The Perfect Fit: Harvard, Passion for Writing and Learning vs. Excellent Sheep?

What is the perfect university?  What is the perfect student? A lot of people think they know. My Ngoc’s words should give many an education about perfection. They will also educate many about courage, inner strength, and the ability to overcome the odds.

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My Ngoc at age 4

      1.    Where did you grow up and where did you go to  secondary school?

I grew up in a quiet suburb in Northeast Atlanta called Lilburn. My high school was a large public high school of about 3,000 kids called Parkview High School.  

2. Were you always a star student and how would you describe your approach to learning? Are there some areas you particularly love?

For as long as I could remember I had been either the top or one of the top students in my classes. My family moved to the US in 1992, when I was 1 year old. Since they only spoke Vietnamese at home, I didn't get to practice my English so I was in ESL classes until the 3rd grade. The moment I got out though I was transferred to the gifted program. I don't know if I have an approach to learning. I've just always been very curious, and it helped when my teachers made subjects seem very interesting. I remember in the third grade (everything happened in the third grade), I would go to the library every day and check out nonfiction books about all sorts of animals. I never really had good study habits, since I just kind of soaked in information as I thought about things. I love writing. I love science. I love art, and anything creative. I've come to see science and art as intertwined disciplines, both of which show the beauty of the universe.

3. How did you decide which schools to apply to? How many did you apply to? Did you do anything special like SAT prep? How helpful was your college counseling office? 

Honestly, I didn't even think about applying to any Ivy League schools until I noticed that my friends were applying to them. And I thought, if they're applying, I would probably be just as competitive of an applicant. Both of my sisters went to schools in Georgia though, so I thought I would just be in Georgia. I applied in total to UNC Chapel Hill, Georgia Tech, University of Maryland, Princeton, Yale, Brown, U Chicago, Columbia, and Harvard. I got into all of them except for Yale and was wait-listed at Princeton. (I remember I tried to suck up to my interviewer by telling her that she looked like Alicia Keys, and I don't think she was too pleased.) I applied to Harvard last, just on a whim, because the application was pretty simple. I didn't do any SAT prep--just got a book and taught myself. Our teachers were good at giving some SAT prep every now and then though. I remember the point when I realized that the SAT was all about--just knowing how to think, and that's when I was able to get good scores. I really didn't talk to my counseling office at all. My parents didn't go to college. I didn't even realize that we had counselors at our school, just kind of did my own thing and got lucky that I did the right things. 

My Ngoc with parents at high school graduation

4. Did you have a mentor or a teacher at school who was particularly inspiring to you? If so in what way did he or she change you?

Yes. One stands out to me now--Ms. Huie, who was my English teacher my sophomore year of high school. She was the one who saw my gift in writing and encouraged me to develop my talent. She taught me how to think critically, and not blindly. And with her support I submitted my writing to a national competition and received a National Writing Award. She taught me to work hard at what I love, and allowed me to get a glimpse of what it's like to live up to my potential.


5. You are one of the chosen few who ended up at what most consider the top university in the US so many will be interested in what you did to get in. Could you talk a little about the kinds of courses you took, the kinds of activities you were involved in and if at all possible the things you chose to talk about in your essays (if you’d be willing to share your essays this would of course be even better).

Freshman year was magical. I was at the best school in the world, in an exciting new city, and I was in love too with a boy of my dreams. I took classes about gender theory (which was quite exciting since I came from a rather conservative, southern town), religion and existentialism, visual theory (I love the VES department), and a graduate seminar on French colonialism (I learned so much about Vietnam and was really proud of my 20 page paper on the role of Vietnam's Latin alphabet in the formation of its modern identity). My world was expanding in ways I never thought were possible. On top of school, I comped and got into The Crimson, The Advocate (literary magazine), WIB (Women in Business), and WHRB (the radio station--I was in the jazz department). I think for a short while I even worked with the Small Claims Advisory Service and found it to be wretchedly boring, so I quit. I also volunteered with a Boston Refugee Youth Enrichment Program where we mentored Vietnamese immigrants. I quit that too because I felt like that the programs were a waste of time, not giving much to the children, and ultimately hurt them more because it is sad to see mentor after mentor leave you after a couple of months. If I wanted to do service work and be good person, I can just be nice on a daily basis. I took a gap year after freshman year due to mental health reasons. When I came back, I dropped all those activities besides the Advocate, but I do not regret comping them, since the comp process is very educational. Just the jazz comp taught me so much about essential jazz artists and jazz history.  Sophomore year I produced a play that my boyfriend at the time wrote. I also started a comics club with my friend, and we published a comics magazine every semester called The Crunch. Since then I've stayed committed to the Advocate, managing my own club, and doing research at a sleep lab at Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center (I ended up majoring in psychology, and this research in neuroscience was so so cool!).

