UNDERGRADUATE ADMISSIONS GUIDE
Your grades are part of the story. Your questions, commitments, and experiences with other people help tell the rest. Start here to explore the education and prepare your application.
Fall 2027 entry
GET TO KNOW THE EDUCATION
You apply to Harvard College, not to a particular major. At Harvard, your main field is called a concentration; you choose it during your second year.
EARLY IN COLLEGE
Try courses and discover questions you want to follow further.
SECOND YEAR ONWARD
Choose your main field in your third term, with room to change direction.
General Education, study across academic areas, writing, language, and quantitative reasoning sit alongside your concentration and electives.
General Education: You take four Gen Ed courses, one in each category: Aesthetics & Culture; Ethics & Civics; Histories, Societies, Individuals; and Science & Technology in Society.
Distribution: You also take one departmental course in each of three divisions: Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, and Science and Engineering and Applied Science.
Writing and data: You take Expository Writing, a one-semester course in analytic writing, in your first year, plus a course in Quantitative Reasoning with Data.
Language: You meet a language requirement in a language other than English.
Your advisers: In your first year, you have an academic adviser, a proctor who lives in your dorm, a resident dean, and a Peer Advising Fellow (an older student trained to help first-years).
Declaring: You declare a concentration in your third term, the fall of sophomore year, and can change it later. Concentration advisers then guide you from introductory courses to advanced work and, where it applies, a thesis or final project.
Your options: Harvard offers about 50 concentrations and 49 secondary fields. You can also combine two concentrations as a joint or double concentration.
Your first year: You share a suite with other first-years, and a proctor lives in each entryway. First-years eat most meals in Annenberg Hall.
Housing Day: In the spring of your first year, Housing Day tells you which of Harvard’s 12 Houses you’ll join as a sophomore.
UNDERSTAND WHAT HARVARD CONSIDERS
Harvard’s current guidance names academic achievement, community involvement, extracurricular distinction, and character. The court record helps explain why these are more than separate boxes to tick.
ACADEMIC POTENTIAL
The historical academic assessment drew on school context, recommendations, and submitted academic work as well as grades and tests.
Letrado’s adviceChoose a question you pursued beyond an assignment. Explain what you investigated and how your understanding developed.
CONTRIBUTION & COMMITMENT
Harvard’s current activity guidance emphasizes contribution over quantity, including paid work and family responsibilities.
Letrado’s adviceDescribe what you did, whom it helped, and how long you stayed involved. Include the responsibilities that shaped your available time.
CHARACTER & RELATIONSHIPS
The historical personal assessment considered qualities such as integrity, kindness, and resilience. Today, Harvard still asks teachers and counselors about character.
Letrado’s adviceGive an honest example of listening, taking responsibility, or changing your mind. Choose recommenders who have seen you do these things.
INSIDE THE 2019 COURT RECORD
The trial findings in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard described six rating categories. School support included separate teacher and counselor assessments.
Academic, extracurricular, athletic, personal, and school support.
The complete application, in context. Not a mechanical average.
The findings describe reading procedures for the Classes of 2014 through 2019. These historical categories are not a verified Fall 2027 scoring system.
WHAT CHANGED IN 2023
The Supreme Court held the challenged race-conscious admissions programs unlawful. It allowed consideration of an individual’s experiences involving race when tied to qualities or contributions, but not essays used to recreate prohibited racial preferences.
WHAT THE RESEARCH FOUND
Chetty, Deming, and Friedman’s Opportunity Insights study links the high-income admissions advantage at Ivy-Plus colleges to three factors: legacy preferences, athletic recruitment, and nonacademic credentials.
The study covers historical U.S. citizen and permanent-resident cohorts with U.S.-based parents. Its detailed nonacademic analysis uses an unnamed institution, not a publicly identified Harvard sample.
WHAT HARVARD DESCRIBES
Harvard assigns interviews, partly by where alumni are available. Your interviewer usually emails you.
By video, phone, or in person. Your interviewer has your name, contact details, and school, but not your application.
Most areas can’t interview every applicant, and there are no interviews in Cambridge. Your application is complete without one and still gets a full evaluation.
WHAT HARVARD SAYS
Harvard says a student’s essay “should reflect their own content, writing style, and English proficiency.” Its Fall 2027 supplement allows help or guidance, “both human and technological,” but says you “may not submit substantive content generated by other sources.”
Harvard also cites the Common Application’s fraud rule, which covers passing off “the substantive content or output of an artificial intelligence platform, technology, or algorithm” as your own.
PLAN THE APPLICATION
Early Action is nonbinding, but it limits other early applications. Harvard says it does not give an advantage to students who apply early.
Restrictive Early Action
Nov 1, 2026Regular Decision
Jan 1, 2027Applications are due by 11:59 p.m. in your local time. Restrictive Early Action lets you compare offers before deciding, while following Harvard’s early-application restrictions. Regular Decision gives you more time to develop your writing and include your latest work.
Common Application, personal essay, and Harvard questions. The fee is $95, with a waiver available for financial hardship if you also plan to apply for aid.
Required; you can self-report scores. Access-related exceptions are explained below.
Transcript, school report, counselor letter, and midyear report. Enrolling students also send a final school report.
Choose teachers from different academic subjects who know your work well.
