Harvard University, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a private Ivy League research university. Every year, thousands of students register for numerous courses, but only the most qualified get accepted. Furthermore, admission to Harvard is competitive, with the university receiving more eligible applicants than it can admit. According to a report by The New York Post, Harvard University has a hidden admissions process for students with powerful connections but low academic scores: the Z-List. This was disclosed by a college admissions counsellor.
The Z-List is a unique admissions category that allows Harvard to admit students who are the children of mega-donors or other powerful individuals without jeopardising its reputation or ranking. These students are advised to take a gap year before enrolling at Harvard, making them “data ghosts” in the sense that their Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) scores and grade point averages (GPAs) are not included in the entering freshman class.
“If Harvard doesn’t want the student hurting their US News and World Report ranking with their GPA and test scores, they admit them through the Z list,” Brian Taylor, managing partner of Manhattan-based college admissions firm Ivy Coach, told The New York Post. Every year, around 60 students are admitted through the Z-List, according to the Ivy Coach website. The students get a letter saying, “We will be pleased to consider your admission in one year.”
“They’re not applying again. They’ve been admitted and are guaranteed a spot in a year,” managing partner of Ivy Coach, Taylor, told the New York Post. Taylor stated that he works with a Z-List client every other year on average, although they represent just a small percentage of the students he assists in getting into Harvard. “It’s for people who are important,” Taylor explained. He further stated that they had clients on the Z list who were close friends or family members of significant international leaders or large funders.
The managing partner of Ivy Coach, Taylor, claims to be able to determine whether a student is a Z-List candidate. Taking a gap year, he added, is a regular indication that a student is on the list. Additionally, Harvard is hardly the only prestigious institution that employs loopholes to admit students with poor academic performance. Other colleges, according to Taylor, use the transfer method as well, which has no effect on their rankings.
Cornell University, for example, provides a “guaranteed transfer” option to those candidates with poor test scores or GPAs. They are instructed to spend their first year at another college before reapplying to Cornell with a specified GPA (typically a B-average).
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