College Admissions: Making the Most of Your Opportunities

Yesterday a former admissions officer at Harvard spoke at a local school about college admissions. One of her main points was that what Harvard and other selective schools want to see is that applicants have made the most of whatever opportunities have been available to them. This means that where you've gone to high school doesn't matter nearly so much as which classes you've taken and your level of involvement with any extracurricular activities you've chosen, given the particular resources of your school.

As an admissions interviewer I've met with countless students from well-endowed top private prep schools to underfunded, languishing public schools. Although I'm always struck by the range of experiences students from the former often present, I'm just as impressed with what students from the latter have been able to achieve despite much more limited options.

In a very real sense, students who've had relatively few possibilities open to them and little personal attention over their high school careers may actually be better prepared for the real world. Because they've essentially had to forge their own way in high school, from appropriate course planning and selection to the entire college admissions process, they may well be more able to cope with the challenges of independent adulthood in college and beyond.

Students who have attended high schools with abundant academic, extracurricular, and personnel resources, however, have often been able to go further academically. Moreover, because of the wealth of their personal experiences, such students frequently offer a broader, more contemplative (as opposed to pragmatic) perspective on life.

The best thing about college is that students from diverse types of schools and dramatically different walks of life end up there together. No matter how limited or plentiful the opportunities were at your high school, the entire playing field is leveled once you arrive at college. And having to interact with students from very different backgrounds than your own is just as much of an education—and, often, stretch—as the classes themselves, regardless of where you went to high school.