As for what I wrote on my college application essays, I wrote one about bras--it was a long analogy about how the increasing complexity of the bras I wore, from basic sports bras in the fifth grade to the fancy frilly cupped bras in high school, corresponded to the increasing responsibilities and burdens I had growing up. The other essay was something about penguins and breaking the ice and learning that I could fly underwater (instead of on land) after reading a certain inspiring book. My admissions officer wrote me a personal note saying she really enjoyed the bra essay.

6. Why did you decide to enroll at Harvard? 

I really wanted to go to Columbia, but they gave me no money. Brown was okay, but didn't give me as much money as Harvard. So it boiled down between going to Harvard on a 30k scholarship or going to UNC on the Morehead Cain Scholarship. I had visited UNC before and felt like going there would be a repeat of high school (big fish in small pond). I also knew that I was insecure and needed to be comfortable with who I was, and being surrounded by all sorts of stars at Harvard would force me to do that. I also didn't know anything about Harvard other than that it was Harvard--this looking, golden, glittering promise of vast success--and that seemed too hard to give up. At first, however, I declined Harvard and said yes to the scholarship. For the next week though, I couldn't sleep or eat because I felt like I had made the worst decision of my life. So I called Harvard and asked them to take me back. They said yes, and then I told the scholarship committee at UNC that I would be declining the scholarship. They were really mad at me since I had already signed the contract, and for a while I thought I was going to go to jail.   

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Note: What follows is the answer that My Ngoc wrote in answer to this question that was posted on Quora.com

Harvard University: What is Harvard really like?

  

I can only speak for Harvard College.

Harvard is a very extreme place. You go there and everyone is extremely smart, extremely driven, extremely focused on attaining his or her goals. It is so extreme that it can become scary sometimes. When you have a bunch of people with high intelligence, but who are not necessarily mature or moral, you can get some pretty nasty results (that's how you get so many insecure, bright students going into Wall Street to make a lot of money even though it's screwing everyone else over).

Even the clubs are extreme. You don't just write for the newspaper. You have to go through a semester long competitive process to be selected into the Crimson. And after that, if you want to do well in the Crimson, you have to work your ass off and neglect your studies to be considered a true trooper. Kids here consider their extracurriculars a job. All social interactions have some sort of shady networking pre-professional slime to them.

A lot of students are really full of themselves. They spend all their time climbing the ladders of success and trying to win everything. Everyone is super busy all the time. You have to arrange lunches with your friends about two weeks in advance.

Harvard is not the type of place where you backstab your friend, but if your friend fell in a race, you would keep on running and not bend down to help. Students, for the most part, are only interested in their own benefit and will do things that look good, rather than things that are good.

But then again, there is the other extreme too. There are people who come to Harvard, not because of legacy or money, but because they are genuinely interested in the truth. I've met people who are so gifted at their focus, whether it's poetry, writing comic books, musical composition, or biomedical research, and they work on these things night and day. They thrive in the guidance of their professors, and I have faith that they will make a meaningful contribution someday. I try to stick to those people.

If you ask any student what they think about Harvard, most will say that they hate it, but that they found a great group of friends who keep them sane. Those who really really really love the place have some serious mental problems--either in that they are super disingenuous or are psychopaths, or are there really only to network and join the super elite circles of final clubs and whatnot.

Harvard is still a very elite place. You will feel out of place if you are anything but a white male. You will feel a bit uncomfortable if you come from a normal middle class family, because bit by bit you see just how much money your fellow peers have.

You will realize that Harvard doesn't care about you. Professors have office hours, yes, and they say to come, but their heart is not into it. Everyone at Harvard is there for their own benefit, for their research and for advancing their careers. Occasionally you will find professors who genuinely care, but they are the exception.

I knew going into Harvard that it wouldn't be easy, that Mother Harvard does not coddle. And I was right. It has been hard as hell. And it's sad to learn the truth about Harvard. But truth does make you stronger, and I would not be as strong as I am today if I didn't gain these hard lessons from my undergrad years.

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"Freshman Year my roommate and I won the Annenberg cooking competition. She made dessert and I made the entree-Thai Peanut chicken sliders".

