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  • Famous Harvard Rejects

    Every famous person who were not graduated from Harvard, may have been rejected by Harvard. But we have no way of knowing unless they are not embarrassed to tell us. So please comment on this article and let us know.

    Rejections aren’t uncommon. Harvard accepts only a little more than 7% of the 29,000 undergraduate applications it receives each year (including 2,000 high school valedictorians are rejected each year.)  Some of the rejects will end up to be celebrities such as Nobel laureates or  billionaire .  They include investor Warren Buffet, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass, Rolling Stone magazine founder Jann Wenner, NBC “Today” show host Meredith Vieira, former “NBC Nightly News” anchor Tom Brokaw, New Yorker magazine editor David Remnick, CNN founder Ted Turner, folk rock legend Art Garfunkel, Matt Groening, creator of the animated television series “The Simpsons,” Sun Microsystems chairman Scott McNealy, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center president Harold Varmus, and Columbia University President Lee Bollinger round out the list.

    Warren Buffet

    Mr. Buffett regards his rejection at age 19 by Harvard Business School as a pivotal episode in his life. Since Warren Buffet grew up before college was invented, he could not experience the thin envelope from Harvard College. Instead Buffet got rejected from HBS in 1950 at age 19 for being “too young,” and for being a prominent sharecropper (seriously – Buffet used his paper boy proceeds as a youth to start a “farmland leasing” racket).  Looking back, he says Harvard wouldn’t have been a good fit. But at the time, he “had this feeling of dread” after being rejected in an admissions interview in Chicago, and a fear of disappointing his father. As it turned out, his father responded with “only this unconditional love…an unconditional belief in me,” Mr. Buffett says. Exploring other options, he realized that two investing experts he admired, Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, were teaching at Columbia’s graduate business school. He dashed off a late application, where by a stroke of luck it was fielded and accepted by Mr. Dodd. From these mentors, Mr. Buffett says he learned core principles that guided his investing. The Harvard rejection also benefited his alma mater; the family gave more than $12 million to Columbia in 2008 through the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, based on tax filings.

    The lesson of negatives becoming positives has proved true repeatedly, Mr. Buffett says. He was terrified of public speaking — so much so that when he was young he sometimes threw up before giving an address. So he enrolled in a Dale Carnegie public speaking course and says the skills he learned there enabled him to woo his future wife, Susan Thompson, a “champion debater,” he says. “I even proposed to my wife during the course,” he says. “If I had been only a mediocre speaker I might not have taken it.”

    Harold Varmus
    Harold Varmus, winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine, says getting rejected twice by Harvard Medical School, where a dean advised him to enlist in the military, was soon forgotten as he plunged into his studies at Columbia University’s med school.
    Dr. Varmus, the Nobel laureate and president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, was daunted by the first of his two turndowns by Harvard’s med school. He enrolled instead in grad studies in literature at Harvard, but was uninspired by thoughts of a career in that field. After a year, he applied again to Harvard’s med school and was rejected, by a dean who chastised him in an interview for being “inconstant and immature” and advised him to enlist in the military. Officials at Columbia’s medical school, however, seemed to value his “competence in two cultures,” science and literature, he says.

    If rejected by the school you love, Dr. Varmus advises in an email, immerse yourself in life at a college that welcomes you. “The differences between colleges that seem so important before you get there will seem a lot less important once you arrive at one that offered you a place.”

    Scott McNealy
    McNealy graduated from Harvard with an A.B. in economics but was rejected from HBS.  McNealy, who had a notoriously crap work ethic and a penchant for hockey (buggery on ice), eventually went to Stanford Business School, but not before the Cardinal rejected him twice.  Rejected once, and then again, by business schools at Stanford and Harvard, Scott McNealy practiced the perseverance that would characterize his career. A brash economics graduate of Harvard, he was annoyed that “they wouldn’t take a chance on me right out of college,” he says. He kept trying, taking a job as a plant foreman for a manufacturer and working his way up in sales. “By my third year out of school, it was clear I was going to be a successful executive. I blew the doors off my numbers,” he says. Granted admission to Stanford’s business school, he met Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla and went on to head Sun for 22 years

    Ted Turner
    Time puts rejection letters in perspective, says Ted Turner. He received dual rejections as a teenager, by Princeton and Harvard, he says in an interview. Little Ted got turned away from Harvard College in 1957 for being “an average student,” which, if you’re rich, means “fucking retarded.” After getting a 470 on his SATs, Ted ended up sailing at Brown, where he was eventually kicked out for rich-kid antic misbehavior and an unhealthy love for swabbing the poop deck. What on earth do you have to do to get kicked out of Brown? The future America’s Cup winner attended Brown University, where he became captain of the sailing team. He left college after his father cut off financial support, and joined his father’s billboard company, which he built into the media empire that spawned CNN. Brown has since awarded him a bachelor’s degree.

