^^ I was too late to correct, it should have read: “cute, slender and blond.”
@gibby - Interesting perspectives! I would think a large percentage of the women who attend final club parties are not Harvard students. I asked my daughter (a current Harvard freshman) and she said that no one she knows had ever mentioned attending one. She’s the antithesis of the final club type, and I suspect most of her friends are too.
@WooTheDay - Are you aware that both Yale and Stanford have more all-male fraternities than Harvard has final clubs? Harvard also has fraternities, but fewer in number, and nonresidential, as are the final clubs.
You can start taking grad classes from day 1 if that is what you want. poli sci is called gov at Harvard. You can take classes at the Kennedy school of gov as an undergrad. The IOP is very well respected and offers lots of internships. There is no pre med major. You major in bio or chem I believe. In math they usually get some of the top math students in the country as undergrads. They are very strong in algebra and geometry. They also have a very god stats dept. Where does your real interest lie? H has a lot to choose from. The choices can be overwhelming
@bldrdad: Yes, there are probably more non-Harvard women who attend final clubs. Google “Wellesly Bus to Harvard final clubs.” (You might have add a naughty word that I can’t use on CC for the Wikipedia entry to come up.)
I can’t speak about Stanford, but in terms of Yale: Yes there are more male only fraternities at Yale than Harvard has final clubs. The difference is that while final clubs are pretty much closed to Harvard freshman and sophomore boys, Yale frats welcome freshman and sophomore boys to their parties, as sophomore year is pledge year, and the frats need to interest boys during their freshman year.
I am sympathetic to the idea of turning down Harvard, having turned it down twice. But you shouldn’t turn Harvard down for dumb reasons. In my mind, dumb reasons include thinking that Harvard is significantly more sexist than Yale or Stanford because of the (largely inconsequential) final clubs. As for elitism, there’s a streak of that at Harvard, sure, and it may even be a couple of centimeters wider than the similar streaks at Yale or Stanford. If you are absolutely allergic to elitism, you had better start looking at completely different colleges. If you are a serious snob yourself, don’t worry; at any of the three colleges you will find plenty of (a) people to look down on, (b) people to look down on those other people with you, and © people who will be looking down at you. If you are like most people and enjoy having a little prestige without making a religion out of it, you will feel great at any of these colleges, and a dozen others too.
The grad school prejudice against a college’s own graduates does not apply at all to professional schools – law, medicine, business, and several others. Harvard Law School and Harvard Medical School will skim the cream from Harvard College (and ditto for Stanford and Yale with their colleges). But you have to be at the top for that to happen. If you are a B+ student at Harvard College, you can kiss Harvard Law School or Harvard Medical School goodbye. (Unless, that is, you have some other enormous distinction, like maintaining a B+ average while you were winning an Olympic medal or an Oscar.)
As for PhD programs, I believe the folklore about hostility to a college’s own graduates is largely a matter of self-protection and keeping the relationship between teachers and students from getting too strained. What happens when Harvard students apply to Harvard PhD programs is that the Harvard professors who are writing their letters of recommendation and advising them, etc., are deciding that there are more attractive grad students to be obtained elsewhere. It’s a lot easier for them to say "Well, we have a policy against admitting our own undergraduates . . . " Except when someone really good comes along, that person gets admitted and wooed.
Hello my fellow EA Admit 
A lot of your questions have been answered here thus far, but I also wanted to add (since I noticed that you have a desire to possibly attend HMS or HLS in the future) that Harvard’s professional schools (e.g. HMS, HLS, HBS, etc.) usually have a disproportionate proportion of Harvard students matriculating to them. For example, I saw a table that showed that Harvard College was the top feeder school to HBS with Harvard grads comprising 9.4% of HBS’s Admitted Class of 2013 (almost double the runner-up, Stanford, with 5.3%). I also saw somewhere else on these forums that approximately 15% of Harvard College students are accepted to HMS as opposed to the overall 5% acceptance rate (There was no data cited to support this claim however). So maybe that is something you might want to keep in mind if are sure that you want to attend a Harvard professional school.
Also, since you seem interested in cross-registering in Harvard’s grad school, I just thought you would be interested in knowing that you can also cross-register with MIT and take any of its courses as a Harvard student (so that means more options for you to explore your interests).
This is a side note, but the first time I heard about a grad school flat-out not accepting applications from its college’s own students, Stanford was the school being referenced as having such a policy. I don’t remember which program it was for, but I think this is definitely something that you should look into seeing as though you also like Stanford and might have plans to go on to grad school.
@go4cornell said:
That is complete hogwash. I know you are trying very hard to convince the OP from attending Stanford (even though he has not received the “golden ticket” yet…and this all may be moot and is an exercise in mental mas*******) but please do not spread bogus information. @JHS has already explained the folklore for certain PhD programs:
All three schools Stanford, Harvard, and Yale prefer their own undergrads for their professional schools (medical, law, business) so each of these schools will have the highest percentage of students represented by their own college graduates vs their peers in the professional schools. On the other hand, PhD programs are a completely different beast in how they choose their candidates…and each department uses slightly different criteria set up by the professors/mentors as to what/who they want…depending on the research/academic areas they are planning to pursue. And all three schools want a diversity of students represented from all types of colleges and universities in their PhD programs along with their professional schools.
…at the end of the day…@WooTheDay is asking some important questions. Even though he may not have the wonderful choices/options come April…he is doing his due diligence.
@gravitas2 I am not trying to deter the OP from attending Stanford. In truth and in fact, my older sibling attended Stanford so I know quite a lot about it (more than can be found on the internet) and thus I know that it is an amazing school. I had fallen in love with it, leading to Stanford and Harvard becoming my my top two choices and it took quite a long time to finally make a decision as to which to apply to early. So I do not appreciate your false accusations of me trying to slander Stanford’s name because I would never do that. It is my belief that Harvard and Stanford are equal institutions with neither being better/worse than the other. As I clearly stated, I said “the first time I HEARD”, meaning that it was second hand information. I am not trying to pass it off as my own, it was merely a point that I SAW on these very forums, and as such I instructed the OP to do his/her own research so that he/she may confirm or deny this for himself/herself.
I never once said that Stanford and Yale did not also prefer their own grads. That is to be expected. I merely singled out Harvard because the OP specifically stated that he/she wants to attend one of Harvard’s professional schools some day.
I really do not understand why you feel the need to be so abrasive and combative in all your posts towards me. Have I ever done something to offend you? If so, I sincerely apologize but I honestly have no idea what I could have said/done to upset you.
This is a variation I am in eighth grade where should I go to college. Don’t worry about grad school now. Pick the college you like the best and go there. Worry about the rest in two or three years. Your major might change four times in college. Find out what you really like first. Most Harvard students don’t cross register at MIT. It is too much hassle.
@florida26 Could you please elaborate on why it is such a hassle? I’ve never heard of it being a strenuous process before. You could respond in a PM if you life since that may be considered as going off topic.