Notes:

It's been a week since I first posted this answer and I've been pretty surprised (and kind of happy) at how many people it's reached. Here's some more thoughts after reading and replying to people's comments:

- I'm not trying to label Harvard as "good" or "bad." Just that is has a lot of good things and a lot of bad sides. It's obviously up to you to make your experience a good or a bad one, and multiple commentators have said that.

- I don't hate Harvard, and if allowed to I would go there again, albeit I would do it differently knowing what I know now. It has given me many good things (amazing research opportunities, friends, experiences, blah blah blah). The other answers already touched on that though and I didn't feel like being repetitive. Instead I tried to show that it is not the perfect brochure Harvard that most people have in mind. I focused a lot on the bad extremes because I know that's what people crave to hear about.

- No, I don't actually think that everyone who loves Harvard is a psychopath. I tried to be as objective as possible, though I am still human and swayed by my emotions. I didn't think much about my word choice because my writing just came out as a rant. But does everything I write have to be factually true?

- I'm also not trying to say that people can't and shouldn't have a good time at Harvard. A lot of people's comments have said that they had a great time, and I'm happy for them. I had a particularly rough time in my three years (that I would wish on no one), and that exposed me to a lot of the uglier sides that many of my friends have not had to face. I am glad, though, that there is so much discussion. Reading people's comments has expanded my view as well. It's good that we're having a discussion, and discussions are more fun when people have ranging opinions.

- I wrote this answer with no other intention then to educate as best as I could. I wrote it because sharing is caring. I'm sharing my experiences and thoughts so that people who go to Harvard can know at least know what to expect so that they can be spared any painful surprises.

So there. Hope this makes things clearer.

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7. Your experience at Harvard should be educational to many. It is a wonderful school, but that does not mean it is a perfect place by any stretch. If you had to do think about what you should have found out before you enrolled that you did not, what would those things be?

I wish I could have known just how cold it would be. I wish someone would have told me to buy a down coat. I wish people would have told me how different sophomore year and freshman year would be. They coddle you like crazy as a freshman with all these mentoring programs, and then come sophomore year you are left to sink or swim on your own. I wish I could have known that the high-pressure environment would make my childhood depression spiral out of control. And I wish someone could have prepared me for the immense culture shock. I had no idea what consulting was, what investment banking was, what hedge funds were.

My parents are nail technicians. I come from a very humble background, and a very small and nurturing environment. My universe expanded so quickly and I had very little to hold onto, considering there was no host family and I didn't know anyone in Cambridge already. I wish someone told me not to be in a serious relationship my freshman year because then I would have been able to bond more with friends (and that guy ended up cheating on me with 13 other girls over three years anyways). BUT, going to Harvard has made me so much smarter. And while it's tough, it pushes you to be better than you ever thought you could be, that is, if you don't break under the pressure, which I almost did. Being a Harvard alum also gives you a good connection base that can last a lifetime. All trade-offs. Pick and choose what you're okay with.


8.  If you were to give advice to parents and students about the college search, and the college choice what would you say?

You have to decide what you want out of college. If the first four years is just a way to get a degree, then any college will do. But if college is a chance for personal development and self discovery then in this case it would be useful to go to a school where you will be surrounded by an excellent peer group and thought provoking professors. You also have to know what type of environment allows you to thrive the most. You should choose to go somewhere where you would feel supported, have the room to grow, and be surrounded by good academic resources.

Pursuing a big name like Harvard might not be worth it if the environment is toxic to you. I admit that Harvard's environment is kind of toxic for the type of person I am, but I do not regret going there at all. To me, college is a time for development, and I've certainly developed in leaps and bounds over these past four years. I started out as an out of control, confused, excited freshman, and now I'm much more aware of who I am and what I want out of college, out of life.

"Me and my blockmates take a photoshoot in Harvard Square freshman year. We stayed friends throughout college. Freshman year I got my bangs cut." 

9. What do you think you want to pursue after graduation?  

My dream is to be a child and adolescent psychiatrist. I care deeply about mental health and want to help fight against the stigma against mental health and to prevent suicide. My other dream is to write books. 

My current project is to write and illustrate a children's book about fairy tales from Vietnam. I think these traditional stories have a lot of lessons to offer the world about the value of humility, loyalty, and perseverance. They also offer a different sort of delight than the Western children's stories I know.  I was lucky that my parents taught me a lot about Vietnamese culture, and I think there is a growing need for Vietnamese-American children to be in touch with their roots

I've already written one book (albeit self published) called The Washing Room in 2013 about my experience with depression. It has helped many people gain strength and courage to speak about their own mental health experiences, and I would say that was the highlight of my accomplishments so far. My story has a happy ending, and I think stories like that need to be shared. Nothing makes me happier than being able to use my words and experiences to help, inspire, and provide hope for others. 

