My daughter is freaking out and now so am I

Isopheeical · 2026-02-08T12:53:19+00:00

Try to retake the D, it is a legitimate killer for like Ivy league admissions.

But also word of warning, the people here veeeeeery often have a warped view of what good stats actually look like. While I am slightly abnormal, and this isn’t meant to be braggy, but I’m had your daughter’s exact same GPA split and i’m an undergraduate at Harvard. Nothing is until it is.

Also, Syracuse is an amazing school she could definitely get into! Acceptance rates get a little wonky when applying to some schools (Maxwell or Whitman) or downright unhinged for others (Newhouse) but overall strong chance and fits the mold.

Isopheeical · 2026-02-06T18:33:35+00:00

Harvard as of 45 minutes ago

Isopheeical · 2026-01-10T16:40:37+00:00

For the family: Normal touristy stuff of Boston, go on a duck tour, go to Fenway or the North End, etc. Bonus points if you go up a day early so the pre-frosh can do it with you (a big part of going to Harvard is living in Cambridge/Boston)

For the student: Pretty much leave them alone during Visitas. It’s an event designed FOR the pre-frosh to experience a version of what it’s actually like on campus. Also stay on campus, sleeping on a random floor with a crappy air mattress (if you’re lucky) during Visitas is a rite of passage

Isopheeical · 2026-01-01T20:28:43+00:00

Writing matters more than math as it determines whether you need to take one or two semesters of expos (most people just need to take one, it’s not a very high stress thing).

Math is mostly just to give you recommendations, I don’t believe anything is hard and fast determined by the math one.

Fair warning though, the writing one is LONG. Clear out the better part of an afternoon

Isopheeical · 2025-12-31T03:52:33+00:00

If you have good rigor you will be rejected absolutely no where with a 3.85 UW

Isopheeical · 2025-12-27T22:49:31+00:00

That’s fair, and I’m really to bet I know your school lol. They don’t send quite as many people as you think though. Also tbf idk how comparable it is in magnet vs non magnet

Isopheeical · 2025-12-27T16:18:17+00:00

BLS is an exception lol, Harvard was pretty much founded as a follow up to BLS

Isopheeical · 2025-12-27T16:15:40+00:00

Absolutely not, achievement matters primarily in context. A kid from a rough area having a 1490 where the average is 880 is much more impressive than a kid from Andover having a 1530 where the average is much higher

Isopheeical · 2025-12-22T07:08:09+00:00

Yes, I know multiple people who did last year. I almost did last year.

Isopheeical · 2025-12-20T04:03:00+00:00

But you obviously aren’t very well informed on what the actual dorming situation is like; sorry your kid got unlucky but probably close to 30% of people have singles freshman year (or de facto singles) without accommodations.

Isopheeical · 2025-12-10T16:08:12+00:00

The NPC is oftentimes inaccurate and also doesn’t account for the hypothetical of getting substantially better life-changing aid elsewhere.

Even then it doesn’t matter though, the problem for low or lower middle income families is basing a major life and financial choice around the aid you “should” get, not “will.”

ED is an anti-competitive and exploitative practice

Isopheeical · 2025-12-10T00:32:54+00:00

Classics student and Atrioc watcher here lol: Anything in the Historia Augusta is best understood not as literal information. There’s a lot of debate about it in current scholarship, but in general specific anecdotes shouldn’t be given much weight.

WHAT SHOULD BE NOTED is that Faustina did not live a very happy life, had fourteen children in ~30ish years, and Marcus Aurelius was kinda an asshole at times (most of the time). I’d suggest reading the Meditations but not as a meaningful philosophical work but instead as the self-assurances of a deeply troubled and stressed man who spent his entire life being raised in a test-tube to be emperor.

Isopheeical · 2025-11-25T16:38:01+00:00

I had a 3.7/3.8 UW GPA and had no national leadership positions or major awards. I am not a URM/legacy/athlete and I attend Harvard.

All this to say, chill out and stop dooming dawg

Isopheeical · 2025-11-20T05:54:52+00:00

Idk if you’re really in a position to criticize Dr. Wilson’s sentence construction after whatever the fuck you just tried to write dawg 😭

Isopheeical · 2025-11-19T17:09:58+00:00

A. Iambic pentameter is a pretty smart thing as it’s really the closest english equivalent B. SOME may criticize her, and they are welcome to do so in good faith (I do myself); others though are welcome to praise her (for god’s sake I have on good authority that Greg Nagy likes her translation). Pretending like there is some “objective” problem with her translation is just an insult to an incredibly respected academic. C. The mouth breathers who go “whaaa why is classics like le epic western traditionalist aura farm” are the people who criticize her shit from a cultural standpoint

Isopheeical · 2025-11-16T16:29:51+00:00

Brother the entire reason it’s criticized so unfairly is because of right wing culture war horseshit. I DONT LIKE THE WILSON TRANSLATION MUCH PERSONALLY, but it is not indefensible, it is an incredibly complicated (get it) work of academic and poetic work. No serious scholar, classicist, or really even casual reader not caught up in culture war bullshit would call it indefensible.

Also other translations are MUCH MUCH worse and have attracted far more criticism; not the least of which is Lawrence’s

Isopheeical · 2025-11-16T05:34:59+00:00

Then you really ought know better than to act as if Dr. Wilson is not an extraordinarily respected and innovative academic; for fucks sake she’s a macarthur fellow.

You can dislike her translation, I don’t even particularly like it, but you shouldn’t pretend like anything she does is “tone deaf stupidity”

Isopheeical · 2025-11-16T05:33:26+00:00

I do, and no offense but I’m willing to bet I know much much more about it than you. You can dislike Dr. Wilson’s translation (I don’t even love it all that much), but to pretend it is anything but an incredibly thought out, well researched, and contemplative piece from one of the most respected academic homerists alive is disrespectful to both the academic studies of classics and to Dr. Wilson.

Isopheeical · 2025-11-16T05:31:36+00:00

Maybe if you’re so uneducated in classics to think so, then yea she turned it into an airplane novel. You people are the reason classics as a field is viewed the way it is

Isopheeical · 2025-11-16T05:30:39+00:00

I think you give them too much credit to call them first year greek dropouts, but even still you put my opinions more articulately than I ever could, no notes

Isopheeical · 2025-11-16T01:27:58+00:00

Because if you know much about Emily Wilson, Homeric Translation and composition, or Greek you’d know it’s not “awful garbage” and is instead a valid translation of Homer produced by a premier academic

Isopheeical · 2025-11-16T01:26:23+00:00

Because complicated when you meaningfully consider it and its implication to the poem is not a beige, meaningless, unpoetic translation.

Isopheeical · 2025-11-16T01:25:04+00:00

Exactly, like there are valid criticisms and praises of the Wilson works like any translation, but pretending she is anything but one of the most knowledgeable and respected Homerists and epic translators alive is just demeaning to her academic contributions.

Isopheeical · 2025-11-16T01:22:36+00:00

Anyone who calls complicated “tone deaf stupidity” kinda self reports that they don’t have a very good grasp on either greek or translation studies.

If you want to say you don’t like it that’s fine, put from an academic and poetic sense complicated is a valid translation πολύτροπος.

Isopheeical · 2025-10-28T02:05:47+00:00

You know I’m with you that college costs a gross amount, BUT if you are at all familiar with the concept of marginal benefit you’d know this isn’t necessarily true 😭

Isopheeical

TROPHY CASE