Flipping the Script on @askharvardstudents

“What was your high school GPA and SAT score like?”

The hook is irresistible and the concept so simple: Ask Harvard students how they got in, and let them answer in detail.

Seongyeob “Sean” Park has amassed over 80,000 followers, and tens of millions of views on his Instagram account @askharvardstudents, doing just that — asking Harvard students.

In Park’s most popular video, an interview with Selena Wu ’28 in Harvard Yard, Wu tells Park she received a 36 on the ACT. Park responds, “36, perfect score, wow!” Wu smiles coyly and shrugs off the compliment. She goes on to describe her participation in robotics, Science Olympiad, cross country, orchestra, HOSA (a pre-health organization), and Scouts.

The video has 5.8 million views. That’s over 100 times Harvard College’s annual applicants, and over 800 times the total number of undergraduates at the College.

Park’s Instagram success seems almost obvious in hindsight. His content sits at the intersection of short-form street interviews and online college advice — two genres that have exploded in popularity in recent years. Add in the allure of the Harvard brand, and it seems a bulletproof concept for virality. Behind the camera stands Park, with an origin story of his own: from an ambitious high schooler in South Korea to an Instagram success at Harvard, where he studies at the Graduate School of Education.

***

We first sit down with Park in Tatte, but quickly relocate to J.P. Licks after he tells us it’s a bit crowded. There, he asks if we want anything to drink at least three times. After we politely decline, he buys us an iced americano anyway.

Park, it turns out, is a self-described introvert, despite what you might expect from his man-on-the-street persona. He fidgets at the start of the interview, tells us he’s nervous, and takes a few deep breaths to collect himself. Park seems used to being on the other end of the microphone.

***

Originally from Muan, a small seaside county in South Korea known for its onion exports, Park came to the United States at age 15, with a single goal in mind.

“When I came here, I had this big dream of getting into a top college,” Park tells us.

For Park, academic success has always been the main focus. Even before emigrating, Park had his sights set on Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University, the three top universities in South Korea — collectively referred to as SKY.

Park’s mindset shifted after reading a story about a Korean student who scored a perfect score on the TOEFL and gained admission to Princeton. The idea that there were schools in the world, like Princeton, more renowned than SKY planted the desire that drove Park across the Pacific. Throughout our conversation, Park repeats this sentiment, as if a mantra: He has to be the “best.”

After only a year in high school in the U.S., Park learned the intricacies of the country’s esoteric college admissions process and decided to drop out to pursue a GED. He moved back to South Korea, where he completed his GED. While there, he also enrolled in culinary school, ostensibly because back in the U.S. he had been eating mainly chicken tenders, frappuccinos, and pizza, and “got really fat.”

Afterward, Park returned to California and enrolled in community college, planning to take advantage of the college transfer system. Three years later, Park transferred to Cornell to study nutritional sciences.

While at Cornell, he competed in amateur bodybuilding competitions, placing third in New York in the novice “men’s physique” category in his senior year. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in nutritional sciences in 2019.

When the Covid-19 pandemic began, Park went back to South Korea. There, he worked as an SAT tutor in a “hagwon,” one of the infamous private Korean cram schools utilized by the majority of South Korean students. When Park was drafted into the Korean military for mandatory service, he elected to extend the usual 18 months of service to 40, in order to become an officer in the Navy — here too, it seems, Park wanted to be the “best.”

***

Initially, Park had little desire to go to graduate school. In fact, Park says, his decision to study at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education had little to do with the program itself.

“I just wanted to come to Harvard,” he says.

***

Once he arrived on campus, Park set out into the world of Harvard-centered content creation with the thought, “they must have their own stories too.”

“I want to share the real story of Harvard students — their real, honest, and authentic stories, so that I can inspire students to dream bigger and remove their self-doubtself doubt,” Park says. His Instagram bio reads in all caps: “INSPIRE 🧑‍🏫TO DREAM BIGGER.”

When he first tried to interview Harvard students, no one was willing to talk, Park says. Park chalks it up to looking “too prepared” and “too professional.” Approaching students with an expensive camera set-up made them “scared” of him.

Because of this initial setback, Park adopted his current style: approaching students at random with nothing but a phone to record and a set of questions he believes will be “insightful to the public” to ask. Now, Park says, “three out of ten students” agree to be interviewed.

On @askharvardstudents you can find videos featuring everyone from Alfred F. B. Williamson ’28, who describes his experience at a NASA design competition, to Neel P. Joshi ’25, a recruited squash player from India. One of our friends — an undergraduate at a different college — even sent us a reel from the account, excited to see an interview with the already-viral Elio Kennedy-Yoon ’25.

Though the majority of Park’s comments section is filled with general admiration, questions like “can I get into Harvard too?”, and giddy comments from personal friends, his content is occasionally met with questionable or downright hateful comments.

“Imagine being attractive and smart at the same time,” writes one commenter. “The perfect Asian kid🙌🙌🙌,” extols another, but the praise quickly blurs into stereotyping. Under the same video someone writes “classic Asian, they actually care about education.” Under an interview with a Black student, one comment reads “the reality is that there were probably many many many candidates more qualified, but he got in because of his skin color.”

Stereotypes and racial resentment run deep throughout online college admissions spaces, and Park’s channel is no exception. As Jay Caspian Kang writes in The New Yorker, the comments sections on college admissions TikToks reflect “a real sense of helplessness — a feeling that, no matter what your resume says, the only actual determining factor for getting into college is what race you check on your application.”

Park’s interviews are seen by some as confirmation of their prejudices against the college admissions process, and his comments sections as the space to air these grievances.

For his part, Park says he understands most of the vitriol as an expression of jealousy.

“I don’t actively take action for the comment section unless it’s discriminatory,” Park says, “or something very negative towards the interviewee.” But whatever one does, Parks continues, “there’s always going to be haters around.” He doesn’t think the “haters” mean what they say, but thinks they “are just jealous.”

Park notes that he also receives hateful comments and direct messages commenting on his accent and mannerisms.

***

Park gears his content towards hopeful high school students and their academically-minded parents. After studying the Instagram algorithm, he almost always starts with his iconic question about the student’s SAT score and GPA. These numbers are “what people are most curious about,” he says.

Though Park is a strong proponent of the use of standardized tests to democratize the college admissions process, he still tries to include students’ stories “to give a better idea” of how to get into top colleges “not just for elite prep school students, but for everyone around the world.”

Throughout his time as a content creator, Park has received countless direct messages from parents and students alike, asking him for tips on how to get into Harvard. Park hopes to respond to this demand with his upcoming college consulting-based business venture.

Still, Park argues that “not everyone needs to set a goal to get a good top college.” Through his work, Park says he aims not to perpetuate the idea that the Ivy League is the end-all be-all of the college admissions process, but rather, to give more insight into what it means to go to Harvard.

Park says that the project “kind of broke my stereotyping.” Listening to the stories that students share, Park finds that the idea that all Harvard students are solely academically focused and have perfect scores is flawed.

“What I’ve learned is that everyone has their own story,” Park says. “Everyone's different, but what they have in common is authenticity.”

—Magazine writer Alexander W. Anoma can be reached at alexander.anoma@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @AnomaAlexander.