 Anything else you want to add?

Nope! If you made it all the way down here, bravo! I just wrote a novella.

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I am grateful to My Ngoc’s willingness to share her experiences here. As she makes clear her experience it Harvard is not what all students go through. On the other hand, the atmosphere at elite schools these days have come under a lot of critical scrutiny.

Over the last several weeks, there have been many stories written about whether it is a good idea for student to enroll in an elite school. At the moment, the leading critic of elite education is William Deresiewicz. His book, Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life, takes aim at the elite schools in the US.

His critique extends beyond the Ivy League; it encompasses highly selective schools and a large swath of the secondary school communities that have turned getting into these schools into process that starts, in some cases, before birth:

When I speak in this book of elite education, I mean prestigious institutions like Harvard or Stanford or Williams as well as the larger universe of second-tier selective schools, but I also mean everything that leads up to and away from them: the private and affluent public high schools; the ever-growing industry of tutors and consultants, test-prep courses and enrichment programs; the admissions process itself, squatting like a dragon at the entrance to adulthood; the brand-name graduate schools and employment opportunities that come after the BA; and the parents and communities, largely upper middle class, who push their children into the maw of this machine. In short, our entire system of elite education.  Deresiewicz, William (2014-08-19). Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. Free Press. Kindle Edition.

Many publications and individuals seem to have taken much of what Deresiewicz says as definitive proof fall in lock step with the stereotypical description of the student bodies at elite schools.  Both My Ngoc and the data do seem to support some of Deresiewicz’s critiques:

“The numbers he does cite are damning. For example, 36 percent of Princeton’s class of 2011 went into finance alone, while the twin sirens of finance and consulting claimed about half of Harvard’s class of 2010.” 

The New York Times has joined in recently:

“The trouble starts at admission. Top universities woo thousands of teenagers to apply, but seek one defined type: the student who has taken every Advanced Placement class and aced every exam, made varsity in a sport, played an instrument in the state youth orchestra and trekked across Nepal. This demanding system looks meritocratic. In practice, though, it aims directly at the children of the upper middle class, groomed since birth by parents, tutors and teachers to leap every hurdle. (The very rich can gain admission without leaping much of anything, as Deresiewicz also points out.)”  

Each year the percentage of students getting into the top ranked schools drops. Applications keep rising but the number of spots do not. Many students are guded or force themselves to try to fit an impossible ideal.

  

My Ngoc is not one of those students who fits into this description. She was not born into the elite. Her parents worked tirelessly to rise from poor immigrants (and My Ngoc worked tirelessly alongside of them too.). Her story is not as rare as Deresiewicz’s opening salvo might lead readers to believe.   At schools like Williams, for example, the percentage of first generation students is far higher than at many less selective schools. Harvard and others with huge endowments also offer greater financial aid packages than many other schools in the nation. The leaders, by far, of elite schools enrolling low-income students are Berkeley and UCLA. (For the reasons why this is and why they receive so little positive press for this go here. Deresiewicz barely mentions these schools in his book.) About 20% of the students at Harvard are Pell Grant eligible, a key indicator of low income. While ths is not a huge percentage there are still a significant number of students who are receiving aid.  

And yet while what I have just written may be accurate, it is also necessary to say My Ngoc found the income and class issues significant. In other words it is true that there are class issues and it is also true that there are far more low income students at many elite schools than most people think. The ones who are now often being squeezed out of the entering classes of selective schools come from the middle class, since admission spaces constitute a zero sum game. 

Those with high incomes  often live in areas with great public schools or send their children to private and boarding schools. These students get access to top counseling, SAT prep and a whole lot more. It is no surprise that they often stand out in the admission process. They have worked hard for it and also had opportunities others cannot afford.  My Ngoc represents one of those who rose to the top largely by her own efforts. She was lucky, however, to find a great mentor in high school and the effects of mentors is dramatic.

Recent articles and Deresiewicz too underscore how important mentors can be to students. At elite institutions, however, faculty members are not rewarded for mentoring. Instead, they must continue to publish or perish in order to get tenure and in order to climb up the ladder to full professor. My Ngoc’s experience with professors should be noted by those who think that by going to elite institutions they will be chummy with Nobel and Pulitzer winners.

