HARVARD DOESN’T THINK MUCH of U.S. high schools, according to this report.
UPDATE: Reader Gautam Mukunda says it’s not quite like that:
I just saw your link on Harvard’s opinion of US high schools. I’m afraid it doesn’t quite mean what you (and the person you linked to) think it means. I graduated from Harvard in 2001 and the dirty little secret of the program was that, overwhelmingly, it was populated by recruited athletes. One of my roommates was a safety on the football team and many of my best friends were recruited players on the football team and soccer teams – I certainly didn’t have any problem with them being at the school. But Harvard does drop its academic standards significantly for people on its premier sports teams (primarily football and men’s hockey – although it happened somewhat on the women’s teams as well, it didn’t happen nearly as much). There was a rumor my year that at least one player on the hockey team had an SAT score below 1000. So, in this particular case, I don’t think it really means that Harvard feels that many of the most elite students in America still don’t have basic writing skills. There is a similar program in mathematics as well – and I mean really basic math, algebra and such, which, again, is heavily populated by recruited athletes.
Me, I was a four-letter man. Of course, the letters were B-E-E-R.