Not all straight-A students are created equal. Some of them got straight A’s because they wanted to go to selective colleges and simply willed their way to a top GPA. And others achieved because they were naturally curious intellectuals who just couldn’t turn off their desire to learn. All of them have worked hard and deserve to be proud. But the members of the latter group are the ones who get into the highly selective colleges.
Arun pointed me to the “Preparing for College” section of Harvard’s website. We’ve rarely seen a school state quite so directly and succinctly not just that you should take rigorous classes, but why you should take them. I’ll share some highlights below. But please read this before you walk up to a rep from a highly selective college at a college fair and ask, “What’s your average GPA?” It’s not about the GPAs at those schools. It’s about the intellect that drove kids to earn those numbers.
English Literature
…We hope that by the time you arrive at college you will love reading for its own sake, and that you will have gone beyond the books you have been required to read into areas of your own interest – fiction, biography, essays, or poetry – and that you will come to care about manner, as well as matter. Besides reading novels for what they can tell you about life in times and places other than your own, you will notice how authors treat different problems or how they treat the same problems in different ways…You can bring to college no more valuable a possession than a mind well-stocked from reading. Just as speaking is modeled on hearing, so writing is modeled on reading. Every good writer was a good reader first.
Foreign Language
…You should leave secondary school knowing at least one foreign language well enough to read it easily and pronounce it acceptably. Knowing a foreign language enables you to enter another culture and to understand its ideas and its values."
History
…Dates and places, names and events, are not trivial facts. They are the very stuff of history. "Concepts" are useless without information to back them up. If you do not know when the invention of gunpowder affected warfare, you will not fully understand the rise of nations from city states. If you are ignorant about when Commodore Perry arrived in Japan, you will not grasp the impetus for modernization in East Asia. If you are unfamiliar with the invention of the cotton gin, you will not comprehend the expansion of slavery westward in the United States."
Research and writing…
In writing a scholarly research paper, you depend on information from authors who know more than you do about the subject. Try to read with common-sense questions in mind. For example, for a paper on emigration from the American colonies in 1776, you might ask "Who were the people who chose to flee to Canada when the American Revolution began? Where in Canada did they go? Why? What became of them? Did they go on to England?" If you read with curiosity and purpose, you will be able to take notes more easily, to weigh one author's view against another, to categorize your research under leading questions, and to form your own observations and opinions.
Mathematics
…You should acquire the habit of puzzling over mathematical relationships. When you are given a formula, ask yourself why it is true and if you know how to use it. When you learn a definition, ask yourself why the definition was made that way. It is the habit of questioning that will lead you to understand mathematics rather than merely to remember it, and it is this understanding that your college courses require. In particular, you should select mathematics courses that ask you to solve hard problems and that contain applications ("word problems"). The ability to wrestle with difficult problems is far more important than the knowledge of many formulae or relationships."
Science
…Even if you have no intention of becoming a scientist, an engineer, or a physician, you should study some science throughout secondary school…A desire for knowledge is not the only motivation for studying science. Broadening the range of human activity through technological advance, fighting disease, and controlling the earth's environment, also spur scientists and engineers to discovery and invention. How did the universe begin? What laws govern its behavior? What is life? Did life result from the chemical reactions of inanimate matter? Could it? How does a fertilized egg become a baby? What are memory and consciousness? Does the human mind consist of more than a large number of interactive nerve cells in the brain? The study of science begins with the habit of asking questions. These questions are fascinating in themselves and their answers can be equally engaging. To answer such questions, scientists perform experiments, make measurements, and develop theories to explain and predict the phenomena they observe. Such experiments and observations are the essence of science and are a critical part of secondary school as well as college science education."
Conclusion
…While the heart of the matter will always lie in academic promise, we prize candidates with special talents and with outstanding personal qualities; we are interested in students who excel in one or more extracurricular activities; and we seek a distinctive and diverse national and international student body. Most of all we look for students who make the most of their opportunities and the resources available to them, and who are likely to continue to do so throughout their lives."