<p>^^That indeed is true. Since I came here in the fall, I have been to Boston only twice.</p>
<p>In terms of quietness, I think Cambridge is a mix. It’s sometimes really calm and quiet and sometimes very energetic. As for the campus itself, the most bustling thing about it are the hordes of Asian tourists!</p>
<p>@pixie; In my opinion, Cambridge bustles. But it’s more like the bustle of an old-fashioned, European town than say, New York. However, the level of comfort people have with Cambridge is intensely subjective, so I think the only way you can tell for sure is to visit.</p>
<p>Harvard peoples:
How were your aid packages, if you received them? My friend was rejected from MIT, but got into Harvard, and got 30k although his parents make nearly a million. And his parents are doing nothing for Harvard.</p>
<p>If parents make nearly a million and the kid got 30k from H, then they must not be reporting their income correctly.</p>
<p>How would you describe workload at Harvard? Is it too much and is it all important to grasp the material?</p>
<p>@lousyanamom</p>
<p>beatlesdisturbed is undoubtedly a ■■■■■.</p>
<p>felixfelicis: Not a ■■■■■, once more.
Probably some sort of mishap. He’s calling back Harvard to recheck it.</p>
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<p>Cambridge (at least the area that Harvard is in) is not really the same kind of “urban” that a city like Boston is. I don’t really know what old-fashioned European towns are like but from what I can imagine, exultationsy’s comparison is pretty good. </p>
<p>Harvard isn’t the same kind of a “bubble” that Princeton’s campus is, but there really are few reasons to go into Boston unless you want to. I would guess that most people don’t go into Boston more often than once a month, unless they have some regular commitment like doing research at an MGH Lab or a program through PBHA or something.</p>
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<p>It depends what classes you take, some are easy some are not.</p>
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<p>Yes?</p>
<p>@Dwight That may or may not be accurate; it’s definitely the impression I have, but that’s mostly from reading. “Old-fashioned town” conjured up images of colonial New England to me, which is not what I was going for.</p>
<p>@confused Are you looking for a college at which you don’t need to grasp all of the material? Harvard isn’t that. But at the same time, some students get the mistaken impression that one needs to do All Of The Reading in All Of One’s Classes and that adds up to thousands of pages a week. You usually don’t need to do every one of the readings (in reading-heavy classes)…but you do need to do at least a very significant portion of them. (What proportion depends on the class.) Is that what you meant? I’m not sure I answered your question.</p>
<p>exultatiosy: you did! :)</p>
<p>it makes me feel better that it’s not just cornell that has the housing lottery. are many schools like this? i was under the assumption it’s normal to pick which dorm you’d like to be in and pretty much get guaranteed to it, along with whether you want a single, double, etc. </p>
<p>does harvard guarantee housing for all 4 years? cornell guarantees it for 2 years, but they don’t guarantee that you won’t wind up in a dorm that you’ll hate. haha. and at cornell from what i heard there’s a massive scramble to get the best dorms. does this happen at harvard? </p>
<p>i just read somewhere that after assigning people to suites, they themselves have to work out who gets what (a single or a double). is this true?</p>
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<p>Harvard guarantees housing for all 4 years and the vast majority stay on campus. There’s no “scramble” because the house assignments are random. And while some dorms are a bit better than others, there are no awful dorms despised universally by all Harvard students. Many don’t want Quad dorms because they’re far away, but many also love them because the rooms themselves are nice.</p>
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<p>Yeah if you are assigned a suite you have to figure out who gets which room. Some people switch it around between semesters I suppose but I don’t think most do, since that’s an annoying hassle.</p>
<p>^Which freshman dorm would you say is the nicest? (in terms of room size, bathrooms, etc.)
Also are all first-year classes within close walking distance, or would you recommend bringing a bike?</p>
<p>Thank you for your replies Polyglot, exultationsy and Dwight! 
I wasn’t really look forward to moving from one bustling city to another bustling city, and it’s good to hear that although Cambridge is near Boston, it doesn’t have all the hype and bustle of a regular city.</p>
<p>Hey, I have some more questions:</p>
<p>I’m from a tropical country and my winter clothing spans a comparatively small range, most of which would probably not be protective for very harsh winters. Do you suggest I should pre order, or just come with a few sweaters and light jackets and shop in Boston for warm clothes when I reach?
