After Harvard deferred him, NC senior makes a rap video to try to change school’s mind
“Who am I you ask? My name’s Ethan Kim. Did I just make a rap? Yes, please let me in.”
Kim is a high school senior in Charlotte. He’s also trying to get into a college with one of the lowest acceptance rates in the United States — Harvard University.
So he made a rap video.
According to the video description on YouTube, Kim was deferred from Harvard in December. The university is a little vague about what that means in the long-run, but Kim said he couldn’t just wait around “without doing something crazy.”
“I know that simply making a rap video is not going to get me into one of the best colleges in the world, but this is the best representation of me,” he said in a disclaimer after the video was posted. “Ultimately, wherever I end up is where I belong.”
Posted Feb. 6, the video has since been viewed more than 47,000 times.
Kim told The Boston Globe the idea started out as a joke. Some of his older friends were home from college over winter break and he told them about the deferral. He said they laughed when he posed the idea — until one friend suggested it might actually help his chances.
It took a few weeks to put it all together, the Globe reported. Kim wrote the lyrics, made the beat with his brother, mixed and recorded it at a friend’s house and had another friend, Carson Philbin, shoot and direct the video.
According to WBTV, Philbin thought Kim was joking when he asked — humor was a theme throughout this project.
“And then he saw that I was being serious and he was like, ‘you know what dude, if you make it good, I’ll be down to help,’” Kim told the media outlet.
Most of the music video takes place around locations in Charlotte and Ballantyne, WBTV reported.
It starts out with Harvard’s letter of deferral on Kim’s application portal, then transitions to the rap’s title page: “Harvard, please let me in.”
Kim is seen walking in his home wearing a pair of Nike sneakers — something for which he later apologized in a second disclaimer.
“I’m sorry for wearing shoes in the house. It hurt me to do so,” he said. “Don’t worry, as soon as we were done filming, my mom made me clean the carpet.”
After establishing his shot at a top-tier university is on hold, Kim introduces himself as a quirky extrovert — smart, “but not the smartest ever.”
“Harvard admit me, you know you want to,” he raps during the chorus.
Kim talks about being an Asian from the South — “I be taking Taekwondo lessons and drinking sweet tea (It’s sweet)“ — and plays on a few stereotypical tropes: “Yellow Mamba got all the jokes to offer. He a class clown, oh, that boy ain’t a doctor.”
He even mentions being “a curvy Korean” at one point.
The video was uploaded under Harvard’s supplemental application material, WBTV reported. It’s where most students submit essays explaining who they are and what they’d bring to the university.
For Kim, that meant a show of creativity since “testing skills ain’t (his) forte.”
He ends the rap with a nod to his home state: “North Carolina and that’s where I be in. If it don’t work I was proud to me — Yessir.”
This story was originally published February 11, 2020 at 2:01 PM.
