elly lau

academic excellence scholarship, 2022

Elly Lau attended the Harvard Summer School Pre-College Program, where she studied the science and philosophy of stereotypes and attitudes. She also participated in various co-curricular activities, explored the campus and the city of Boston, and met students from different countries. She thanked the Mac.Rob Foundation for the scholarship that enabled her to have this enriching experience.

“During the Term 2 holidays, I was honoured to travel to Cambridge, Massachusetts, following my acceptance into the Pre-College Program at Harvard Summer School. I was part of some 500 students chosen from 72 countries worldwide to attend a fortnight of non-credit college courses and observe independent life in the US. This experience graciously lent me priceless insight into the campus lifestyle at Harvard, and a cherished group of friends who came from all over the world.

The two weeks consisted of experiencing US college life with a balance of academic courses, co-curricular activities and exploring the city of Boston. The course I selected was Stereotypes and Attitudes: The Science of First Impressions, a hybrid of psychology and philosophy wherein we explored the social phenomenon of stereotyping, questioned the benefits of stereotypical thinking and engage deeply with social psychology, epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and moral philosophy. The intensive three-hour lectures were led by Harvard PhD candidate Megan Entwistle, who led the class through readings of social psychology and philosophy academic papers, structured debates on the ethics of stereotyping, and enthusiastic class discussions with her philosophy background. Of all the academic material we studied, the most impressionable was Claude Steele’s Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do, which is centred around a recount of an African American man’s method of deflection to avoid stereotyping: whistling the classical Vivaldi while walking the street at night so as to display “high white culture” and deter from the negative stereotype of African American males being “violence-prone”. This is one of the ways people within the social setting of everyday life cope with stereotype threat; the relevance of this phenomenon struck my classmates and me deeply. (For reference, here is chapter 1 of Steele’s book.)

Beyond class, students were required to participate in co-curricular activities that encompassed further academic exploration, college readiness, and recreational activities to socialise with other students. I had the opportunity to sightsee around Harvard Square, visiting landmarks such as the Widener Library, the John Harvard Statue and the Harvard Coop. On the weekends, the Pre-College students ventured to the city of Boston; I visited the New England Aquarium for whale watching and the Museum of African American History.

In time slots for independent study, I attended the lectures Innovation, Invention & the Future of the Global Economy, which provided an overview of how innovation and invention can help address global challenges of the population ageing, climate change and global terrorism, and The Artist & The Autocrat: Cultural Life under Authoritarianism, which explored the emergence of apathy and anti-politics in Soviet Union artists’ expressions through manifestos, architectural plans, clothing design, films and folk ballads.

While American students typically attend Secondary School Programs during their summer break for AP credit, the Pre-College Program provided students an avenue to learn for learning’s sake. This invaluable experience lent me greatly beneficial academic skills and united young people from across the globe under a passion for the same discipline. I would encourage upcoming students to explore attending a Pre-College Program in the US, or even get involved in high school programs at universities in Melbourne as they can be highly rewarding in preparation for tertiary studies.

With this, I express the utmost amount of gratitude to the Mac.Rob Foundation for the Academic Excellence Scholarship, which allowed me to attend the Harvard Summer School Pre-College Program.”