One thing that virtually every student at elite schools agrees on--the competition in and out of class is intense. Students must compete with others who are exceptionally talented and driven. I have underscored what Malcolm Gladwell and others have said about competitive schools before but it bears repeating.  The most competitive schools are not for everyone 

But what I would like to emphasize here is that any book or article or blog entry that purports to demonstrate what students as a group are like on a college campus skips individuals and will, therefore, leave out the stories that call into question the usefulness of an overarching thesis about students at any school.  In previous entries, I have interviewed many students who talk about their experience at their schools. All of them are different because they provide details. But all of them have something in common—the words they share are inspiring for students.  Anyone reading them can learn there are lots of ways to succeed and lots of ways to learn from challenges too.

 Most recently, Kate’s entry on her experience in the Plan II  Honors program at UT is now linked to their website. Her words demonstrate how these students are anything but excellent sheep. So too, with Ryan’s entry on her experience at Oberlin. She  had a tough time for a while but now is exploring writing and women’s studies and a lot else because she loves to learn and write. And then there is Zara, a student from China at Harvard, whose words about her great experience there have gone viral in China.

Each of these stories demonstrates an individual experience rather than an overall perspective that applies to all students. Assigning rubrics like “excellent sheep”  that attract headlines works well for selling books, but it if a student had written such unsupported generalizations in a paper submitted for one of my classes they would have received some comments about learning to support these words with more solid data and detailed  interviews. There are some data and words from students in the book  but not enough, at least for m to say the vast majority of students at these schools have not examined their lives at some Socratic level  I know  many students at elite who do ask the hard questions of themselves and the world,( and some of these are now on Wall Street or consulting). Elite schools educate many students  to think about thinking and being. They do change lives in great ways more than what many reading the current spate of articles might think.

I am glad, therefore, The NY Times piece, mentioned above,  does, contrary to almost every other review of Deresiewicz’s book, call him to account for over generalization too:

But anyone who cares should also know that the coin has another side, one that Deresiewicz rarely inspects. He describes the structures of the university as if they were machines, arranged in assembly lines: “The system churns out an endless procession of more or less uniform human specimens.” Yet universities aren’t total institutions. Professors and students have agency. They use the structures they inhabit in creative ways that are not dreamt of in Deresiewicz’s philosophy, and that are more common and more meaningful than the “exceptions” he allows.

I mention all this because My Ngoc’s story does not fit into the simplistic dystopian vision of elite schools. Schools have spent untold millions recruiting students who are not from elite private schools. They have put money and  a good faith effort in trying to diversify.   Have they succeeded in creating a utopian campus in which the percentage of students mirror the demographics of the US by income? Not by a long shot, but they have tried and to some degree succeeded in creating a grand social experiment in which great students from all over the US, the world, and all income groups do live and learn together. But that still does not mean that at the end of the day those kids with 20 APs, 2400 SATS, global service and experience still won’t stand out. For those who have not yet heard, life isn’t fair, but IS schools, more so than than most other places around the globe, try to use a holistic approach to admission and do emphasize a liberal arts education.

It is true that My Ngoc beat the odds. She, by her intellect, exceptional writing skills, and the help of a mentor or two found a spot at Harvard. But as her words demonstrate, her story is far more complicated. For her she found that Harvard was not a perfect fit. But this too was a valuable experience in the log run as she now prepares for a career that will help others who have troubles. She has both the intellectual acumen and real world experience to bring to those who can learn from her.  I have already learned about her courage, her incredible writing voice, and her desire to turn what some might consider a disaster into a “fortunate fall”

My Ngoc describes what she has written above as a novella, but the words she shares are true to her experience. In a subsequent entry I will review her real book, The Washing Room, which I think many should read, given what I have quoted above from articles about the atmosphere at elite colleges today. Too often people say college will be “the best fours years of your life” . For some this may be true (although is so I think it is kind of sad given the life expectancy most college attendees have), but for others it is anything but.

The process of getting into the elite schools has become far more selective, far more complicated, and far more fraught with pressures than there have ever been. My Ngoc’s words in her interview and in her book should be both cautionary and reassuring. Students finding themselves “under pressure” should learn that their struggles are not terminally unique and not something to hide from those who can help. They  also serve as a cautionary tale for any writer hoping to lump into groups a large number of individuals into a simplistic rubric whether it be "excellent sheep" or "elitist rich kids" or something else. 

“We are our stories” and these stories contain infinite details and experiences. My Ngoc’s story has given us a view into her own world.  For this I am grateful. What she has shared here should change some minds about a lot of the unexamined premises about education on elite campuses. I know those reading my upcoming review of her book will find her memoir may help far more than incendiary articles to think deeply about the big questions in life.