General News Parkland HS survivor David Hogg plans to attend Harvard

Good for him?

I'm not sure why this is news except to stick it to Laura Ingraham. I suppose I have no problem with that.

 

Yay I’m proud of him. I’m also glad for what him and his class mates are standing up for.

 

The guy clearly only got in because he's famous now. Good for him and everything, but if the parkland shooting didn't happen he would not have been accepted with a 4.1 GPA, most Harvard kids have like a 5.0 or even 6.0 with honors and AP classes. That's how Ivy league schools do things - anyone famous or very rich goes to the head of line so the school can get either publicity or prestige/money/donations from them regardless of their academics (case in point, George W. Bush who nearly failed out of high school and still got into Harvard just because his dad was famous and rich, and Trump who had average grades and still got into U.Penn)

 

I think it's probably true that he wouldn't have made it in before. I, personally, don't think it has much to do with fame though. The fact of the matter is that while most people who attend Harvard have near perfect GPAs and test scores, that's never been sufficient for admission. It's always been about if you can tell a convincing story of who you are and how you would benefit, and benefit from, the incoming class. The fact is that he's a different person than he was before this all happened and can tell that story of leadership and determination in a way that he couldn't before. It's possible that he always had this potential, but I doubt even he knew it before. Now everyone knows. I, for one, am proud that my alma mater chose to admit him. I doubt it was a difficult decision.

 

According to the 2018 stats you can get into Harvard with a GPA as low as 3.3.

4.1 is the average GPA to be accepted and even without the Parkland massacre he is obviously a leader with strong communication skills, so he would have had a very good chance of being accepted anyway.

 

However, if anything I would say his social activism after the Parkland shooting rather than his "fame" would have given him the edge in getting into Harvard. If anything the incident reinforced his leadership and communication skills which were always there but strengthened in a situation of extreme stress and difficulty.

That is a quality that cannot be represented in a GPA score.

 

Undergraduate admission to the Ivy League is a frankly absurd process which involves arbitrary (or nastily systematic) culls of perfectly eligible applicants because of how unbelievably competitive it is to get in. I think those doubting how he deserves admission should keep in mind just how many people can't go to these universities, not because they're insufficiently talented but because there's a kafkaesque bureaucracy created to determine which tiny proportion of the most academically and socially successful school-leavers in America (and a lesser extent, the world) actually gets through.

I'm just a bit sceptical as to how this is really news. He's a private person who is barely more than a child, whatever his qualities.

 

"if" and "because" are such funny words