I’m going on a Bentley campus tour, which is very close to Harvard. I’m obviously not accepted or anything, but can my family just visit without a reservation or without being in a part of a campus tour group?
Our family skipped a lot of info sessions and tours to be honest. Much of the info is available online, though these gatherings do offer a chance to ask questions. We preferred getting “the vibe” on college greens, in dining halls, libraries and bookstores. However, at Harvard, it could be hard to access some of those locations.
But of course you can walk around the Yard, the campus, the Coop, the Square etc. if you prefer.
We were fortunate in having a pretty “chill” tour guide at Harvard.
My suggestion is to skip Harvard’s tour given by the Admissions office and instead take this Harvard tour: http://www.trademarktours.com/harvard-tour/.
FWIW: this company was formed by Harvard alumni, employs Harvard students to give the tours, and is much more informative and fun than the tours given by Harvard’s Administration, which as @compmom mentioned, are very similar to the informational every other college tour provides (yes all of our professors teach undergrads, yes all of our professors have office hours, yes all of our students find a balance between classwork, homework, extracurricular activities and sleep etc).
Harvard was our first admission tour when our daughter just finished her sophomore year. They evacuated the auditorium due to a fire alarm and after 30 minutes waiting to reenter, the director said, “well good luck. We’re out of time.” He was nice and stuck around for individual questions until the tour left but we didn’t get much from the brief. The tour was great.
I wish I’d known about the independent brief. Daughter’s reaches were Princeton and Harvard with Princeton by far her first choice. Rejected by Princeton and accepted at Harvard so our college journey will likely end where it began. Won’t be able to visit again until move-in (if she decides on Harvard which is likely).
@Sportsman88: Congratulations to you and your daughter!
Thanks!
Congrats @Sportsman88 !
Can’t see any reason why any family cannot do an impromptu self guided tour of any campus. Talk to students, eat the food, read the school paper. If you want to attend the info session and a guided tour, you might want to sign up on line.
They did have a student panel at the official brief which was nice since we got to hear from more than just the student tour guide. Maybe if you have time do both.
If you have time, take a walk over to Harvard Business School and Harvard Stadium. Very impressive.
Harvard is quite strict about keeping the dining halls, Houses, and dorms off limits to non-students. You can access museums on campus, but contact with students is more problematic since there is no public student center.
Well, there are exceptions…
During my D’s Harvard tour, a current student saw the tour group coming by and said “Wanna see a freshman dorm?” We then had about 30 people go through a very messy suite, much to the surprise of one roommate who came out shirtless to see what the noise was about, only to find several prospective women students ogling his body.
While I can applaud the initiative and the friendliness, I can tell you that that is a no-no for privacy and security reasons, Had that happened in my dorm as a freshman, I would have had marched my butt to the Freshman Dean’s Office in a heartbeat.
My guess is his shirtless roommate had something to say afterwards as well.