Passion, Padding Draw H.S. Students

Rising high-school senior Lauren Liechtenstein has been in love with Harvard since she first visited at the age of 12. She’s 17 now, and a student at the Harvard Secondary School Program (SSP), which lets high-school students spend eight weeks over the summer taking college-level courses within Harvard’s gates.

“I loved the place—I just loved everything about it,” says Liechtenstein, who is attending SSP for the second consecutive year. “I figured, why not try to spend the summer here and see what it’s like and find out about the college and how everything works?”

Like Liechtenstein, many students are drawn to SSP out of a love for “Harvard”—though what Harvard means differs from student to student.

For some, “Harvard” means great academics. For others, it’s synonymous with college life; for others still, it’s a line on a college application. Some, like Liechstenstein, are simply motivated by the idea of studying at Harvard. For most, it’s a combination of all these factors.

As Liechtenstein says, though it isn’t the primary reason she came here, she hopes that when she applies to Harvard College, her experience at SSP will have some bearing on the admissions committee’s decision—“I don’t know,” she says. “I’d like to think it helps.”

But some aspects of the “Harvard” experience SSP offers may be more authentic than others—though they live in the same dorms and eat the same food as Harvard freshmen, and sit in classrooms next to Harvard students, their experience is at an institution that boasts only 23 Harvard professors among its 241 instructors.

A TASTE OF HARVARD

For eight weeks each summer, approximately 1,000 high-school students fill first-year dormitories, while about 250 of their classmates commute into Harvard Square each morning. The rising high school juniors and seniors, who constitute about one-fifth of the overall enrollment of the Summer School, sit in classrooms for about 10 hours a week, often alongside Harvard undergraduates and graduate students.

Many have come to sample from the Summer School’s academic platter.

“Harvard was the only summer program with both International Relations and Graphics Design, which were the two classes I wanted to take,” says rising senior Alli Taylor, 17.

Although a scheduling conflict precluded her from enrolling in both courses, she says Harvard’s offerings have allowed her to experiment with an interest she cannot explore at her high school.

“I’m here because I’m thinking about taking international relations in college, so I’m looking at various colleges with strong international relations programs,” she says. “I want to see if I like the college and if I like international relations.”

Others students who attend SSP are hoping to experience “college life.”

They want “freedom from parents” or to “get outta house,” as indicated in free responses to a Crimson poll of SSP students administered last week.

Monitored by proctors who are undergraduates at Harvard College, students must follow basic rules—but the freedom they’re allowed is more than they might get at home or in another program.

“We sometimes call it a taste of college. They’re basically enrolling in college before they’ve applied to college. They get the experience of being in college as well,” SSP Director William J. Holinger says.

Rising senior Mikhaela G. Agnion Armendariz, 17, says he came to Harvard in part to take a biology course, although he adds: “Also, to be honest, I wanted to meet people.”

The SSP can provide students with a new and vibrant peer group: the diverse Summer School population includes students from all 50 states and 93 countries.

“I wanted to be in a challenging environment,” says rising junior Sierra Kornfilt, 16. “It’s good because everyone here has high standards, so you need to keep up.”

Dustin B. Lushing, 17, says he wanted “to be able to show [his] intelligence without being made fun of and beat[en] up.”

For other students, like Joseph L. Drain, 17, of Rocky River, Ohio, the idea of attending Harvard was reason enough to come to Cambridge for the summer.

“I’m not going to get in. The chances are so low,” says Drain. “If I have an opportunity to get this education, even if it’s two classes for this summer, I have to jump on it.”

An unscientific poll of 139 SSP students conducted by The Crimson found that 38 percent of respondents listed Harvard’s reputation as their principal motivation for attending the Summer School. And another 35 percent of respondents listed “the Harvard name” among their top three reasons for attendance. Only 33 percent of students listed the reputation of Harvard’s Summer School among their top three reasons.

“I got into another program at Exeter, but Harvard sounds more impressive,” says Robert J. Rosser III, 17.

AN ADMISSIONS ADVANTAGE?

Yet, for many rising high school juniors and seniors, the decision to take SSP courses came less in the throes of academic passion and more in cool-headed navigation for the future.

“It looks good on college résumés,” says Victoria A. Butler, 16, of El Paso, Texas. A rising junior, she plans to apply to Harvard for the Class of 2011.

Attending SSP “should help [with admissions] if you get good grades,” she says.

“I came because I get real college credit that can be transferred and also because it’s a ‘foot in the door’ for Ivy League schools,” says David M. Pritchett, 17. “Particularly Harvard, because they will know I have experience with the environment and the campus.”

Butler and Pritchett aren’t alone—the unscientific Crimson poll found that 70 percent of students thought that attending the Summer School would boost their chances of being admitted to Harvard College or a comparable institution.

But applicants hoping to convert the Harvard name into an admissions edge that distinguishes them from the crowd may find themselves disappointed.

“There is no relation between admission to the Harvard Summer School Program and admission to the freshman class of Harvard College,” the Summer School Web site states.

At other colleges, participation in a summer program could offer a student the chance to demonstrate his or her dedication to the college, which is important for schools trying to increase their yield rate (the percentage of accepted students who matriculate into the institution).

This consideration is less important for Harvard, the national yield-rate leader. Harvard College Admissions Director Marlyn McGrath Lewis ’70-’73 says Harvard does not take previously demonstrated affinity into account in making its admissions decisions.

But, Lewis adds, attending SSP “wouldn’t hurt.”