    Lee Bollinger
    Columbia University President Lee Bollinger was rejected as a teenager when he applied to Harvard. He says the experience cemented his belief that it was up to him alone to define his talents and potential. His family had moved to a small, isolated town in rural Oregon, where educational opportunities were sparse. As a kid, he did menial jobs around the newspaper office, like sweeping the floor.

    Mr. Bollinger recalls thinking at the time, “I need to work extra hard and teach myself a lot of things that I need to know,” to measure up to other students who were “going to prep schools, and having assignments that I’m not.” When the rejection letter arrived, he accepted a scholarship to University of Oregon and later graduated from Columbia Law School. His advice: Don’t let rejections control your life. To “allow other people’s assessment of you to determine your own self-assessment is a very big mistake,” says Mr. Bollinger, a First Amendment author and scholar. “The question really is, who at the end of the day is going to make the determination about what your talents are, and what your interests are? That has to be you.”

    Jann Wenner
    Wenner got rejected by Harvard College in 1964 and went on to drop out of Berkeley to construct the ultimate college application essay – Rolling Stone (at least originally). The magazine’s first few years certainly captured a great “unique journey of self-discovery” narrative like the ones fawned over by college admissions officers.

  • Ivy League Over Rated

    At this very moment, all over the country and potentially the world, high school students and their parents are planning and scheming to get into an Ivy League. Young people are groomed practically from birth to be attractive to mysterious and all-powerful admissions committees guarding the gates of the eight universities that comprise the “Ivy Leagues”.

    This is now so common, there is even a psychological malady known as “The Yale Syndrome”, a sort of obsession with college admission that creates an unusually proximate time horizon for a young person, the moment of college admission. Students who suffer from this affliction do not develop a plan for success in college, or in any aspect of their lives, beyond the arrival of that “fat envelope” detailing their acceptance. Oddly, they share many of the same concepts of time as terminally ill cancer patients.

    Parents view admission to one of these schools as a high grade on their parenting skills, and correspondingly view rejection as a low or failing grade. There is a great gnashing of teeth about the whole endeavor. But seldom does anyone really ask the question: “Are Ivy League schools over-rated?”

    How did this national obsession come about? First, let’s define what the Ivy League is. In one sense, the Ivy League is a collection of geographically proximate schools that formed a football conference in 1956. If you look at it another way, the Ivy League is a collective brand representing the pinnacle of American higher education. This is the Ivy League: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale. No other school is a member, in spite of what some alumni may claim.

    The Ivy League has not been a focus of fevered longing for very long. For most of this nation’s history, college was a local endeavor. The best and the brightest did not go far to go to college. Then, a convergence of societal trends in the late part of the last century quietly nationalized education, without anyone really noticing. The advent of cheap air travel–and the breakdown of regional differences due to television and the migration of educated workers throughout the country–combined to make bright young people look nationally for college choices. So this collection of venerable schools became a focus of their attentions. The problem is that young people and their families didn’t catch on to the level of competition that this change entailed.

    As college became a middle-class right instead of an upper-class privilege, a lot more students wanted in to what they perceived to be the most elite schools. One Ivy League school now rejects over 90 percent of the students who apply, and rejects over half of the students who apply with perfect SAT scores. Think about that.

    That’s where we are today. Everyone in the country wants into the same handful of schools. But what do you get with an Ivy League education, especially as an undergraduate? Is it really the best in the country? These are undeniably good schools, but there are also one hundred other schools that do as good or better a job at educating undergraduates.

  • Financial Aid – Premier Schools

    Stanford’s announcement came two months after Harvard publicized its expensive new financial aid policies and over a month after Yale and Dartmouth followed suit with their own. Since Harvard’s announcement in December (at which time it saw its application rate spike by 19 percent), other top ranked schools including Williams, Princeton, Swarthmore, Cornell, Northwestern, University of Pennsylvania, Bowdoin, Pomona, Cal Tech, Duke and Davidson have announced new financial aid policies in what some people consider an effort to “keep up with the Harvard’s.”

