You Got In. Now Put It Behind You.

Overheard at a party I attended during winter break:

“Are you in college?”

“Yeah. So what brought you to Boston?”

“Where are you at college?”

“What?”

“Where do you go to college?”

“I’m-at-Harvard-ha-ha-not-exactly-far-from-home—so you’re from D.C.?”

Okay, I didn’t overhear that. I participated. I was the H-bomb avoider.

Though the nature of its influence has been debated, “dropping the H-Bomb,” or telling someone you go to Harvard, has been widely recognized by our community as a powerful move.

But, good or bad, why do we attach so much value to this gesture? When my roommates started buzzing about their newfound ability to read their admissions files, I began to wonder why we, as college students, still care so much about the choice someone made to let us come here in the first place.

I think we care for the same reason we think the “H-bomb” is such a big deal—not because we go to Harvard, but because we got into Harvard. These things seem important because we were taught that low admission rates are important. That selectivity translates to success—or, even worse, self-worth.

Because we put the details of our academics, passions, and personal qualities on our college applications, there’s this odd sense that the “yes” or “no” we get back is a definitive judgment of our identity.

Most of my friends who say they want to look at the files that got them here cite validation as their main impetus. But by making the effort to acquire these Admissions Committee comments, a student conveys that what got her into Harvard is still reflective of, and crucial to, her character.

Looking for validation in an admissions record just validates the assumption that Harvard’s (or any college’s) selection process defines those who participate in it. It turns acceptance letters into lifelong affirmations of self.

Instead, we should put an end to the myth that our admission to a particular college—and the reasons behind it—merits self-acceptance.

So clearly I go here, and I was psyched about getting in. I actively avoid the H-bomb. But to reinforce why I shouldn’t let my status as an admitted student give me too much of an ego boost, let’s consider how personal qualities have factored into Harvard’s admissions process in the past.

Rewind to 1922, when President A. Lawrence Lowell started getting nervous that too many Jews were attending Harvard. He tried quotas, he tried limiting scholarships for Jewish students, but only one strategy stuck—shifting focus from an applicant’s academics to his character.

This new process allowed admissions officers to look for indicators that the applicant belonged to a group of “undesirables,” which became code for Jews. If evidence showed that an applicant belonged to this category, he or she was generally rejected. The year after Lowell instituted this policy, Jewish enrollment plummeted from around 20 to 8.2 percent.

Harvard currently frames its applicants’ interests, activities, and personalities as marks of future success, and while I do believe a diverse community with myriad interests is important to a school’s environment, the roots of this process are pretty arbitrary. It was not created as part of some genius method to determine value in a human being.

Additionally, plenty of deserving students don’t go, or oftentimes even apply, to top colleges for reasons completely out of their control. To state the obvious again, acceptance letters or their absence does nothing to determine a person’s worth.

We should love Harvard for the experiences we’ve had here, not the ego boost it gave us in a congratulatory email. Let’s discard notions of the "Big H" as a part of us that is so powerful it can be likened to a bomb. Let’s not limit ourselves to comments that strangers wrote about us before we were even old enough to vote.

Rachel C. Talamo ’18, a Crimson editorial writer, lives in Weld Hall.