Harvard Admission
It was a chilly early-autumn morning in 1991.
I left the gas station in Garden Queens in the care of my parents and uncle and returned to where I belonged, as a student once more.
“Harvard. Good luck, kid.”
The taxi driver tossed the line at me, glancing at me through the rearview mirror.
When I opened the door, the humid oil stink of Garden Queens gave way to the cool, slightly bitter breath of autumn on my skin.
I’m back again.
Truthfully, college wasn’t something I desperately needed right now.
It would have been better for profit if I had stayed in Garden Queens, kept developing the oil field, and stayed focused on expanding the black-market gasoline channels.
For example, buying up every failing gas station that hit auction and turning them into a major franchise.
But that was something I could do in a matter of days if I wanted, even by phone or mail.
While I was at Harvard, my parents and uncle would continue managing the oil field and the gas stations, so all I had to do was call or write from time to time, and visit in person on weekends or whenever I had a free day.
I had taken this detour because there were things I could only get here, at this school, at this moment.
That was credit and connections.
In 1991, America’s financial system was a fortress to someone like me, a second-generation immigrant.
Without a credit history, it was difficult even to open a bank account, and the threshold for a brokerage account was even higher.
No matter how much cash I had sitting around, no financial institution was going to extend a loan or an investment opportunity to an “unidentified Asian.”
But a Harvard student ID was different.
That little plastic card gave me the credit of being a “verified talent.”
More importantly, Harvard had the Harvard Alumni Association.
The Harvard Alumni Association, or HAA for short.
Founded in 1840, it was a vast network linking more than 400,000 Harvard graduates around the world.
It was a global alumni network, and also a financial organization that let them invest money or receive investments and manage them on their behalf.
Alumni would entrust their personal assets to the HAA, and the association’s fund managers would put that money to work for them.
The Harvard endowment’s average return over the past ten years had been 11.2 percent annually, nearly twice that of a typical mutual fund.
It offered far better returns than investing on your own, but naturally, it didn’t take just anyone.
Only those affiliated with Harvard could enjoy those benefits.
The alumni association also supported startups.
When a Harvard alum launched a business, the Angel Fund under the HAA would invest seed capital as pure support, with no repayment obligation if the venture failed.
Network brokerage through alumni was even more powerful.
People were classified in meticulous detail by profession, place of residence, specialty, investment style, even hobbies, and if a member said, “I want to start a semiconductor business in Silicon Valley,” the HAA office would provide the contact information of three alumni in related fields within seventy-two hours.
If a member said, “I need a lobbyist in Washington,” they would introduce a law firm partner with ties to senators.
The HAA membership opened doors to relationships money couldn’t buy.
Investment bankers on Wall Street, senators in Washington, venture capitalists in Silicon Valley.
Because they all shared the same alumni network, they would open their doors to me, the second son of an Asian immigrant family with no backing of its own.
In my previous life, I realized that fact far too late.
I studied like hell and graduated with good grades, but I never properly used the network.
This time will be different.
When I later negotiated with the county government for development permits, when I hired a capable lawyer to help me set up a drilling company, when I signed with a competent tax accountant, that Harvard student ID would come in handy.
So the four years I would spend here would be anything but a waste.
On the contrary, it would be the fastest shortcut.
To get formal drilling rights and set up an oil company, I may need investment from the Harvard Alumni Association or a low-interest loan. Even if not, I might still need a guarantor when negotiating with the county government.
I lifted my head and looked at the main gate.
...
Weathered, authoritarian lettering had been carved into the arch built of red brick.
Harvard’s main gate, Johnston Gate.
Above the black iron bars, a faded banner fluttered in the wind.
[WELCOME CLASS OF ‘95]
That phrase referred to the freshmen who were expected to graduate in 1995.
Unlike in Korea, where students were identified by the year they entered, in the United States they were called by their expected graduation year.
It became an identity used for life, after graduation too, in alumni associations, donations, networking, and everything else.
Red brick buildings, broad stretches of neatly kept lawn, white-barked birches, ivy climbing old stone walls.
