Word: rankness
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...Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68, student groups may be on the top of students' priority lists, but administrators rank other needs higher...
...sixth digit in your Harvard ID number indicates your projected academic rank, as determined by the admissions office upon your acceptance. Since the admissions office must by definition select 800 students each year to form the bottom half of the class, administrators try to predict student performance, keeping careful tabs on actual performance to maintain its impressively high accuracy in such predictions. The fifth digit in your Harvard ID number indicates whether you were home-schooled...
Throughout its history, Harvard College has suffered the effects of a "social cleaver." In the mid-eighteenth century the college president personally listed students, when they enrolled, in order of their social rank or, to be precise, "to the Dignity of the Familie whereto the students severally belonged." The social list was printed in the college catalogue for all to see. The creme de la creme were placed at the top, followed by the social outcasts who attended Harvard because of academic merit. The social list determined precedence in table seating and service during meals, position in academic processionals...
This institutionalized method of social rank was soon terminated, not because it was deemed undemocratic, but because too many angry parents harrassed the president for not rating their sons high enough. Nevertheless, new lists emerged and even without the "official list" the Gold Coast was still shining in the distance, a glowing reminder of the best things in life...
Enrique Hank Lopez, author of The Harvard Mystique, argues that the existing dichotomy between the Yard and the Gold Coast encouraged a rank-conscious Harvard population...