How do I get advice on what sort of clothing is really suitable for Boston weather? At the moment, I really feel lost, and from what I hear Boston winters set in really quickly (when exactly? by what time does it start getting cold? I’m a person who feels cold pretty easily).
Should i even bother carrying a lot of summer clothing? If not, then what with buying all winter clothing when I reach, and little summer clothing…I should have pretty light bags, lol. 
Do dorms have a lot of space for hanging up clothes?</p>
<p>Do many people double major? Do many students take classes at the Kennedy school, or at MIT, or does it become too cumbersome to walk all that distance in the snow in winters?</p>
<p>I’m sorry if this has been asked before, but is it necessary to bring a printer as a freshman? Is it a large distance to the Womens center/science center? I’m sure I’ll be having classes with a lot of problem sets. For upperclassmen, do the houses have their own printer?</p>
<p>Thanks! :)</p>
<p>thanks for the reply. are pets allowed in any of the harvard dorms? at cornell, we can have any caged pet as long as it isn’t too big in one of our dorms. (except for cats, dogs, ferrets, or poisonous creatures though) i shall hopefully be assigned to this dorm.</p>
<p>^I’m curious, if you’re going to Cornell, why are you interested in the intricacies of Harvard dorm policies?</p>
<p>The smartest thing you can do is plan to dress in layers. I would make sure you have a sweatshirt and/or light jacket as a staple for fall/spring, to be worn under a quality winter jacket on the coldest days in winter. Even better, get a winter jacket that is double-layered with a fleece sweatshirt inside…Columbia and Northface both sell these. You don’t necessarily need to go for the name-brand but if it’s too cheap it’ll probably be a crappy jacket. Get a hat and gloves, scarf if you want, etc. Boston isn’t northern Canada but with wind chill it can get pretty cold in February especially. Note that a fleece coat is not a winter jacket.</p>
<p>As for the weather in general, make sure you do bring summer clothes because the first two weeks of the fall are almost always hot (for northeastern US standards anyway). There can be some high 80 low 90s days and none of the dorms (save dewolfe) have AC. It starts getting chilly (i.e. fleece weather) in October and it starts getting full-on cold in December and when you return in February. The months of March and April are unpredictable. Sometimes it snows in April, sometimes you get 70 degree days in March. </p>
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<p>Everyone gets a chest of drawers and most of the time every student gets his own closet. Sometimes you get 4 closets for a suite of 5, which is what happened to us freshman year. You can buy independent free-standing closets for fairly cheap actually if that happens. Or you could convince one of your suitemates to transfer…</p>
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<p>At Havard you can “joint concentrate” which means you take roughly the same # of classes as one major but it’s like half/half. All(?) of them require you to write a thesis combining both fields, which means that joint concentrating in Physics and Romance Languages&Literature is essentially impossible. Also, some fields don’t allow you to joint concentrate. Others, like History, only allow you to joint concentrate with certain other concentrations (East Asian Studies). </p>
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<p>I don’t know about “many” but I’ve met quite a few who do. The Kennedy School isn’t far at all…it may even be closer than some of your Harvard College classes especially if you live in Eliot or something since it’s right next door. To take a class at MIT I’m pretty sure you have to argue that it’s a class they don’t offer at Harvard, but I know some people who do this. You don’t walk to MIT because it would take like an hour…one kid I know takes a bus but I suppose you could maybe take the subway from Harvard to Kendall. Via bus or subway it’s like 10 minutes travel time.</p>
<p>Also, walking in the snow is a fact of life in MA but usually Harvard/Cambridge does a good job of plowing walkways and sidewalks. The rough part is walking at night because the cobblestone sidewalks turn into a skating rink from the ice.</p>
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<p>Some bring printers. We didn’t. Some freshman dorms and some(many?) upperclass houses have printers. If you live in Canaday you can print in the science center…if you live in the yard you can print in Lamont or Widener. It’s not hard to find places to print.</p>
<p>^^In addition, I think about a half of the freshman dorms have printers in their common rooms. Printing costs 5 cents per page, 3cpp if duplexed, which makes it as cheap as, if not cheaper than printing with your own printer.</p>