Posted by Rupal on November 12, 1999 at 16:20:18:
In Reply to: Re: Harvard Admissions posted by ly on November 02, 1999 at 23:44:56:
First of all, it's fine that your kid applied to Pomona -- great school. i applied there and got in. I might have gone, but it's not so well known on the East Coast even though on the West Coast it is quite equivalently rated in a sense to Stanford or any other big named school. And my better, more realistic reason is that it was very far from home. It's nice to be able to get home with a 1 hour plane flight.
Now the deal with Harvard is that we've got our bad-ed singers (I'm a soprano), only the vast majority of them are not music majors. Has your baritone son heard of the Harvard Glee Club? Only the oldest, preeminent choir in the United States. So, SOOOO good -=- their web site is http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~hgc. If your son also wants to consider other good choir schools, he should look into Cornell -- their director is fabulous as well. If he wants a coed choir at harvard, he can look into the group I'm in, the Harvard Radcliffe Collegium musi (the site is http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~hrcm but it has not been updated recently I believe) or the Harvard University Choir (http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~uchoir). These are all amazing groups filled with extraordinarily talented singers and overall musicians. Plus, musical theater here is really excellent. I don't know why he is under the impression that other ivy choirs are better than harvard. I've heard the singers of Princeton and Yale, and I do actually think that we are better, but it's just my opinion. I hear that Cornell beats us out, though. maybe because they have a much larger pool of students than we do. So how did I get Harvard to recognize my voice? I sent a tape to the vocal directors, and my current choir director actually told me last year that she was the one who listened to my tape and really liked my voice. So it is something that works -- he should go to a local studio for an hour, put in 3 or 4 songs (at least one foreign language) - sometimes schools like Stanford specify what they want, and he should send copies to all of his schools, including Pomona. Making a tape makes a huge difference -- it singles you out from the hundreds of other all-state singers that are applying to a school. My SAT was a 1470, but I really believe that when a score is over 1300 it is kind of in the range of people who are still considered. There are sports recruits at Harvard who have under 1000 SAT scores (not that I respect this or condone it; i actually have a big problem with it). I'd say that an SAT does not make you or break you. But if he doesn't want to go to Harvard, that's fine. I'd say that for wherever he applies, he should definitely tell them that he is very itnerested in Russian -- it is something that is unusual and will make him stand out; colleges look for groups of students that are well rounded, so they want their sportsy students, their singers, their Russian experts.
~Rupal
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: Okay, Rupal, tell me about their chorus, because my kid is a bad ed b-baritone and he hasn't even considered Harvard. Clearly that's a mistake from what you say. His SAT score is a 1340 (700 in math, 640 in verbal) Do you think he should apply? His intrest is Russian: he's a stellar Russian student (but not in anything else, unless you consider theater and singing Core subjects) Wants to get his "day " in some kind of diplomacy work, but wants to keep a thumb in the singing-theater pie as well. So, tell me (and all others, as well) how YOU did it! And what your major is. I think you're NOT a business major: you may be just the voice my kid is looking for with regard to Harvard! :) Respond quickly, though,; time is running out! LY