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HARVARD PLEASE LET ME IN (Music Video)

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A Harvard deferral letter turned into a rap video, and it’s the most 2020 college admissions story you’ll see this year.

Ethan Kim, a senior at Ardrey Kell High School in south Charlotte, North Carolina, got deferred from Harvard’s early action pool in December 2019. Instead of quietly waiting out the regular decision cycle, he and his friend Carson Philbin spent the following weeks writing, filming, and editing a nearly four-minute rap music video titled “HARVARD PLEASE LET ME IN,” which Kim posted to YouTube on February 6, 2020.

• Kim was deferred from Harvard’s early action admissions round in December 2019, not rejected outright, leaving him in limbo until the regular decision announcements in late March.
• The video, filmed, directed, and edited by Carson Philbin, opens with Kim logging into his Harvard applicant portal to reveal the actual deferral notice before launching into the song.
• Kim closes the video with a written statement saying he never expected the video alone to get him in, framing it instead as staying true to himself while he waits.

From Deferral Notice to Music Video

The video doesn’t dress up the setup. It starts with Kim pulling up his actual Harvard applicant portal on screen, the deferral notice sitting right there, before he drops the interlude line that sets the whole tone: “Hold up, I got deferred, but not rejected, though.” From there it’s straight into the song, a decision Kim and Philbin made specifically because a deferral isn’t a no — it’s a maybe, and Kim decided a maybe was worth doing something about.

Rather than sit through roughly three more months of silence before Harvard’s regular decision release in late March, Kim treated the gap as an opportunity. He and Philbin built nearly four minutes of original material around it, betting that a personality-forward pitch would stick with an admissions committee in a way a supplemental essay never could.

The Pitch, Line by Line

Kim’s verses lean into specifics rather than vague self-promotion. He raps about growing up Korean American in the South, drinking sweet tea, taking Taekwondo lessons, and posting SAT scores solid enough to back up the bravado. He even jokes that he’s already prepared for Massachusetts winters because he’s “already got a North Face.”

The video’s funniest turn is Kim owning the absurdity of his own approach. He contrasts himself with the stereotype of the quiet, violin-playing overachiever admissions offices are used to seeing, rapping the video’s most quotable line about doing something unconventional instead.

“Music video, it ain’t the violin / Look at that boy Ethan he is wildin’.”

Motivations Behind His Creative Decision

Kim wasn’t under any illusion that a rap video guarantees an acceptance letter. He said so directly in a written statement at the end of the video, making clear the point wasn’t a hack or a gimmick to game the system — it was about not betraying his own personality while he waited.

That’s the through-line of the whole project: Kim treating self-representation as the goal, separate from the outcome. It’s a mindset that fits neatly into a broader moment where high schoolers are using platforms built for entertainment, the same space that fuels a lot of the content in trending music right now, to say something admissions essays alone can’t capture.

His Realistic Assessment of Odds

Kim was upfront that he understood the math. Admission rates for students moved from the early deferral pool into the regular round are historically low, and he never framed the video as a strategy to beat those odds. His closing statement instead argued that sitting passively and waiting for a response “without doing something crazy would be untrue to who I am,” and that wherever he ends up going to college is where he belongs.

That’s a notably level-headed stance for a video built on comedic bravado, and it’s part of why the project reads more like a personal statement with a beat behind it than a stunt. It’s the kind of self-aware bit that tends to travel well in the same corners of the internet that keep trending funny content in heavy rotation.

Harvard’s regular decision letters go out in late March, which is when Kim will actually find out whether the deferral turns into an acceptance, a waitlist spot, or a rejection. Until then, the video stands on its own as Kim’s answer to the three-month wait — four minutes of sweet tea, Taekwondo, and a North Face jacket, no different than the guy who made it.