Shedding our Application Selves: A Letter to the Class of 2027

“A true humanist.” That’s what they said she was — or at least, what they said about her college application. Perhaps it was how she found comfort in the absurdism of Camus’ The Stranger, or her intrigue in the Tajik Persian language, or intention to address American isolationism by creating culturally-sensitive translation technologies. Compassionate and introspective, she appeared to be a talented writer.

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This “she” is me. Or a version of me, reconstructed through my Winter 2018 Harvard application, my preparatory notes for my alumni interview, and my recollections from interviewer and application reviewer comments (which students can request to see via the Registrar). And indeed, I recall being a language nerd in high school, a passion that spilled into computational linguistics, writing, and an ambition to “enhance global communication” (a phrase courtesy of my writing supplement).

I think of this because a few days ago, Harvard sent out regular-decision acceptances for the Class of 2027. Welcome, and congratulations! I’d love to chat with you, if you have a moment.

It’s safe to say you have left a stellar impression on the entity that is Harvard Admissions™️ — a coherent semblance of your specific passions to change the world and your potential as a future leader that Harvard College would like to nurture.

But I hope you don’t feel beholden to that impression. As a social senior, I reflect on how many of my classmates swapped out their stated passions: art for technology, neuroscience for economics. I myself dropped Linguistics following a high-school career spent on that topic (I thought I could get enthused by semantics, but couldn’t).

And so, I want to say that it is okay to depart from the identity you applied to college with, since the admissions process often pressures us to craft identities that may fail to reflect who we really are or who we’ll become.

If you found a true calling in high school and genuinely expressed it in your application, that’s great! Still, the competitiveness of college admissions has skyrocketed in recent years, with historically-low acceptance rates and historically-high volumes of applications. These days, it seems crucial to be a specialist and to market yourself based on those specialities — “distinguishing excellences,” as one college consultant puts it, to stand out.

So admissions offices seem to notice those already on a mission. (Or those who can afford to package themselves in a palatable manner: In a survey of my social class, 18.6 percent reported receiving help from a private college counselor, and a whopping 53.4 percent of those students reported a combined family income of at least $250,000).

Thus, the college application process may pressure us into amplifying our interests into larger-than-life identities. For me? I did love personal essays and computation-like patterns in the Japanese language (due to teen angst and an anime obsession). But my family encouraged a lot of my achievements because they’d stoke the flames of my side-hobbies into a marketable brand.

It’s the chicken-and-egg problem: Even now, I wonder which came first, the activities or the passion.

So I hope you give yourself the grace to keep, and let go of, parts of the passions you came to us with. Because over the course of your time in college, you simply might change! Indeed, Harvard strongly encourages first-years to explore a breadth of fields through its diverse freshman seminars and its collection of introductory classes, including the famous computer science course CS50 (which advertises how two-thirds of its students have never taken CS before).

But it may be tough to internalize the idea that it’s okay to switch passions when the admissions process conditioned us to repeatedly assert our commitment to a path that may have merged with our sense of identity. (Just think of 2018 Vanessa, who put “absolutely certain” on her application when asked how definite her academic plans would be). This toughness may become more discomfiting if you encounter prodigies in beginner classes, who then are highlighted for their excellence — a sense I got after taking CS50 (which then led me to panic about software internships and attempt to honor my claimed affinity for computation before I finally admitted I’d rather write than code).

This discussion of the admissions process may broaden to how we encourage exploration of new passions after setting foot on campus. While Harvard values its liberal arts education, as evinced by its General Education program, I’ve occasionally felt discouraged from multidisciplinarity. I sometimes feel “too soft” for intense CS culture at the SEC, or “not deep enough” for the artsy Englishness at the Barker Center. When I earnestly asked about a CS and English joint degree, I was warned that I’d need to come up with a clear approach to bridge these disparate fields.

Prioritizing specialists stifles intellectual curiosity and our collective potential to help the world, particularly when complex problems may require jack-of-all-trade solutions (I think of the social, political, and technical complexities embedded in issues of racist technology). And so, I hope you consider the new double-concentration option, which seems like an approachable way to challenge the specialist mold — without a thesis requirement (and the imposter syndrome).

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Right now, perhaps you’re very sure of your excitement for your intended concentration(s) — or perhaps you’re not sure at all. Regardless, you have ample time to discover your spaces of fulfillment at Harvard, as we all eventually do.

Anyway, in a 2021 Pew Research Center study, 79 percent of American college graduates said their education was extremely or very useful for personal and intellectual growth, whereas 65 percent said it’d be useful for developing workplace-relevant skills and knowledge. So how we grow as humans is perhaps the most important part of entering Harvard.

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As a social senior, I enjoy reflecting on what has or hasn’t changed from my application self. Like how I dropped Linguistics but was still excited about Japanese to get a language citation. Or how I still am a calming force amongst my lovely friends (like the character Shiro in Voltron). Or how I said I didn’t like poetry, but embraced it in my gap year and even got to read my work with a youth poet laureate last week. Or how I hope that I was, am, and will be a warm, thoughtful, and intellectually curious person.

Regardless of how we change concentrations or other life trajectories, we’re always discovering — or rediscovering – parts of ourselves along the way. And I hope you decide to do that here at Harvard.

Best wishes,

Vanessa

Vanessa B. Hu ’23-’24 is a junior in Currier House studying Computer Science. Her column, “Hopes and Hypocrisies,” runs on alternate Mondays.