At 5 p.m. yesterday, about 30,000 high school seniors had an e-mail from the Harvard College admissions office arrive in their inbox. Of those 30,000 or so students, only 2,110 were lucky enough to be accepted to Harvard. And of those 2,110, only 5 were lucky enough to be interviewed by FlyBy just hours later. Here are their stories.
When Randi B. Michel of Cleveland, Ohio learned she had been admitted she was speechless. “I had to show the e-mail to my parents instead of saying anything,” she said.
Ralphie A. Haro, a student body president from Miami, was at a friend’s house when he looked at his phone and saw that the e-mail had arrived. When he told his friend he was too scared to open it, his pal went into the next room, opened the e-mail for him, and announced that he had been admitted.
Although Haro was also accepted at Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Duke, and University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, he said he is “90 percent sure” that he will come to Harvard.
Amanda R. Rodrigues of Monroe, CT, is even more certain that she’s coming to Cambridge for the next four years. “Obviously I know I’m going to Harvard,” she gushed. “My parents are sending in the check tomorrow. We’re going to visit on Saturday.”
“I just love the environment” at Harvard, she said. “Everyone is so different and so good at something. When I stepped on campus I just got this feeling that all I wanted was to be at this school.”
Daniel B. Cooney of Westchester, NY, was attracted by the surrounding area as well as the campus. “Boston is great. It’s the best place to go to college in the world,” Cooney said.
Another new admit said Harvard’s ballet company drew her here.
“One of the reasons I applied is that your ballet company is so sick. It’s amazing. I definitely want to be a part of that,” said Paula M. Maouyo, a Baltimore native who plans to study linguistics and Romance languages. “All your dancers are fierce.”
Echoing a grievance raised by many Harvard admits before her, Maouyo gently complained, “The first paragraph [of the admissions e-mail] failed to mention the word accepted. It said ‘we offer you a place in the Harvard Class of 2014.’ I reread it, like, five times.”
Nikhil R. Mulani of Lake Forest, Ill., agreed. “I thought I must have misread the e-mail,” he said. “So I read it again.”
Mulani, who serves as Governor of the Midwestern Region in the Junior State of America program and wishes to study classics and computer science, says he will be choosing between University of Chicago, New York University, Williams, and Harvard.