    Similar to Harvard and many other elite universities, on February 20, Stanford University announced a new financial aid policy dramatically increasing the eligible amount of aid for middle-income families. The announcement comes as the latest in a series of policy revisions over the past three years designed to ease the burden of paying a tuition averaging $47,000 a year and to ensure that no high school student considering applying to Stanford decides not to because of cost.

    In addition, the plan also calls for eliminating student loans. All students qualifying for need-based financial aid no longer need to take out the expected $4,000 loan before receiving money from the scholarship fund. Beginning in the 2008-09 school year, students are only expected to earn $2,500 from working during the school year and earn approximately $2,000 over the summer.

    Each fall, the financial aid program is reevaluated by the Financial Aid Office, the Dean of Admission and Financial Aid, the Budget Office, the Provost, and the President, with consultation from the Board of Trustees. Cooper added, “There are no specific plans in the works for more changes at this time. We will be evaluating the success of our current changes next fall.”

    The changes were made possible through an increase in the endowment payout and doubling the financial goal of the Stanford Challenge, an effort to increase fundraising for the university, to $200 million. The Board of Trustees approved the increase in endowment payout from 5% to 5.5%, or by $160 million, on June 14, 2007, at the time intending to fund capital improvement projects.

    The announcement follows the House of Representative’s passing of the College Opportunity and Affordability Act, which aims to expose the allegedly corrupt relationship between expensive colleges and loan agencies and give greater transparency to the consumer. The Senate has put forth its own version of the bill. If passed, the law would require colleges to report financial information that Stanford University officials claim to be unproductive and difficult, namely revealing the rate of their endowment spending.

    Many people believe Stanford’s increase in endowment spending on financial aid from five to 5.5 percent this year is aimed to counteract the repealed provision of the College Opportunity and Affordability Act that would have required colleges to spend at least five percent of their endowment on financial aid. But the Board of Trustees approved the increase in endowment payout in June, nearly five months before the act’s proposal. As far back as 2003, Republicans had been discussing a bill that would penalize colleges that raised tuition significantly faster than inflation.

    These policy revisions have also coincided with and followed those of other top ranked schools. In 2006, Stanford eliminated educational costs for families earning less than $45,000. Harvard had enacted a similar policy in 2004 and Yale in 2005.

  • How will schools help fund families?

    How exactly do all the schools start to help poor families, or even middle class?

    Harvard took the lead. Two years ago, Harvard implemented a policy in which students whose parents earn a $60,000 or less no longer pay for tuition or room and board. Stanford has just adopted the same policy, adding that students whose parents earn $100,000 must only pay room and board. Stanford Financial Aid has not provided a formula for evaluating aid for students who come from families with income over $100,000.

    Princeton has taken a similar approach in which it evaluates aid on a case by case basis rather than the more formulaic sliding scales that Yale and Harvard have decided to use. At Stanford and Princeton, students in the income bracket range between $60,000-100,000 can expect to pay $11,000 or less, approximately the cost of room and board.

    But at Harvard and Yale, students in the income range $60,000-120,000 can expect only to pay on a sliding scale between 1 and 10% of their income ($600-12,000), which is significantly less than students at Stanford. Students at Harvard and Yale from income brackets between $120,000 and $180,000 can expect to pay between $12,000-18,000. Cooper has refused to make comparisons between higher income students at Stanford and Harvard, saying she does not want to mislead them about their potential aid package. She cautioned that aid will be evaluated on an individual basis with a number of factors including home equity, other siblings in college, and cost of living taken into account.

    The new financial aid policy isolates the upper-middle class. Universities are increasing tuition fees for students who do not receive financial aid. It is called “Take from the Rich and Give to the Poor”. While the financial aid policies have made it less expensive than some state schools for students from households less than $100,000, colleges generally remains much more expensive for students from households with income well over $100,000. State schools also usually offer merit aid, which can often significantly decrease the expense for top students.

  • Popular Universities

    Which university is the most popular one?
    Of course, Harvard University tops the list. You may believe Stanford to be the second, but you are wrong. You will be surprised that Brigham Young University-Provo ranked second.