Upperclassmen in matching red T-shirts stood beneath the banner, waving and guiding the freshmen.
Cars piled high with hand trucks and cardboard boxes lined the roads around the Yard.
FDO staff wearing name tags that read “Harvard College” handed out maps and guidebooks, while shop employees in red jackets pointed toward the Harvard Book Store down the next alley.
In front of the John Harvard statue at the center of the Yard, tourists were rubbing the polished toe of its shoe and taking pictures.
On one side of the Yard, I could see a white tent marked FRESHMAN MOVE-IN.
Lists printed in bold type, bundles of keys, and red canvas bags were piled high across the registration tables.
Upperclassmen checked the freshmen’s names and called out their dorms and floor numbers one by one.
Parents strained under boxes as they carried them, and the freshmen, newly turned twenty, trailed after them like chicks.
Among them, I was alone.
As if I haven’t done this before.
I had talked my parents and uncle out of coming with me, even though they had insisted on it.
The sooner they were free to earn the seed money, the bigger the pool I could manage.
Still, here I am again. Harvard.
SANHA-LEE.
At the registration desk with my name tag on it, I received my admissions envelope and a heavy key.
The staff member handed me a campus map and said indifferently, “You’re in Matthews Hall, Room 202. Just head down that way and you’ll see it.”
I nodded.
Matthews Hall.
A red-brick dormitory on the edge of campus.
Steep triangular roofs and tall, narrow windows.
By the front entrance, there was an old bronze plaque announcing that the building had been constructed in the nineteenth century.
Everything’s exactly as it was back then.
I walked on, lost in memory.
Inside, the smell of old wood and the creak of the floors greeted me.
All along the corridor, there were scattered flyers for clubs and posters for a FROSH ICE CREAM SOCIAL.
I hauled my heavy suitcase up the narrow, steep stairs.
At the end of the second-floor corridor.
In front of the weathered wooden door marked 202.
My gaze fixed on a sheet of paper pinned to the small corkboard beside the door.
[Room 202 – Victor Hamilton / Sanha Lee]
Room 202, which would be shared by two people.
My roommate was Victor Hamilton.
That, too, was a name from the past.
I had entered Harvard with him and graduated with him, and later we had even joined Black Diamond together.
Creak.
I turned the key and opened the door.
The room felt smaller than I remembered.
Maybe that was because, back then, every part of Harvard had seemed enormous after I had finally made it in through sheer hardship.
Along the left wall stood two battered built-in wardrobes and two worn wooden desks side by side.
On the right were two single beds that looked as if their springs might poke through any second.
Outside the window, the green Yard spread out like a painting, full of students coming and going.
The desk by the window was already unpacked.
A New York Mets cap hung from the chair, and on the desk were several smiling family photos and a picture of a young blond boy wearing a baseball uniform.
From the shut bathroom door across the room came the sound of dripping water and someone humming under his breath.
The tiny shower stall attached to the room.
As I set my suitcase down beside the bed and caught my breath.
Clack!
The bathroom door flew open, and a wash of hot steam rolled out.
“Whoa! The hot water! It keeps coming and going! I’m filing a complaint over this!”
A white male student burst out with wet blond hair and only a towel slung over his shoulders.
He was walking around barefoot when he spotted me and jumped in surprise.
Victor. Exactly the same face he had back then.
Then he broke into a bright grin and threw a hand up high.
“Oh! My roommate’s finally here! You Sanha Lee, right? I’m Victor!”
His voice was cheerful, his pronunciation a little too fast.
When I held out my hand, Victor gripped it tightly and shook it up and down with vigor.
“You were probably surprised I had the bathroom monopolized, huh? Sorry. The room’s smaller than I expected. But the view’s killer, right?”
Victor pointed out the window toward the Yard.
Watching him, I found myself drifting back to the past.
Black Diamond had been ruthlessly meritocratic.
It was a structure that forced people in the same class to compete with each other and cut the ones who fell behind.
That Victor and I had been matched among all those classmates was surely one of management’s more twisted amusements.
