JFK's 5 Sentence Harvard Admissions Essay

He could have saved some ink if he just signed his name.

Please tell me that's not your idea of flattery and I have just failed to pick up the sarcasm in this post.

This is quite sad. I'm working my ass off to get a good job in finance from a nontarget and this bum was lucky enough to get born into power. My hope is one day I can become wealthy enough so my kids can get away with this crap.

With "poor grades from high school" and this terse application letter which, by my evaluation, lacks any sign of thought or effort given, how the hell did JFK get into Harvard? Is being a legacy that powerful, was the Big H that significantly easier to get into back in the day, or both?

That's pretty dank. On a somewhat related note, UVA has an essay question asking about your favorite word and why. Some kid a few years ago wrote "brevity, it's concise"

There was substantially less competition if you were a white male from wealth. There wasn't competition with poor people, people with less resources, people who didn't go to private highschools (they still benefit the most these days), no asians and quotas on Jews, additional racism and gender discrimination, and more explicit legacy admits.

It was a different time. Worse in many ways, but different nonetheless. It is pointless and silly to look back on past standards and criticize people. Just because applications are intensely important today, doesn't really mean they had to have been in the past. Kennedy was born into power and money, that much is true. Kennedy was also extremely clever and strategic. Great leaders typically do not have the raw intellect of the genius academic, but to deny Kennedy's ability is to just be naive.

I always have to laugh when I hear these things about Harvard. Like that one dude who got his MBA from INSEAD and then just enrolled for the second year and got the HBS MBA as well.

I'm sure that if you were loaded, chairman of the SEC, and buddies with the POTUS, your son could get into Harvard without even applying. Actually your son could probably walk into any BB and make MD in record time as well.

You guys realize that in 1935, Harvard was a place for rich white guys to spend 4 years practicing to join the upper class, right? You didn't have kids in high schools across America jerking off to US News and World Report. The vast majority of people didn't go to college, and Harvard wasn't even on their radar. Look at the bottom of the application: the SAT had literally just been released. My grandma went to girl Yale in like 1950something back when it was still segregated by sex. She has all these stories about how she brought her personal maids with her, prepped for the debutante ball, etc. Different times.

The page only provides enough room to write 5 sentences :/