<p>thanks for answering Admiral! I guess everyone has this preconceived notion of Harvard students all being work obsessed geeks, because in order to be admitted you have to have amazing grades/hard courses, etc. which usually in high school constitutes as geeky! It sounds amazing to be surrounded by students who are really interested in what they're learning, rather than going to college just to party. Nice to hear that everyone's supportive of each other too :) I only wish I had a chance in the world to go to a school like Harvard, but there's positively none!</p>
<p>Haha, I asked my interviewer this but he avoided the question:
How much BUSYWORK aka homework are you assigned a week? Are you actually going to be checked for completion or just simply that you understand everything?</p>
<p>Wow! I am really amazed at all the great questions you guys have posted! Now for a bit of my input...</p>
<p>I am also in the sciences and while there is no outright competition (no one will come up, snatch your paper and look at your grade) there is both self-competition and a certain underlying competition that exists. You know that you will be up against all of your peers for medical school and just for that, there is an unspoken competition. Everyone mainly stays quiet about their achievements (under-achievements sometimes) in the academic area- a nice refreshing change from high school. </p>
<p>This semester has been brutal. Late nights, no outings on the weekends- really brutal. I am feeling the stress right now taking some really bad (but unfortunately mandatory for me to move on to better science classes) classes and they are definitely keeping me awake at night. As someone said to me once "nothing here is easy- there are just differing degrees of difficulty." The stress level has gone up BUT by no means are all students taking anti-depressants! </p>
<p>The thing to really keep in mind is that students here are all really goal driven- each one of us has somewhere we want to go. Some of us know where that is, others do not- but we all know we want to go somewhere in the end, thus we all have a drive that pushes us forward. In saying this, it is easy to sometimes get overwhelmed by this and feel "depressed." In high school you are given a title- my friend "Sarah" was the best athlete, "Sean" was the best at math, "Devin" was the Wiz kid... those titles give you a direction, or purpose in a sense. However, here...everyone is the wiz kid, the athlete, etc. So some students feel as though they have no title, and thus no identity. This loss of identity does make many sad and "depressed." Overall, however, students are happy with the dynamic and the environment they are in. So, really, the rich environment is both a bane and advantage/strong point about Harvard. It can be overwhelming, but so enlightening as well... it really depends on how you take things.</p>
<p>I have to get back to studying though! Cabot library closes early!!!! Keep posting guys :)</p>
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[QUOTE]
Haha, I asked my interviewer this but he avoided the question:
How much BUSYWORK aka homework are you assigned a week? Are you actually going to be checked for completion or just simply that you understand everything?
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>Hey Inaina-</p>
<p>First of all, understand that my answers come from the perspective of someone taking almost exclusively science courses. The experience of people in other areas is surely pretty different.</p>
<p>What's important is that in college, except for a few exceptions, homework does NOT equal busywork.</p>
<p>There's loads of it, but it's often incredibly difficult (it depends on the class), and it reflects accurately what you need to understand to succeed in the class. In some classes (like organic chem, as I mentioned earlier), you're effectively forced to work in groups on the problem sets. And if you don't keep up with the course, you'll realize you're falling behind as you do the problems.</p>
<p>Most courses have no interest in "keeping you busy," or "giving work for the sake of work." In high school, I noticed that teachers often gave me assignments that consisted of solving the same kind of problem many, many times. In a Harvard class like Physics, though, a problem set (one a week) consists of about 10 questions, each generally testing a different kind of problem, and each taking around half an hour to complete. (I'd usually finish them in about six hours with a few brief breaks). They're not the kind of things you just slug through, though.</p>
<p>As for checking the work- almost all courses check every answer, and often grade pretty harshly. Problem sets are taken fairly seriously- they're not treated the way homework is in high school.</p>
<p>The good news is that the curve on problem sets is often very kind. It's not unusual for the average for an advanced class to be in the 70s, but that corresponds to a B+ on the homework for many classes. (Tests are curved seperately, sometimes more harshly than the problem sets, sometimes less).</p>
<p>There are a lot of changes in attitude that students have to make when they come to Harvard (most of these are true of a lot of colleges). There's no longer an attitude of "I have to take as many courses as possible and take the most advanced ones available!" Just leave that at the gates. So is the attitude of "I have to be the smartest in my class- a B+ is a sign of the coming apocalypse!!!" That's just silly. You can perform well on most of your classes if you work hard, but there will be courses where you can't be at the top, and you deal with it.</p>
<p>Other attitudes that change, by the way, include pretty much everything you know about free time. You have a LOT more responsibility in planning out your free time than there is in high school- classes only meet 2 or 3 times a week for lecture, and there is rarely a direct penalty for missing lecture, so it's up to you whether you can afford to skip a lecture for any reason. (Hint: "I want to sleep in" is a reason you sometimes later regret). You end up with huge chunks of free time that can trap you into leading an unstructured and spontaneous schedule- it's fun, but it can hurt you.</p>
<p>For example- on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I have only ONE class the whole day- chem from 9-10 A.M (I crammed a LOT into Tuesdays and Thursdays- they're nightmarish). That means that after 10, I'm free the whole day (and sometimes I just skip the lecture and watch the video later- free four day weekend!). This is a lot of fun, but it sometimes leads to me sleeping the whole afternoon, or wandering around Cambridge and Boston on trivial errands, even if I have work to do. At least in high school, there was a regular structure.</p>
<p>I hope that answers some of your questions (and some you didn't ask). Good luck.</p>
<p>DocT and Admiral thanks so much, you guys are really giving such great insight. </p>
<p>DocT, what you said was exactly what I've heard before, and what I was getting at earlier! In order to get into Harvard you have to be pretty outstanding, and probably top of your class, have won prestigious awards, etc., but then when you get to Harvard everyone has impressive accolades and you are no longer the stand out student, which could be difficult for some.</p>
<p>Admiral, I've heard that a lot about college in general- that you have a lot of free time and need to learn to manage it. Fortunately for me, I go to a prep school and have a lot of free time already. 3 periods worth of classes Mondays, the rest are free periods! So helpful with getting work done, and extra help with teachers. As a matter of fact I'm in a free period right now, bored to death haha.</p>
<p>Admiral... you are amazing.. :D I can't believe you can take all classes in one field... that's insanely cool...
