Just 16, Saheela O. Ibraheem ’15 waited in line, anxious to participate in a Harvard Square ritual—watching the R-rated Rocky Horror Picture Show late Saturday evening.

Her friend whispered to her in line, “Don’t worry, just give her the card, and she won’t notice.”

Ibraheem slipped her HUID card under the glass window and waited.

“It felt like an eon and a half, waiting anxiously as she inspected my card, seeing the date and meticulously calculating in her head exactly what it meant,” Ibraheem said.

The cashier passed the ID back. “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you in. You must be 17 to buy a ticket.”

While most Harvard freshman are 17 or 18 years old when they arrive on campus, every year Harvard also admits much younger students. Though these young students prove their academic prowess in the admissions process, their age can pose challenges. Some of these are legal hurdles: none of the students in this story will be of legal drinking age while in college. None were able to apply for internships, vote for their preferred political candidates, or even buy cold medicine at the local CVS during their freshman year. Perhaps more importantly, some young students say they face social obstacles when they arrive on campus.

But for the most part, these students learned how to be the youngest person in the room before they ever got to Harvard.

“It was more noticeable in high school, because I went to a small private school so everyone knew,” Ibraheem said. “People would view me differently.”

Now, at Harvard, other students help her fit in.

After getting turned away for the Rocky Horror Picture Show, she found a stranger old enough to help her buy a ticket.

Embarrassed by the experience, Ibraheem said she doesn’t expect to head to an R-rated movie again until May when she turns 17.

“It was embarrassing as a college student to beg someone to buy me a ticket.” she said. “[But] as bad as it sounds, it was an experience, and I’m glad I can tell the story.”

‘NO AGE LIMITS’

Harvard does not consider age as a factor when admitting students to the incoming freshmen class, administrators say.

“We have no age limits. We’re really looking at individuals on the basis of individual achievement and personal characteristics,” said Marlyn E. McGrath ’70, the Harvard College director of admissions. “Certainly, maturity and self-direction and the capacity to thrive and benefit at Harvard is always a factor, but none of those qualities are associated in any way that we know with chronological age.”