Actually Maclaurin almost didn't become a rower. He only picked up the sport in high school after being cut from the tennis team. Two years later, as a junior, he was a member of the high school national championship boat at New Hampshire's St. Paul.
At Harvard, rowing has been at the center of a busy life. He has rowed all four years and served as co-captain of the lightweight varsity team as a senior.
A joint concentrator in East Asian Studies and Anthropology, MacLaurin will be moving to the business world next year, working for an Internet consulting firm in Boston.
"My rowing career is almost done," he ruminates. "It's going to leave a hole in my life, but I see it as time to move on. I'll look back on it with fond memories.
"Harvard is a tough place to be in the sense that everyone is so successful," he continues. "You feel like you're behind. I didn't feel that way for rowing."
With a pair of national championship in high school and college, as well as a world record, he certainly shouldn't.