2 graduating Fairview seniors are Harvard bound. They're also best friends
Anthony Cimino was on a bus headed for Disney World with the Fairview High School marching band when he learned that he'd been accepted at Harvard University.
Best friend and classmate Adam Chiocco got the same news while on a school trip in France.
Harvard had notified applicants that it would announce its admission decisions March 30 at 7 p.m. Chiocco and Cimino each clicked on the emailed link on their phones at the appointed time.
"I was not expecting to get in. So I said, 'No guys, don't pay attention to me. I'm just going to open this. Leave me alone. It's fine. It's no big deal,'" Cimino said. "But once I actually opened the link I dropped my phone and yelled, 'I got into Harvard.' The whole bus clapped."
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"It was my first night in France and I was in a home staying with a family I'd just met," Chiocco said. "It was one in the morning because of the time difference. I was tired. I'd been awake for probably 30 hours at that point."
He opened the link, saw that he'd gotten in and connected with his parents on FaceTime.
"My mother cried," Chiocco said.
Then he texted friends on a group chat to tell them he'd been accepted.
"I got a message from Anthony that said, 'Me too.' It was surreal," Chiocco said.
His trip to France lost much of its luster. "I'd just gotten the most exciting news of my life. I wanted to be home," he said.
Chiocco and Cimino will graduate from Fairview High School on June 8 and will begin classes this fall at what arguably is the most prestigious and most competitive university in the U.S. Harvard accepted just 4% of applicants this year.
"That we had two students accepted is fantastic," Fairview High School Principal Luke Beall said.
For Chiocco, attending Harvard will be a years-long dream come true.
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"I've thought of it as the biggest assembly, probably in the world, of people who are really passionate about something and want to make a difference in the world," he said. "They're intelligent. They're driven."
For Cimino, applying to Harvard was almost a last-minute decision. "I thought, 'Well, we'll see what happens,'" he said.
It was after an interview by Harvard alumni in Erie that he began to think he might be accepted and that he wanted to be.
"It became more apparent to me that Harvard is a community where you can find what you're passionate about and not only further your own interests but further the interests of others. It's where you can maximize your passions and how you manifest them in world," Cimino said.
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Still, Cimino didn't commit to Harvard until he and Chiocco attended a university event for admitted students in April. Cimono also had been accepted at Princeton. Chiocco was placed on Princeton's waiting list for admissions.
"I went there with the expectation that unless something very wrong happened or there was something there that I absolutely hated, I'd commit. Not only did nothing happen that I hated, Harvard very much exceeded my expectations. The people there, the arts, academics, networking, all of the things they provided for us to do really blew me away."
Cimino made his decision in the wee hours one night during the Harvard visit, on a deflated air mattress in a dorm lounge.
"I had the revelation that I couldn't imagine myself going anywhere else. So just like that, I got on my phone and hit the button. And that was it," he said.
Chiocco committed to Harvard almost immediately.
"I was in a science class in a school in France the morning after I was accepted. It was very boring and I wasn't really interested. I speak conversational French but only understood about half of what was being said; it was a geology class," he said. "So right there in the middle of class, whether I should have or not, I pulled out my phone and hit the enroll-at-Harvard button.
"I had no doubt in my mind."
Cost wasn't a factor in their decision. Tuition, room and board costs at Harvard are based on families' ability to pay. Chiocco and Cimino each estimate they will pay just $6,000 for their degrees.
"My parents won't have to put any money in a student account for tuition or room and board, or anything like that," Cimino said. "My only expenses will be for textbooks and personal things like shampoo."
"I have a very small college fund saved up from my grandparents that will cover everything," Chiocco said.
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If cost had prevented them from going to Harvard, it would have been devastating, they said.
"We are very middle class," Chiocco said. "Both my parents are teachers. We're not rolling in it by any means, either Anthony or me."
Besides being surprisingly affordable, Harvard is surprisingly normal, the friends said.
"With all the glitter and glam around Harvard, there's a sense of human normalcy that complements all of that perfectly," Chiocco said.
Since their acceptance at Harvard, underclassmen have asked how they positioned themselves for admission.
Their grades and standardized test scores certainly helped. Chiocco scored 34 of a possible 36 on the ACT. Cimino scored 1550 of a possible 1600 on the SAT.
Neither padded his resume.
"There are people, I'm sure, who pack their schedules with as much as possible, with extracurricular activities, jobs, and with this, that and the other thing just with the goal of getting into a good college," Cimino said. "But I feel that the most effective thing is to do things that you actually enjoy, which for Adam and me was music, political campaigns, our student activist group at Fairview, and speech and debate."
Chiocco also participated in marching band and with Cimino worked on local school board campaigns and for State Rep. Ryan Bizzarro, of Millcreek Township, D-3rd Dist.
"A lot of people think of the college application process as very cutthroat, very competitive, but Anthony and I were always very collaborative. We worked together. Any opportunity that one of us had, we tried our best to extend to the other," Chiocco said. "We ended up with very similar resumes because we roped each other into things."
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Both expect to major in government, with a dual focus on philosophy for Chiocco, who plans to be a civil rights lawyer and maybe one day a senator.
"I'm really interested in the abstract thought side of philosophy but also the really pragmatic, solutions side of government," he said.
Cimino is considering a legal career.
"I feel like political science, or what Harvard calls government, will help push me in the right direction, to social sciences and the humanities, what I'm really most passionate about," he said. "I may pursue law school after Harvard, but I'm not fully committed to that."
Besides classes, both look forward to living in Boston.
"It's such a bustling, active, alive environment with so many opportunities available to further our education, for culture, for jobs and just for fun," Cimino said.
Including baseball games at Fenway Park, where Harvard students pay just $9 for a ticket to see the Red Sox.
"I'm definitely going to take advantage of that," Chiocco said. "And I expect I'll become a Celtics fan. I'm a big fan of Pittsburgh sports teams, but since Pittsburgh has no basketball team, I'll root for the Celtics."
The friends will not be roommates at Harvard, and that's for the best, they said. Roommates are matched by the school based on their responses to an interests survey.
"I'm excited to see who I'll get," Cimino said. "You know when you're going to Harvard that you'll get someone interesting, someone with a story."
"I don't know that we would have roomed together anyway," Chiocco said.
"We could have wound up hating each other," Cimino said.
Contact Valerie Myers at vmyers@timesnews.com.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Fairview friends and 'collaborators' are Harvard bound
