<p>I’m not hating; I’m just saying that anyone who feels it fit to enumerate his career goals at a pre-party is a tad too eager.</p>
<p>Maybe the budget problems are affecting t-shirt distribution. Last year, our daughter got a t-shirt, and then there was also one that said “Harvard parent” on the front. None of us ever wore the shirts, but they were given to every student and family attending. With an endowment that had taken a dive in value, perhaps this is an example of across the board cost-cutting. And perhaps cost-cutting affected the pre-frosh weekend in other ways, with perhaps fewer staff or something.</p>
<p>I had heard ahead of time that in past years if you did not come at the earlier end, they ran out of t-shirts. We had that in mind. D got one and my husband and I both got parent T’s. D friend who came Sunday AM also got t-shirts so they were distributed longer than we understood that they would.</p>
<p>Harvard pre-frosh weekend was meant to show the school as it is.</p>
<p>Here’s my experience that weekend.
I made friends with other pre-frosh right when I arrived at the airport. The five of us took the T together to Harvard Square, where there was a man in a donkey suit running toward us screaming “Pre-Frosh!!! Come this way!” and we had couple students showing us where to register and all that.
My host was a sophomore in Pfoheimer who shares her triple with three other people. They even took me and my friends out to lunch (the crepes were delicious). We had a good hour of talk about life at harvard, academics, and the ups and downs of the school.</p>
<p>You can savor the wide range of opinions at Harvard for example
by seeing the disparity in my post here versus white rabbit’s comments
on competition and guidance. :)</p>
<p>Harvard “appears” non-competitive but freshmen in certain science
classes know the reality. There are myths about Harvard that are baseless
but the one about ultra-competition seems somewhat true from
personal experience. The level of competition is somewhat lower than
Integrated Sciences at Princeton but definitely way out of proportion when
compared to MIT.</p>
<p>Superficial guidance appears in abundance in many forms for freshman.
Intimate guidance (someone taking the time to talk to you about your
goals <strong>and</strong> having the knowledge to guide you on specific course selection)
is <em>very rare</em> for freshmen. It is more likely freshman will land advisers
who did not attend Harvard as an undergraduate and are simply
not plugged into the latest offerings. For some concentrations certain course
selections in the first year provides a significant advantage that may be missed
by "mis"advising.</p>
<p>In fact at the orientation you may get to hear statistics about the percentage
of students who report that they seek their guidance for course and activity
selection form their parents and siblings (quite high).</p>
<p>I love Harvard but do have to admit that my friends at Princeton seem to be
getting relatively higher quality guidance for their freshman year. This situation
seems to be addressed favorably once you get into your houses at Harvard.</p>
<p>Yes, I suppose it varies alot then. I am a future humanities concentrator who has found zero compition in my classes and who hasn’t heard about any from my friends. I imagine pre-med classes could be different. Which isn’t to say that kids aren’t driven to succeed in my classes, they just don’t see that as contingent on how others in the class perform.</p>
<p>My guidence has also been very good. My advisor is the Chair of a large department on campus, but has always made time for me. We’re going to lunch in a few minutes. My proctor is amazing, and always goes out of his way to connect us with people he knows around campus. Also, several of my Professors have a hugely generous with their time. Last semester two of them took me to lunch to talk about my summer plans and opportunities. This semester I’ve talked at length about having a career in academia with a pulitzer prize winner and gone to coffee to talk about future plans at Harvard with another top professor. So it’s been fine for me! I find you just have to make the effort, but that could be different in other fields.</p>
<p>@ Mustafah (das ist nicht meine name ali simbali): So you’re saying someone who talks about one career they want to pursue is fail right? If so then I agree, but don’t make it seem like you’re hatin on people who love integration.</p>
<p>Figured I’d chime in here, although I am still W/L at Harvard. To the peolpe that found their day a negative: I’m wondering if it is simply that your perception is influenced by whatever other schools you visit. I found that the accepted students day at Brown was similar (in in terms of negative/cold/unorganized) as what some have said here about Harvard. Now, my situation is that I have been to accepted students days at a bunch of other schools (GTown, BC, Villanova, Tufts) that REALLY went all out and left nothing to chance, whereas I found Brown’s to be kind of seat of the pants and “take us as you see us”. Maybe some schools (justly, or unjustly) feel that they don’t have to sell. Or they (as in the case of Brown) leave it to students to run most of it and you get whatever they happen to pull togetehr, or not.</p>
<p>Guess what I’m asking is: Of those with a negative impression, did you form this impression by comparison to other schools that were more effusive?</p>