Coincidentally, I had posted the highest performance among our entire class that year, while Victor had been informed of his dismissal before he even made it through the entrance the next day.
However unavoidable the situation had been, I had felt guilty toward him and avoided his calls afterward.
But Victor had kept calling me steadily after that, and whenever there was an important family event or personal crisis, he dropped everything and came running, the only friend who ever truly stood by me.
Even when I was dying of cancer, he had cried and told me absolutely not to give up, then gone chasing after every doctor he knew with more energy than I had, as if he were the one who needed the consultation more than I did.
Before long, Victor returned wearing a T-shirt and jeans.
He plopped down on my bed.
“So, Sanha. Where are you from?”
“My parents immigrated to the U.S. when I was little. We live around Garden Queens now.”
On the outskirts of Garden Queens, in the eyes of these Harvard kids, it was probably still just that oily, backwater kind of neighborhood.
But Victor was a good friend, without that kind of prejudice.
“Ah. I’m from New York.”
“I saw the photos on your desk. Figured as much.”
Then Victor showed me his family picture with a grin.
“That’s my dad and mom. They both work on the New York Stock Exchange, the NYSE. Floor brokers. You know, the people in blue jackets who shout orders and take them?”
My ears perked up at once.
Right, his parents had always been good people too.
Whenever I visited their house during vacation, they had treated me especially well.
I asked casually, “Wow. So you’ve lived near Wall Street since you were a kid?”
“Yeah. But my dad’s always telling me, ‘You stay the hell off the floor. Finance is gambling~’ He wants me to do physics or math instead.”
Wall Street in 1991 was a fortress.
To get onto the trading floor, you had to belong to a member firm with a seat bought for millions of dollars, and an individual like me could do nothing more than place orders over the phone.
Every time a private investor placed an order, it had to be for at least one hundred shares, and commissions burned twenty to thirty dollars at a minimum.
This wasn’t an age of clicking a mouse on a computer.
The order book didn’t live on a monitor; it lived in the floor broker’s voice and hand signals.
An immigrant with no credit history, a small-time investor. Those were the limits of my reality. Under those conditions, it was hard enough to open a single account.
But if I had friends whose parents worked on the NYSE floor?
I could get help opening an account.
I told Victor, “If your father works on the exchange, he must know stocks inside and out. You should tell me more about him sometime. Sounds interesting.”
“Uh... the story about my dad’s a little long, but sure! We can have a beer later and I’ll tell you.”
Right then.
Knock, knock.
There was a knock at the door.
It opened, and a broad-shouldered white upperclassman with red hair and jeans leaned against the doorframe.
He scanned the room, looked down at the list in his hand, and pointed at me.
“Sanha Lee? That right?”
When I stood, he came over with a wide grin and gave my shoulder a light shove.
“Welcome to Harvard, Sanha. I’m your floor proctor, Jack.”
Harvard in 1991 had a proctor system.
An upperclassman was assigned to a floor of freshmen dorms and handled it like a housemaster.
“Tonight at eight, there’s a freshman orientation party on the lawn in front of Annenberg Hall. There’ll be music, plus pizza and soda. Make sure you bring your ID. Later, some upperclassmen may be handing out a few things in a corner of the Yard... you know what I mean? Officially, alcohol’s off-limits for now. Figure it out without getting caught.”
Jack winked at me.
He had been a good senior in my memory.
During my freshman year, he played housemaster, counselor, and big brother all at once, and handled everything from roommate fights to grades, career advice, and keeping the hard cases in line.
Victor asked me, “You’re obviously going, right? Sanha?”
“Hmm.”
Annenberg Hall was a freshman-only dining hall built like a Gothic church.
For the first week, there were endless gatherings in that building and the halls around it: alcohol education, sexual harassment prevention, honor code briefings, house assignment introductions, and so on.
In my previous life, I had thought those events were pointless and skipped half of them.
But now they looked different.
These were the people whose connections would later flow into Wall Street, law firms, and politics.
“Of course. I have to go.”
“Yes! Then we can go together!”
Victor cheered at my answer.
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