    Recently U.S. News and World Report ranked colleges by the percentage of students accepted who actually wind up attending. In college terms, it is known as the “yield.” 79 percent of the students selected by Harvard enroll at the Massachusetts school. That is why Harvard ranked the first. Brigham Young University-Provo has 77% yield, ranked the second for the yield even though the school only ranked 113th by traditional method. University of Nebraska-Lincoln is third, with a yield of 71 percent even though it is ranked 89th by traditional method. Stanford University only comes in fourth, with a yield of 70 percent, of course Stanford ranked 4th by traditional method. Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale University tied for fifth, each with a yield of 69 percent.

    U.S. News_Rank Acceptance_Rate Yield
    Harvard University (MA) 1 9% 79%
    Brigham Young University–Provo (UT) 113 74% 77%
    University of Nebraska–Lincoln 89 62% 71%
    Stanford University (CA) 4 10% 70%
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology 4 12% 69%
    Yale University (CT) 3 10% 69%
    Princeton University (NJ) 2 10% 68%
    University of Pennsylvania 6 16% 66%
    Yeshiva University (NY) 50 69% 65%
    University of Florida 49 42% 63%
    Columbia University (NY) 8 11% 59%
    Brown University (RI) 16 14% 56%
    Texas A&M University–College Station 64 76% 56%
    University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill 30 35% 56%
    University of Notre Dame (IN) 18 24% 56%
    Louisiana State University–Baton Rouge 130 73% 55%
    University of Texas–Austin 47 51% 54%
    Dartmouth College (NH) 11 15% 52%
    University of Virginia 23 35% 52%
    University of Georgia 58 54% 51%
    Kansas State University 130 95% 50%
    University of Alabama 83 64% 50%
    University of Oklahoma 108 89% 50%
    North Carolina State University–Raleigh 83 60% 49%
    Ohio State University–Columbus 56 59% 49%
    University of Missouri–Columbia 96 86% 48%
    University of Tennessee 108 71% 48%
    Cornell University (NY) 14 21% 47%
    Georgetown University (DC) 23 21% 47%
    University of Kentucky 116 77% 47%

    So why Brigham Young University has high yield? BYU accepted 74% of the 10,010 people who applied for admission in the summer term and fall semester of 2007. The majority of students at Brigham Young University have traveled the world to preach the doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the founders of Brigham Young University. It is the oldest existing institution within the LDS Church Educational System, is America’s largest religious university, and has the second-largest private university enrollment in the United States. Approximately 98% of the 34,000 students at BYU are LDS; two-thirds of its American students come from outside the state of Utah. The university’s primary focus is on undergraduate education. About 70% of student tuition is funded by LDS Church tithing funds, making tuition relatively less expensive than at similar private universities. It is the money! This explains the yield score.

    For BYU, the average ACT score and GPA for these admitted students was 27.9 and 3.78, respectively. Students from every state in the U.S. and from many foreign countries attend BYU. In the 2005-6 academic year, there were 2,396 foreign students, or 8% of enrollment. Slightly more than 98% of these students are active members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 2006, 12.6% of the student body represented ethnic minorities, mostly Asian/Pacific islanders and Hispanics.

    BYU received other reviews. Princeton Review has ranked BYU the best value for college in 2007, and its library is consistently ranked in the nation’s top ten–#1 in 2004 and #4 in 2007. BYU is also ranked #19 in the U.S. News and World Report’s “Great Schools, Great Prices” lineup, and #12 in lowest student-incurred debt. Due in part to the school’s emphasis on undergraduate research, BYU is ranked #8 nationally for the number of students who go on to earn PhDs, #1 nationally for students who go on to dental school, #6 nationally for students who go on to law school, and #10 nationally for students who go on to medical school. BYU is designated as a Carnegie research university with high research activity, one of the highest classifications by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

  • 2008 College Acceptance Rates

    These are 20 universities with low acceptance rates for 2008. Some of these are record rates such as Harvard’s 7.1%.

    Harvard University – 7.1%
    Yale University – 8.3%
    Princeton University – 9.5%
    Stanford University – 9.5%
    Columbia University – 10%
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology – 12%
    Dartmouth University – 13.2%
    Brown University – 13.3%
    Washington and Lee – 15%
    Swarthmore University – 15%
    University of Pennsylvania – 16.4%
    Bowdoin University – 18%
    Georgetown University – 18%
    Duke University – 19%
    University of Southern California – 21%
    University of California, Berkeley – 21.5%
    University of California, Los Angeles – 22.1%
    Cornell University – 22.9%
    Vanderbilt University – 23.1%
    New York University – 24%

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