First year Applicants
Requirements
To be eligible to apply, you must:
- Have a cumulative grade point average of 3.0 or above in all college-level work completed by the end of senior year. If you graduated from high school in 2019, your GPA must have been 3.0 on a 4.0 scale for all classes completed during the junior and senior years (including summer).
- Have taken one of the following tests: ACT Plus Writing; SAT with Essay; SAT Reasoning Test without Essays; Subject Tests (Math Level 1 or 2; Literature; World History); Advanced Placement Examinations with an official score report sent directly from College Board or ETS.
Application Timeline
- Application opens on September 1st
- The deadline for application is January 1st. Students who apply by this date will receive a decision from Harvard in April, allowing them to begin their studies in the fall semester.
- Admissions decisions are made on a rolling basis, so it’s best to submit your application as soon as possible!
Eligibility
To apply to Harvard, you must be a high school senior on track to graduate in the spring. It would help if you also planned on attending full-time at Harvard College and taking the ACT or SAT as part of the application process. In addition, some other requirements vary depending on whether you are an undergraduate applicant or a graduate student.
Application Fee
The fee is $75, and it’s non-refundable. Payment can be made by check, money order, or with a credit card (Visa or MasterCard) online through the application portal. If you choose to pay by check or money order, please note that these payments must be received by the deadline; otherwise, your application will not be considered complete.
The university does not accept cash payments for first-year admissions applications; all payments must be made by check or electronic payment through the Harvard College Financial Aid Portal.
Restrictive Early Action and Regular Action Decision
Harvard College offers two types of decisions: Restrictive Early Action and Regular Action.
- Restrictive Early Action (REA) is a binding decision. If you apply for REA, you must decide whether or not to enrol at Harvard College by December 15th. If you accept an offer of admission from Harvard through REA, all other colleges will know that you have already applied elsewhere and cannot consider them further; they will release your application materials without prejudice.
- Regular Decision (RD) is non-binding- you may still choose not to attend Harvard even if we admit you! The deadline for RD applications is January 1st; however, earlier submissions are strongly encouraged as they are prioritised over later ones.
Mailing your Application
The next step is to mail your application. You can do this by sending it through the mail or dropping it off at a local post office. Be sure to include payment for the application fee, which is $75 if you pay by check or money order and $80 with a credit card (or other payment methods).
If you are mailing your application, be sure to use sturdy packaging so your envelope is not damaged by Princeton University’s Admissions Office in New Jersey back home! Once we receive all required documents and fees (including any necessary test scores), we will send out decisions as soon as possible but no later than March 15th for Early Decision I applicants, April 1st for Regular Decision I applicants, July 1st for Early Action II applicants; August 1st for Regular Action II applicants; October 1st for Early Action III applicants; November 1st – December 15th (for international students only)
Once we receive all required documents and fees (including any necessary test scores), we will send out decisions as soon as possible but no later than March 15th.
This is a guide on how to apply to Harvard first-year applicants.
Before you begin, it’s important to note that Harvard College does not grant admission to any applicant under 16. This doesn’t mean you can’t apply when you’re younger than that; it just means that if your birthday falls before December 31st (and thus makes you ineligible), then they won’t accept your application. The same goes for international students: if your passport expires after December 31st, and was issued before then, they will consider your application regardless of whether or not it’s past its expiry date by the time their decision comes out.
Harvard has two kinds of deadlines: an early action deadline and a regular action deadline (which we’ll focus on here). Suppose you apply for early action at Harvard College as a first-year applicant. In that case, there are three important dates: October 1st (for domestic applicants) or January 1st (for international applicants), November 1st (for transfer students applying through this program,) or February 1st, respectively; these are all considered “early” because they’re before other schools’ regular admission cycles begin rolling out their offers later in the year – but don’t worry! If everything works according to plan, there’s still plenty of time between now and those dates, anyway!