“We certainly don’t require [summer study] of our candidates or expect it from everybody. If they have [attended SSP], it may help us understand what they’re interested in,” Lewis says. “It would not be a negative. No one would say, ‘He’s trying to advance his case by applying to Harvard Summer School.’”

Lewis says that although she supposes that a “fairly large” number of SSP students later apply for admission to the College, her office does not track numbers on how many apply, are accepted, or matriculate.

SSP admissions processes are less rigorous than those at the College—SSP applicants need only demonstrate that they can handle college-level work. But attending SSP can offer real admissions benefits—just not for everyone, according to Katherine Cohen, the founder and CEO of IvyWise, a private admissions counseling company, and the author of several books on college admissions.

“It helps you do your college research better, but just because you go to Harvard SSP and get an A in your course doesn’t mean you’ll get into Harvard,” Cohen says.

She offers three principal reasons she would recommend summer academic programs to her clients: to delve into a subject about which they’re passionate, to get ahead in a subject—especially math or science—or to get to their bearings at a school they hope to attend.

“It depends on the individual student,” Cohen says. “There are some kids who are so academically inclined, they just want to do summer school every summer. Maybe for those kids [even] more academics doesn’t make sense.”

Even if SSP is not a back door into the College, it touts itself as a preparatory program for the exigencies of college applications.

Visits are scheduled to other area colleges and universities, and the school website suggests that the Bureau of Study Counsel’s course Reading and Study Strategies could help with SAT preparation.

“The majority [of SSP students] are rising seniors, and they’re facing college admissions in the fall. They’re really interested in that,” Hollinger says. “We think about giving them ways of selecting the college or university that’s right for them.”

‘SO-CALLED COLLEGE LIFE’

Amy D. Lu, 17, of South Pasadena, Calif., came to the SSP to see how she would handle being 3,000 miles away from home for an extended period of time. While she says she isn’t a fan of the East Coast’s muggy and unpredictable weather, she has found the independence of her new lifestyle appealing.

“I’m enjoying this so-called college life, actually being on my own, planning out my days,” she says. “There’s things to do, but when you go in the Yard at night it’s completely silent. Then you take two steps out and there’s bands playing.”

She’s learning how to balance the challenging workload of the class she is taking, Econ S-10ab, “Principles of Economics,” with the distractions that confront Harvard students, including music in the Square and canoeing on the Charles.

Academically, SSP provides more of a collegiate experience than most other institutions’ summer school programs—colleges, including Harvard College, will accept most of the courses for credit.

That, according to Holinger, is what sets Harvard off from the competition.

“All but one or two other programs create courses for students,” he says. “The real distinguishing characteristic is we let kids take real college courses.”

Drain says he finds the academic experience authentic enough.

“I’m doing work constantly. It’s pretty tough. It’s doable, but I think I had to buy seven or eight books for this one class,” he says. “I’m putting in a lot of time, but I can really feel the effects.”

The campus life SSP constructs also gives students a taste of college life, although the program also offers rules and checks—like a strictly enforced ban on underage drinking, curfews for rising juniors, and a network of proctors serving as resident tutors—to help students avoid sand traps sometimes encountered during freshman fall.

But the Harvard that SSP students are experiencing isn’t, in every way, the same as the one that assembles during move-in week each September. In the Yard, the trees always have leaves, and the ground is covered in grass—never snow, mud, or spray-on fluorescent green.

The story is similar in the classroom. What the Summer School terms a “distinguished Harvard faculty” includes only Harvard professors. Only 19 of the 241 Summer School instructors are tenured in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and another four are associate professors.

Of the 241 instructors at Harvard, 149—just less than 62 percent—hold Ph.D.’s. Four more hold D.Phil. degrees, and 12 have advanced degrees in law or education.

A few other tenured Harvard professors are listed as Summer School professors, though they are teaching summer courses abroad.

Whether the Harvard experience is authentic or not, some high-school students have found their preconceptions about the College shattered.

“[Harvard] isn’t as big a deal as everybody makes it out to be,” Lu says. “Everybody thinks of it as a nerdy, preppy school where everybody doesn’t have fun.”

The summer faculty­—a hodge-podge of professors, lecturers, graduate students, and professionals—does boast a few marquee names.

Cabot Professor of English Literature and Professor of African and African American Studies Werner Sollors teaches courses on American and African American literature, while Bernbaum Professor of English and American Literature and Language Leo Damrosch teaches versions of his Harvard courses, Literature and Arts A-72, “The Enlightenment Invention of the Modern Self,” and English 185, “Wit and Humor.”

And Classics Department Chair Richard F. Thomas teaches both a seminar on Bob Dylan and Latin S-104, “Ovid, Metamorphoses.”

Sollors says the Summer School offers rewards not only for students, but also for professors like himself.

“From [the standpoint of] a student-professor relationship, you get more time in the summer,” Sollors says. “I can’t keep the schedule intact. You have to spread out the reading a little more....The other reason is also more leisure, less distraction. All our students do so incredibly much.”

Sollors says that the presence of younger students does not compromise the academic quality of his classes.

“SSP students are right on track. [I’ve seen] a fairly good level of close readings,” he says.

“I haven’t encountered any particular problems.”

—Dennis M. Hogan, Chaz Kelsh, Claire Moses, Beth Pedersen, Joseph R. Santo, and Michael Skocpol contributed to the reporting of this story. ­—Staff writer Samuel C. Scott can be reached at sscott@fas.harvard.edu.