4 ms·
I'm curious: does anyone know the context of the grades in the application? I saw actual grades listed in three places (pages 3, 17 and 26). He seems to have
by jontas 14y ago
I'm curious: does anyone know the context of the grades in the application? I saw actual grades listed in three places (pages 3, 17 and 26). He seems to have received scores ranging from 50-85. Are these out of 100? If so, it appears he wasn't a great student. He was ranked 65th out of 110 students (page 17).
I'm not questioning his intelligence, he was clearly brilliant. However, I find it interesting that he was an underachiever in high school (something I'm sure the HN community can empathize with).
The letter from his father (page 13) says:
"Jack has a very brilliant mind for the things in which he is interested, but is careless and lacks application in those in which he is not interested. This is, of course, a bad fault. However, he is quite ambitious to try and do the work in three years. I know how the authorities feel about this and I have my own opinion, but it is a gesture that pleases me very much because it seems to be the beginning of an awakening ambition"
I feel like this statement would've been equally accurate on my own college applications.
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- zerostar07 14y agoOne can certainly question his performance at that age. It's kind of reassuring actually, not all great people have to be born such. However, why would his father write things like that?
- ojiikun 14y agoI can't speak for Harvard in particular, but back in the '30s, grade inflation hadn't yet taken hold, so it was quite normal for there to be many students with Cs, rather than 90% As like today. http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/the-history-of-college-grade-inflation/ http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/the-history-of-...
- abalone 14y agoThat doesn't explain his middle-of-the-pack class ranking. Even at a prestigious boarding school that's not exactly "Harvard material". (Well, I guess it is...) Clearly he got in because of family connections.
- jmduke 14y agoStraight C's at Andover/Exeter are more impressive to a dean of admissions than a 4.0 at a public school. (Not saying that one is more difficult than another, as I honestly have no clue.)
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