GU Harvard Weighs Talent Over Scores
Koreans Are Third Largest Group of International Students
By Kang Shin-who
Korea Times Correspondent
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. ― Harvard University looks at students' varied talents including originality and intellectual capacity over scores when selecting students, its president Drew Gilpin Faust said in an interview with The Korea Times.
She said that student diversity is a key driver of the school's competitiveness and its doors are wide open to talented students from every background, regardless of their financial means.
``Harvard is genuinely open to talented students from every background; we believe that student diversity contributes powerfully and directly to the quality of the Harvard experience.''
She said it was important that students applying to Harvard fully understand the type of education it offers. ``We hope that the decision to apply to and, if admitted, attend our institution is based upon not only our name, but also upon the qualities deriving from a diverse institution ― the value of sharing the educational experience with students from around the globe.''
It is the first time that Faust, 61, the first female president at the prestigious school, has been interviewed by the Asian media. She took office as Harvard president in July 2007.
She said Harvard views intellectual and human capacity as much more important than just grades, ``so we take recommendations very seriously when students are evaluated by their teachers and others with whom they work. We take the wide range of their engagements seriously, so scores are only one component.''
Established in 1636, Harvard is usually ranked as the No.1 university in the world by journals and university research institutes. Currently, some 20,000 graduate and undergraduate students attend the school and about 20 percent of them are from overseas.
Among them, 297 are Korean, the third largest group of international students after Canada and China. The university recently had undergraduate admissions in which out of 27,000 applicants, only 7 percent were accepted, the president said.
She said financial limitations should not keep students with aspiration and talent from applying.
``Harvard offers financial aid to international students so those without financial means, we hope, would apply and be able, if they have the ambition and talent, to attend.''
She stressed the importance of learning languages other than English. ``We are urging our students to learn languages other than English so they can reach out to other parts of the world, as we urge them to have international experience.''
Faust said Korean Studies are expected to draw a greater interest at the school. She expects the plan to allow Koreans' visa-free visits to the United States to enable universities of the two countries to have more exchanges.
History Lights Up Future
As a historian, Faust said that efforts to learn the past are essential for any country to move forward.
Asked about President Lee Myung-bak's pragmatic, future-oriented policy stance, she said, ``I believe that knowledge and open understanding of the realities of past times is an essential for moving into the future.''
She said the role of history is to illuminate the truth and to explore understandings and, sometimes, injustices from the past. ``How they're dealt with in the present is a question for politicians.''
Asked about the conflicts between Japan and other Asian nations over the issue of sex slaves during World War II, she avoided a direct reply, saying it's not her major field of study.
``I think the appropriate role for a university is to support scholarships that encourages free inquiry and give individuals the opportunity to conduct extensive research and have the kind of training that enables them to use archives even in other languages,'' she said. ``Harvard's role in complex questions of the past is always to support the kind of scholarship scholars who can burrow and find the truth and do the often painstaking and tedious and very detailed research that enables us to see the full picture of what the past has entailed. Because it is that kind of understanding of the past that enables us to have a clear-eyed sense of the present and the future.''
On being the first female leader at the top university, she said, ``At Harvard, it means a number of things. It symbolizes to many individuals on this campus and beyond a sense of possibility and opportunity that did not seem present before.''
However, she said, in her daily life, her operations are not very different from those that a man would pursue and that on a day-to-day basis people treat her in much the same way. ``I have the same challenges, stresses and strains that a man would have in this role.''
A graduate of Bryn Mawr in 1968, Faust gained her master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. She served as professor of History and director of the Women's Studies there for 25 years.