If you are an international student eyeing the Ivy League, we understand the allure. However, if you are considering Harvard there are some things you absolutely must plan for in advance. That is where we can help, as we’ve assisted international students in gaining acceptance to the Ivies, including Harvard, for over a decade.

Harvard as an institution is so ridiculously historic that they don’t have to take where you live into consideration when reviewing your application — except as it impacts class make-up and diversity of origin and experiences among students.

As a result, it isn’t, theoretically, that much harder to get in as an international student compared to a domestic student…except that the data shows that it is.

Based simply on the application numbers, Harvard could fill the entire first-year class with international students. However, doing that wouldn’t fulfill their mission of maintaining a geographically diverse student body. So, they limit the number of international students to maintain that diverse student body. Historically at Harvard, about 85% of seats in any given undergraduate class are for domestic students. Then only 15 of every hundred may be for international students. This is despite nearly 30% of applicants being international.

The overall acceptance rate for the Fall of 2023 was 3.5%. The acceptance rate for first-year international applicants was less than 2%.

Seeing an acceptance rate under 2% can be daunting, or even discouraging, for some prospective international students. With our students, we like to take it as a challenge. Remember that 15% of admitted first-years for the Fall of 2023 were international, and you could be one of those students with the right grades, scores, interests, extracurriculars, and essays. Honing your personal and academic profile to meet Harvard standards is one of the ways an expert like us can make an impact on your application.

In this post, we’ll break down what you need to know if you want to get into Harvard as an international student. These steps and tools can be put into action immediately, whether you are the equivalent of a high school junior or 4+ years out from applying to college. The best next step, though, is to ask for help. Getting into Harvard as an international student is statistically improbable, even as an objectively excellent candidate. And yet, we help students pull it off. When you’re trying to do the (nearly) impossible, experience matters.

Applying to college as an international student requires strategy. Get yours.

As an international student applying to Harvard, you’re going to complete the same application as every other first year applicant. You have nearly the same requirements, with the addition of an English proficiency requirement if applicable, and there aren’t a bunch of other ways that Harvard proactively gives you to stand out from the thousands of other students (15,000 or so) also applying from outside of the United States.

So, in order to ensure that your application shines, you have to work within the opportunities and limitations of the Common Application (or the Coalition Application should you wish to use it). This means planning in advance for the ways Harvard will see you on paper, and amplifying the opportunities for your application to pop through carefully selecting and cultivating your interests.

Plan in Advance

The first step of applying to Harvard as an international student is to have started planning yesterday. Harvard requires standardized test scores, like the SAT or ACT, except for in exceptional cases. These tests are not last-minute commitments. You need to be preparing months in advance, and ideally further if English is not your first language.

And months in advance is pocket change compared to how we advise our students who ultimately get into Harvard. If you are really serious about Harvard, you should be strategizing at least two years in advance. This doesn’t mean that you have to have your future mapped out — in fact, you shouldn’t. You’re a kid. However, you do need to have a sense of what you love, and be leaning into it.

One challenge we often see for international students is differentiating their application from their peers due to a lack of opportunities for extracurricular experiences, or things outside of the classroom. School is often so all-consuming, that there aren’t clubs, student groups, or often even sports unless you are a specialist. We’ll go into pinpointing your interests more deeply below, but for now just remember that planning in advance offers you the opportunity to develop these aspects of your application.

Select Target Programs

If what you see when we say, “target programs” is a big flashing sign that reads “HARVARD,” that actually isn’t specific enough. To successfully apply to Harvard, you need to have a precise idea of what you want from Harvard, such that you can show them what you can offer, even if your ideal major may change before you officially declare a major during your sophomore year.

This means identifying a major, department, or program to use as your north star.

Sometimes the easiest way to start is by ruling things out.

First, you should definitely say that you want to pursue a Bachelor of Arts degree, rather than a Bachelor of Science degree. This is a common international applicant mistake, as the SB sounds “more serious.” But only a few dozen students graduate with an SB each year, while 98% graduate with an AB.

So, if we decide that shooting for an AB is the best option, let’s narrow it down to a few specific majors, which Harvard called Concentrations, that you may want to consider. By looking at recent data on degree conferral, we can see what concentrations hold a large number of students (History and Literature with 46 seniors in one year) compared to, say, Folklore and Mythology with 3. If you are an international applicant choosing between focusing on either of those two options on your application, we’d highly advise the History and Literature route.

The largest number of students in recent years can be found, though, in four places: Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Economics, and Government. All of these are Bachelor of Arts degrees, not Bachelor of Science, even though “Computer Science” has science in the name.

You should also identify a network of activities at Harvard that are related to the chosen concentration — like a club, a study abroad program, a research opportunity, or another extracurricular. These aren’t things you can do now, obviously, but they are things you could do at Harvard, and they are something to aim towards.

So, if you want to study biology and are interested in a research opportunity, you should be pursuing research in biology now. That could mean an internship, a lab position during the summer, a relevant summer intensive, or a research assistant role.

If you want to study history and love writing papers that connect current events to historical precedents, you should be writing for a school newspaper, contributing to a journal or publication, doing independent research, and interning with a publication.

None of this is busy work. Based on our experience getting international students into Harvard, it’s necessary.

The most important thing here, though, is identifying the target within Harvard to aim towards. You should have goals you are pointed towards, and an idea of how you are going to get there. And, ideally, you should have a guide pointing you in the right direction.

Pursue Verifiable Extracurriculars

One of the biggest hurdles we’ve seen international applicants to Harvard face is not being sure how to focus in on an interest or area of expertise beyond the course offerings at their school. However, it’s crucial that you go deeper for a strong Harvard application. One of the best ways of doing this is identifying the ideal concentration, as you did in the previous step, and working back from there. This goal concentration can be your guiding light in building a niche through your activities.

Harvard does understand that schools outside of the United States often don’t have the types of clubs and activities that those within the US do. The solution to this is two-fold. First, start things. You may not have access to a student paper — but you can probably start one. You may not have a math club — but you can probably start one. Find a teacher willing to support you and start convincing your administration. This can take time, underlining the importance of planning ahead. We’ve helped kids all over the world petition administrations to start clubs.

The second thing you can (and should) do is to look externally. If you’ll be putting a bunch of things you’ve started and run on your application, you should consider also signing up for an ‘official’ online course, or virtual or in-person program, through a high-caliber U.S. university.

Also, as you aim towards this target program at Harvard, you need to make sure that what you are doing outside of your coursework can be easily verified by admissions. They will not take the time to do a web search for each activity on your list. If the things you do are all independent and self-organized, you could just be making them up. “But why would anyone do that?!” you may be asking. Fair question, and yet it happens frequently. Harvard is on the look-out for students who are inflating their application with faked credentials.

None of these steps are technically required, and Harvard doesn’t tell you to take them. However, we know what actually works in the end. We help international students not just apply to the Ivy League, but get in.

Every year, we help strong students get into exceptional universities. Contact us for an assessment of your profile as an applicant.