I would be interested to hear other's thoughts on JFK's answer to why he would like to attend Harvard.
I suck at writing essays but it seems his reason for wanting to attend Harvard is incredibly trite and superfluous, especially coming from a man who would eventually be considered a great orator.
For example, he states that Harvard " is a university with something definite to offer." Yet gives no definitive examples. Why is "To be a 'harvard man' is an enviable distinction" in President Kennedy's mind? Essentially every sentence lacks justification and specificity.
Sigh. These sorts of materials at least provide fuel to refocus on work and studies. Being born outside a powerful family may lack certain advantageous but they can be overcome. Right?
His answers are shallow because they can be. The application was just a formality for the sake of show. He was guaranteed admission based on family connections.
I assume his reason is trite and superfluous because it's a stupid question. When you're a high school senior, all you know about colleges probably boils down to
- General reputation
- About famous people (or family members) that went there
- A brief visit to a few of them that you pick out of a hat
- How much it costs
What kind of non-superflous evidence do you expect him to be able to bring to bear?
Of course it is. Families like that don't think in terms of a single generation. Joe Kennedy knew that putting his kids in Ivy League schools meant that his grandkids had a very high probability of being in Ivy League schools, simply because of the connections you make with other wealthy people at these universities.
Joe didn't care whether his kid was in Princeton or Harvard, as long as it was one of them. Once you've made more money than you can count, the next step is to focus on your legacy.
> Joe didn't care whether his kid was in Princeton or Harvard, > as long as it was one of them.
And oddly enough, JFK went to both Princeton and Harvard. He attended Princeton for six weeks before getting ill and withdrawing and then going to Harvard the next year.
He would barely qualify for a state directional school with those grades at that time. Had he not been the son of Joe Kennedy, his school counselors almost certainly would have tried to steer him towards manual labor.
What do you base that on? Do you have the historical college admission records from the other 109 kids in his class? All 110 kids in his class at Choate are likely to be Ivy League material. I base this off of their current stats posted at http://www.choate.edu/admission/25greatreasons.aspx
The most popular colleges from 2008-2012: Georgetown University, 48; New York University, 40; Yale University, 38; Boston University, 32; Columbia University, The George Washington University, 31; Boston College, 30; Wesleyan University, 29; Cornell University, 24; Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania, 21; Brown University, Trinity College, 20.
I am not sure of how the grading system worked at his particular school at that particular time, but it would appear that JFK received numerous C's and D's during high school (see: scores in the 60s and 70s on page four).
Ah, I see now. Page 6 appears to be the results of an exam conducted by Harvard, and I had figured Page 4 was probably related (in which case who knows what a "good" score is).
Now, the other question, how much did academics matter in 1935?
While JFK's grades may have been unexpectedly poor in any case, readers should bear in mind that C and D had different meanings than today's due to grade inflation.
