One Test Everybody Passed

We all know them. They were in our proctor groups, or we've seen them at the Grille. They've taken classes with us; some of us might have even blocked with them. Who are they? They are those people, some friends, some enemies, but mostly passing acquaintances, who spend a lot of time trying to convince you that they don't have any idea how they got into Harvard because, in short, they really aren't that smart and frankly don't belong here.

It's an odd social phenomenon, one we're most aware of when we're just starting out here and our social roles are up for grabs. In the first year, most of us carefully feel our way around this place, trying to become familiar with the environment before we plug ourselves into it. For others, graduation might just as well be around the corner because they spend most of their time trying get ahead as quickly (and as unapologetically) as possible. But then there is another group who, like the go-getters, are also quite confident about their place at Harvard--which, they will gladly tell you, is hardly at the head of the class but, rather, at the bottom of the food chain. From the way these people talk sometimes, they'd have you believe they were lucky just to graduate from high school much less gain acceptance into the most prestigious University in the world.

It is all a big farce, of course. You learn this as you go on. Not a few times during your academic career do you read the name of that self-proclaimed dumb guy who has just been elected Phi Beta Kappa or discover that the ever-affected air head who lived across the hall from you won a Hoopes Prize for her thesis and will graduate summa--ahead of you.

In a sense, of course, you shouldn't be surprised. For all of the earnest attempts by the dumb guy to convince you that book-learnin' just isn't for him and all of the air-headed girl's exclamations that her courses are sooooooo hard, there's one thing you know about them that betrays even their most impassioned pleas. They got into Harvard.

Now, by this statement I am not trying to imply that the Harvard undergraduate body is the single awesome intellectual force that the rest of the world (e.g. Yale) needs to reckon with, I am merely making a simple observation. It is hard, very hard, to get into this place. How hard? Go to the admissions office and have them give you the statistics or, better yet, take a poll among all your friends who didn't get in here and see what they say. Certainly, there aren't make many generalizations you can make about the Harvard student body, but you can make this one. Every undergraduate may not be breathtakingly beautiful or very nice or even remotely athletic, but each of them is smart, very smart, with absolutely no exceptions.

Now, at this point, the cynics out there are clamoring for me to explain those students who seem to have gotten in to Harvard for reasons other than brain matter, like the "legacies," the "diplomatic kids" and, of course, the athletes. My response is simple. Some people do get into Harvard for reasons, in part, other than their brains, but this, of course, is because no one gets into Harvard just because of their brains. We sometimes forget that Harvard does set basic requirements for anyone who wants to get in. When it comes to academics, those requirements are very high, and no one--let me repeat that--no one gets in who can't meet them.

Now, there is a larger issue here, of course. Harvard can be quite intimidating. As someone who came here from a small mid-western high school that rarely sends anyone out of state to college (much less to Haahvard) I can attest to that, and I think that it is a feeling we've all shared at one time or another. And yet, while most students go out of their way to downplay intellectual elitism outside of Harvard, there often seems to me a terrible tendency toward it within the undergraduate community itself. It is a kind of put-up-or-shut-up mentality that scares a lot of people into portraying themselves as not terribly fit for the intellectual survival of the fittest. This, in turn, promotes the self-imposed dumbing down of a number of people at Harvard who feel that they can't compete and must, in turn, put on a ridiculous act of ineptness, one which no one really believes and which makes those people who put it on appear more pathetic than dim-witted.

The tragedy in all this is that, once trapped in this social position, most people have a hard time climbing their way out--largely because there are others who don't want them to be as smart as they are, lest their own fragile social position be threatened. And so many people are forced to keep performing the pantomime they fell into playing as first-years, that of Harvard Yard yokel.

The moral, I guess, is simply not to let yourself be cornered early on. For while all of our social roles here at Harvard are eventually cemented, in the beginning the mortar is still soft, and there is yet time for any brick to be rearranged. The decision to do so is one that only each of us, individually, can make.

John Paul Rollert '00-'01 is a social studies concentrator in Mather House. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.