Meet the Harvard insider helping Sydney students get into elite schools

1 week ago 3

Former Harvard University admissions officer Devery Doran has read thousands of students’ college application essays but one young woman’s still stands out in her mind.

“She wrote this very descriptive essay,” she said. “Made it very visual of her, like awkwardly dancing at concerts and not caring about who was behind her or what she was doing and that she was off beat.”

Former Harvard University admissions officer Devery Doran is visiting Australia with the Princeton Review, a service that assists students with preparing applications to US colleges.

Ultimately the student spun a broader exploration of a very personal journey of self-acceptance, which Doran knew made her a perfect choice.

“It just made you feel that this is a girl who is coming to her own … She’s going to bring other people up. She’s going to encourage them to do their thing. I was just excited by her.”

Doran is in Australia this month speaking to students who aspire to get into US colleges, including Ivy League institutions such as Harvard, Brown and Yale. She is here as a guest of The Princeton Review Australia, which launched last year to provide assistance with applications to overseas universities, joining other businesses such as Crimson Education.

When hopeful students meet Doran, they inevitably have the same request: please, tell us the secret.

Last year there were about 120 students from Australia enrolled at Harvard.

“So much of the process can still feel nebulous … They’re unsure, like, is it a checklist? Are there certain things I have to do? Is it a formula?”

Doran emphatically says no, and characterises the approach admissions counsellors take when deliberating whether to accept or reject a student as an art rather than a science.

While entry to Australian universities is based on year 12 results, she said US colleges review everything a student does from year 9 onwards, from the subjects they elected to study to their academic marks.

“Students who I find are most successful in the process are introspective, do things with purpose, definitely have a sense of self,” she said.

When she worked at Harvard, Doran would read applications from one geographic location, in her case Texas’ south, selecting students she thought would be a good fit for the college and submitting them to a second admissions counsellor for review.

“Maybe you’re not sure if they can make it or not … just how much it’s going to take to stand out in a pool that accepts 3 to 5 per cent of the applicants that you read.”

Final decisions are made in a days-long process of deliberation in a room with the other admissions counsellors, where she hears about students from all over America and the rest of the world. With the world’s brightest students on show, Doran’s views about who deserves a place can shift.

“I was like, ‘that one is stronger than this one I just read but we have got to take them’ – you’re ultimately doing what’s best for the university.”

Australian students abroad

Last year 54,008 students applied to Harvard and 1970 were admitted, 18 per cent of whom were international students.

There were 120 Australian students studying at Harvard last year.

In May those students were spooked when the Trump administration revoked the university’s ability to enrol international students, following accusations it was harbouring foreign students it considered hostile to US values.

A legal challenge is under way. In June a US federal court issued an injunction that effectively meant international students could stay, and new students continue to enrol, while the challenge was under way.

US colleges don’t typically publish admissions data.

In the UK there were 147 applicants for University of Cambridge undergraduate degrees from Australia last year, up from 113 in 2015. Twenty-six Australian students were accepted.

For the three years between 2020 and 2022 the University of Oxford admitted 55 Australian undergraduates – or about 18 a year. Previous enrolment data shows that a decade beforehand it received 108 applications from Australia, with 20 given places.

Samedh Chirravuri says he likes that the application process for US colleges goes beyond pure academic marks.

A snapshot of data collected by one of Sydney’s best public high schools, James Ruse Agricultural High School, shows dozens of students have applied for elite institutions overseas over the past five years, with a handful securing places at Harvard and Oxford.

Sydney high school student Samedh Chirravuri, 16, has been thinking about applying for a US college since the end of primary school. His mother is a US citizen now living in Australia.

Despite being an involved process, Samedh said he liked how the selectors looked at a range of interests, from academics to sports he played, such as water polo.

“It recognises everything you do, instead of just you being a mark and a number,” he said.

His mother, Alison Barnard, attended Presbyterian College in South Carolina and Syracuse University in New York. She said living on campus opened up her world.

“The on-campus experience of US universities is one of the most unique parts of the entire experience,” she said.

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