Harvard Applicant Profile: Leadership Potential / Underserved Minority

Today's Harvard Applicant Profile is the leadership potential / underserved minority. Harvard has in recent years placed an emphasis on creating a diverse student body. This post is not meant to be a critique of those policies, but rather a statement of the reality they create. Under such policies, students are actively recruited from underserved groups, primarily for their leadership potential. Please note that underserved groups range across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic spectrums. Furthermore, leadership potential extends beyond politics to mean leadership within communities, be they social communities or academic ones. In other words, a poor Caucasian male student from the Deep South who is an Eagle Scout fits this profile as well as a well-to-do Pacific Islander female student who is interested in botany.

Why lump these together? Basically, this profile is for students who are unique due to their backgrounds and experiences, and who can hopefully take away from Harvard a broad, world perspective to advocate for their interest groups. They will serve as a voice for their communities in the future is the hope.

Clearly, either you fit this profile or you don't, and there isn't much one can actively do to change that. However, for those of you who have "non-traditional" backgrounds, i.e. didn't go to prep schools, don't have connections, don't have any particular talent, don't think that Harvard is out of your reach. If you have performed well academically in an environment where the odds were against you, Harvard may very well be interested in having you join its student body.

Next time, I will discuss the applicant profile that probably fits most people visiting this blog: the academic.