Geez... I would love to just have one class for a whole day... my public high school teachers are under the impression that we will burn the school down if not sedated with daily injections of busywork... haha... then each one of them takes it as a personal responsibility and by the end of the day, we get about 6X the prescribed dose... By the way, does Harvard have wi-fi?</p>
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By the way, does Harvard have wi-fi?
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</p>
<p>Yes, and it's actually AMAZING.</p>
<p>You can get a very good signal in every one of the dorms, every part of the library, almost every classroom, even in the middle of the yard... there are some blind spots, like Sanders Theater (where a few very large classes are), but generally, you could sit down anywhere on campus and browse the internet.</p>
<p>I am in all science classes as well, including my Expos class which is Imagining Science... but I still have my share of busy work, especially in one of my intro classes. Trust me, the busy work never ends. While the busy work becomes a bit more integral to your studies here, there are still some things that are annoying... like this stupid project I have to do!</p>
<p>Haha... DocT... you still have to do projects? I thought that's just an invention of High school teachers... useful only as a vehicle of torture... lol :D I'm sorry... if it makes you feel better, I'm still in high school, and I'm swamped with "projects" ERRRRRRG!</p>
<p>a homeless guy slept on the steps once in front of matthews... besides that they never enter the yard. also about the wi-fi, it is not good everywhere. in matthews north it goes out sometimes, and some of the river houses don't get good service, but it is still amazing, of course it cant be perfect.</p>
<p>Can anyone tell me if the notification on March 29th is for acceptance or for the second phase of applicants?</p>
<p>I do have projects and this project I have for my science class is kind of a big deal. The fabrication of the high school project is not just for high school anymore.... although I feel like they should just stay in high school... seriously a pain in my butt</p>
<p>Nicolby, the notification on March 29th is for acceptance.</p>
<p>I hope you guys get accepted, that'd be awesome!!</p>
<p>Ok, so this sounds a little silly, but I have a question about admissions. I don't have the most rigorous schedule (I'm a junior) because of illness, which is what my essay is going to be on (overcoming adversity, having to quit competitive figure skating because of it, etc.) but right now I'm working on two major projects. 1) A research paper, trying to get it published in The Concord Review, and 2) Getting a book published. I know it sounds ridiculous, but say one or both of those events occurred, from your own experience and knowledge of admissions at Harvard, do you think the rigor of my classes could be overlooked?</p>
<p>See, I find it frustrating (and I remember how frustrating it was last year) to know that there is no real formula for getting in. It doesn't matter if you don't take the most rigorous classes because just doing that doesn't mean you will get in... it is the big picture. I feel like they may overlook that for you because you have other things in the works that show you have a passion for something: writing. So, while it is not guaranteed, there is a good shot that they won't care.</p>
<p>Is it really ok to use the common app or do they prefer you use theirs?</p>
<p>wheels, they require applicants to use both the common application and harvard supplement.</p>
<p>eeks... you know what I hate? You never know what to put on the applications! I was afraid to put a bunch of stuff on my application because I thought that it might look like I was "padding" the application.... gah! Ah well... say... how long does it take the rejection.... or in your case, acceptance letter to arrive? Is it overnight delivery (the deligent snailmail) or is it the regular old, maimed slug mail?</p>
<p>Inaina- if you put down that you wanted it emailed, you'll get the email that night, so the letter isn't all that important...</p>
<p>But to answer your question- acceptances are mailed with a much higher priority than rejections. Mine reached me on Saturday, so two days after decisions were emailed. Rejection letters (I'm not sure about waitlists) come later than that, but honestly, those letters don't say anything particularly interesting (I believe they're the same as the rejection emails). Some people I know had fun burning their rejection letters, so it can't hurt to save them somewhere.</p>
<p>Anyway, good luck with all your applications! Honestly, no matter what schools you get into and what schools you don't, it's usually wonderful for most people just to know where they're going. You get to set up a facebook, hang out online with other people going to your school, plan out your life in a new city... it's very exciting. That's much more important than, "Oh, did I get into this ranked school, or this ranked school, did I beat so-and-so..."</p>
<p>On another note, I ran into DocT in the Science Center Tuesday, which is cool!</p>
<p>Haha... all the Harvard people have "connections"...lol. I'm trying to delay the collapse of the wave function for as long as possible, so I'm going to wait for the *Mollusca Gastropoda *mail (even though I suppose this doesn't really work since there are the admission officers who could serve as the conscious observers) Hm.... I wonder if you know some people... they're in your class.... AHHHHH... MUST REFRAIN FROM REVEALING IDENTITIES.... <em>goes off and sulk</em></p>