm really, really hoping it doesn't come to that, but if you're waiting for financial aid info to come through, it seems not beyond the pale...

[IrishJew]

Ya, I'm not liking that extended deadline, though it seems like they'd have to rush decisions or just dump a bunch of the JS1.5s on the waitlist if they wait until scores come out to look at those files again.

I've looked at a bit of data from last cycle, and on Feb 20th there were JS2s for about 4-5 people who had been waiting since October-December and IIRC were below one median and just below another. There were a couple more in March and April before the waitlists came out, but not as many. Obviously this year has been different, especially with the extended deadline.

As we progress into March we need to start to become more and more realistic about our chances. I think, based on various pieces of info I'm considering, that they have accepted somewhere on the order of 550-600 people. That only leaves about 250-300 spots. Maybe 50 or so will come from the WL. So they need to accept about 200-250 between now and May 1. If TLS is 10% of the applicant pool, we may only see another 20ish people on TLS get accepted between now and May 1.

But TLS is not a representative sample and I would think the acceptance rate among TLSers should be much higher than the general applicants, no?

Right, that's why the top schools have said in their diversity policies that they are trying to recruit students "from underrepresented backgrounds... including ... people who are not on TLS." Didn't you have to fill out the part of the application where it asked if you've ever used TLS or other illicit abbreviations?

[IrishJew]

I don't understand why they would waitlist people when they don't have a full picture of who has or has not applied.

Isn't that common practice among other schools? Penn has been waitlisting tons of people, and their deadline isn't until March 1. And that seems one of the reasons to put candidates on the waitlist; you don't know who the other applicants are yet.

Word. But I think in the past Harvard hasn't done it that way, and personally I don't see why removing official hold would change that.

[selden]

You can accept scholarships without withdrawing from schools where you haven't received a final decision. Not saying that it's not stressful, but anyone still waiting to hear from Harvard in April can accept NYU and then withdraw after they hear from Harvard.

NYU has extended its scholarship deadline to 4/21 (I got an email from them yesterday informing me of this welcome decision!), so hopefully it wouldn't come to that.

Thanks for letting me know about the deadline change Pallas - I only recently submitted Need Access so I haven't heard about any potential awards yet.

[PallasAthena]

.

[Quest4Knowledge]

Have to say that a 172 with below median GPA getting WL'd gives me a lot of hope here... Maybe Harvard is holding onto 172s because they might need to drop a point with their LSAT median? JS... I can help you hold your 173!

That's an interesting way to think about it, and if correct it's quite promising...

[kenwash]

You can accept scholarships without withdrawing from schools where you haven't received a final decision. Not saying that it's not stressful, but anyone still waiting to hear from Harvard in April can accept NYU and then withdraw after they hear from Harvard.

NYU has extended its scholarship deadline to 4/21 (I got an email from them yesterday informing me of this welcome decision!), so hopefully it wouldn't come to that.

Thanks for letting me know about the deadline change Pallas - I only recently submitted Need Access so I haven't heard about any potential awards yet.

No problem. Hope they offer you loads of money soon! They were pretty fast with my need+merit based aid. I heard back within a week.

Pallas - A week is pretty fast. Did you get an email from them stating they received your Need Access app or did they just send you your aid info?

[rseaney]

Have to say that a 172 with below median GPA getting WL'd gives me a lot of hope here... Maybe Harvard is holding onto 172s because they might need to drop a point with their LSAT median? JS... I can help you hold your 173!

That's an interesting way to think about it, and if correct it's quite promising...

are we thinking this WL is legit then?