If you cannot access the SAT or ACT: In exceptional access circumstances, Harvard permits AP exam results, or actual or predicted IB, GCSE/A-level, or national leaving-exam results. You can explain your circumstances in the application. Read the requirements before relying on an alternative.
When to test: Harvard would like early applicants’ scores by the end of October but accepts November tests. For Regular Decision, Harvard recommends November tests or earlier but accepts the December SAT or February ACT.
If you are applying internationally: The requirements are the same wherever you go to school. English-proficiency tests are optional and do not replace the SAT or ACT. If an alumni interview is unavailable, your application is not disadvantaged.
If you are applying through QuestBridge: Harvard participates in the National College Match. Follow that route’s separate instructions and deadlines. Finalists answer two Harvard questions, of 150 and 400 words. If you rank Harvard and match, you’re expected to enroll. If you don’t match with any college, Harvard reconsiders you in Regular Decision after you fill out the QuestBridge Regular Decision Form.
If you are considering Early Action: You generally cannot also apply early to another private U.S. college or through a binding public-university plan. Nonbinding public, military-academy, and international applications are permitted; check Harvard’s full rules for special scholarship and other exceptions. You can still apply elsewhere in Regular Decision or Early Decision II, including after a deferral.
Optional materials: Harvard says supplementary materials, such as music recordings, artwork, or samples of academic work, are neither expected nor required. Send them only if they would significantly add to your application.
Midyear and final reports: In mid-February, ask your school to send your midyear report with your latest grades. If you enroll, your school sends a final report by July 1.
Demonstrated interest: Harvard says it doesn’t consider demonstrated interest when reviewing applications.
WRITE IN YOUR OWN VOICE
150 words maximumFor each of Harvard’s five required responses, alongside your Common Application essay. Harvard says each can be answered in about 100 words.
You do not need a dramatic story for every answer. Give each response a different job, and choose details you can explain naturally.
Letrado’s adviceAbout 100 words is enough, so don’t pad an answer to reach 150. One specific detail will say more than a summary.
Choose an experience that shaped your perspective. Help the reader see how it affects the way you take part in a community.
Describe a real disagreement, how you communicated, and what you learned. The interesting part may be where your thinking changed.
Work, family responsibilities, activities, or travel can all be meaningful. Focus on what the experience changed, rather than repeating your activity list.
Connect what you hope to learn with a question or contribution you want to pursue. You do not need a fixed career plan.
Choose three details that reveal your habits, interests, or personality. This is room for the person behind the application.
YOUR COMMON APP ESSAY
WHAT THE COMMON APP ASKS
The prompts are the same as last year’s. The last one lets you write about any topic you choose, and it was last year’s most popular choice (28%).
You write the essay once, in the part of the application your colleges share, so write it for every reader rather than one school. Each college’s own questions come separately.
LETRADO’S ADVICE
Write the essay no one else could write. If another applicant could have written a sentence, swap it for something only you would say.
Sound like yourself. Plain sentences and everyday words work better than impressive vocabulary.
Tell it as it happened. Keep to the facts, seen from where you stood. Don’t add drama or invent details.
Skip the big lesson. A small, true observation shows more than a claim about growth.
Any topic can work. An ordinary moment, or a setback, often says more than a trophy.
MAKE ROOM FOR THE FINANCIAL QUESTION
Harvard considers applicants without regard to their ability to pay. International students have the same access to Harvard’s need-based aid.
ANNUAL FAMILY INCOME
Aid covers billed costs.
ANNUAL FAMILY INCOME
Aid covers tuition, with further support based on your circumstances.
ANNUAL FAMILY INCOME
You may still qualify for aid. Check before ruling it out.
These guidelines assume typical assets, which usually don’t include your family’s home equity or retirement savings. They’re also based on an average U.S. cost of living and taxes. Your aid offer will explain any student contribution toward books and personal expenses.
Read Harvard’s financial-aid policy (opens in a new tab)PUBLISHED 2026–27 COSTS · BEFORE AID
$95,134–$100,134Includes estimated books, personal expenses, and variable travel. Health insurance adds $4,954 unless waived with qualifying coverage.
For fall 2027 entry, use the 2027–28 budget when published.
Full published cost breakdown (opens in a new tab)Letrado’s adviceIf there’s any chance you’ll need aid, apply on time. Asking won’t affect your admission, and late forms can slow your aid decision.
Harvard’s net price calculator can help you begin a family conversation; it is an estimate, not your final award.
Estimate your family’s cost (opens in a new tab)ADMITTED TO HARVARD · D.K.
Her first draft sounded like a position paper. A real disagreement about a school lunch-subsidy proposal brought her own thinking and experience into the story.
The proposal looked logical on paper.
The model missed part of the daily experience of the students it was meant to help.
Her essay described the discomfort of being challenged and how it changed her thinking.
The reader could see how she listened and learned, not only the position she held.
HER HARVARD OUTCOME
Offered a place at Harvard College
HER CHOICE: PENNThe Quadrangle, University of Pennsylvania · Photo: WestCoastivieS / Wikimedia Commons, CC0. Cropped.
With four offers, she compared aid packages and the flexibility to study economics and philosophy.
ALSO ADMITTED TO
WHEN YOU’D LIKE A HAND
Bring your questions to a free 45-minute introduction with your proposed mentor. Afterward, we’ll email a personalized plan with recommended next steps.
