Delayed Acceptance to Harvard, should I take it?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
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<p>You will be an adult for decades and no one gives out medals for having been finished before anyone else. Nearly 30% of people who enter Harvard change their career plans from what they indicated on their applications.</p>

<p>What is the rush? Now if there are financial issues, that is another story entirely and by all means get on to it, but if it just being done for the mere sake of being “done”–What is so great about being done–merely to be done? You will be “done” for a long long time.</p>

<p>It is the journey, not the destination, which counts.</p>

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<p>Etondad is right. There is no rush. I know at your age it can feel as if there is a rush, but there isn’t. Particularly if you choose the medical route, there is no rush. You will be a student for so long that taking a year off now would only be an advantage.</p>

<p>But, ask yourself this: Do I want to go to Harvard? Or do I want to go to MIT?</p>

<p>These two schools are so different that you must have an answer to that question.</p>

<p>Remove the gap year from the equation and where do you want to go? </p>

<p>Go there.</p>

<p>Good luck to you.</p>

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<p>@underachiever: Yes, women do have to manage their biological time clocks, but that really should not play a major factor in deciding whether to take a gap year before college. It’s one year. For physicians in training, one of the best times to plan a pregnancy is during the fourth year of med school. This presumes that the female med student already has a committed partner/spouse in place. I have lots of female physician friends who took maternity leave at the tail end of their residency. I suppose it bears mentioning that, in the back of their minds, many female med students do take into consideration family planning when it comes to choosing a specialty for residency. The guys…not so much.</p>

<p>Strength of the biology program at MIT really isn’t an issue. They do great work over there. It’s the appalling dearth of liberal arts courses that would be my concern. The OP would likely graduate with a better liberal arts education from Harvard (if it’s important to him/her). That being said, both are great schools.</p>

<p>@SpeakerBoxer: Despite what the “numbers” might say, I don’t think the easiest way to get into Harvard Med is to attend Harvard as an undergrad (also termed “Preparation H” by those in the know). Think about it. As an undergrad, you are competing for grades in your science classes with some of the smartest people (at your age) in the country. For example, in my organic chemistry classes (Chem 20/30 sequence), we had the gold medalist and 2 silver medalist winners for the previous year’s International Chemistry Olympiad. We also had the guy who had won the previous year’s Westinghouse award (everyone wanted to be his lab partner). One of the aforementioned students took it upon himself to hold review sessions before each test…and was doing a better job at teaching the material than our grad student teaching fellows. We had to compete with those guys for grades. They were consistently scoring 2-3 standard deviations above the mean. I was just trying hard not to be curve-fodder (and having a great time stepping up to the challenge). Yes, Harvard University sends a significant number of alumni/-ae to Harvard Med, but those are the highest achievers in an already highly achieving bunch. It’s difficult to distinguish oneself in that kind of company.</p>

<p>@etondad: I completely agree with your “what’s-the-rush” comments. A gap year spent doing something productive can actually be a positive thing.</p>

<p>You mentioned the possibility of financial issues being a concern. Interestingly, when I was applying to colleges, of all the schools from which I received acceptances (Stanford, CalTech, MIT, Yale, etc.), Harvard offered the most generous financial aid package. Over my 4 years in school there, the grant portion of my aid package increased steadily. Total cost of my college education (parent contribution + my contribution + loans) was less than the cost of my sister’s education at a California state school (UC Santa Barbara).</p>

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<p>Bartleby: Having a child at fourth year of medical school is a bad idea. The truly learning time is the first two year of the resident program. I do have a female with newborn rotating in my lab for physician scientist track for PGY1. I can assure you that this is one of most disastrous cases for me in the last twenty years. She simply doesn’t have enough stamina to handle the work after all night up baby care. Even though we don’t have a rule in considering issue like this, there is a subconscious consideration when a candidate with heavy pregnancy applies for residency training in our program. The best time to start to have children is right after the board (getting pregnant before the end of resident or fellow training), unless you have a house husband. So it is not an easy task. </p>

<p>In terms of your comment on MIT “dearth of liberal arts”, I don’t think so. But this is not up to me to defend them since I am not connected to MIT in any way. MIT alums should come here to fend for their programs.</p>

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<p>^ There are no “good” time (you can wait forever for the "perfect time–but something in your or your partner’s life will make it less than ideal so give up the “good” time idea)-- but there are worse times (3rd year med school, internship/junior residency) than others. </p>

<p>Things have a way of working out–don’t stress particularly before you start college!!</p>

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<p>@underachiever: As etondad pointed out, there is never a “good” time to have kids, particularly when one is engaged in demanding training for a hectic career.</p>

<p>Your comments regarding 4th year med school being a poor time for pregnancy/childbirth demonstrate a rather short-sighted view of the accommodations that a physician in training can make. I have personally known several female colleagues who have given birth in this time window. A few of those folks opted to postpone the start of residency for 1-2 years. Most had a great deal of family support nearby (spouses, parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, etc.) to help with infant-/childcare. It’s really a matter of priorities and figuring out the best use of available resources.</p>

<p>Regarding the MIT liberal arts issue, I’m not sure what evidence you have to support your comments. My comments regarding MIT are based on personal discussions I had with matriculating MIT students (when I was in college). In order to have the opportunity to take certain humanities courses, some MIT students had to cross-register at Wellesley and take the Senate bus between the two campuses. That doesn’t paint the picture of a university which offers a compelling liberal arts education.</p>

<p>On a related note, I have yet to encounter an MIT alumnus/a who gushes about the liberal arts opportunities at his/her alma mater. That being said, the science education is top-notch and opportunities for undergraduate research abound.</p>

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<p>“the data on those who have taken gap years is very strongly correlated with happiness and success in school. If you can wait-- even if you decide on MIT-- you will be better off.”</p>

<p>This is right! Chances are, you’ll get more out of MIT, too, if you defer a year.</p>

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<p>Wow, taking a gap year between medical school and resident training for maternity? It does not bode well for somebody who wants to be a doc. She likely will struggle to repick up a lot of skills and to adjust work pace.</p>

<p>Cross-registration between Wellesley and MIT does not prove MIT having bad liberal art programs. Some Harvard students cross registering at MIT for social science and music classes does not prove Harvard having poor social science and music programs, either.</p>

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<p>By the way, OP appears a guy. It gets quite irrelevant for what I said.</p>

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<p>@underachiever: Based on your comments, I have to ask: What is your specific role in physician training? Are you an academic physician-scientist who runs a lab and has clinical responsibilities in the typical 80:20 split?</p>

<p>You mentioned the “disastrous” scenario involving the woman with a newborn who is rotating through your lab during PGY1 of a physician-scientist track residency program. With proper organization and judicious scheduling of experiments, lab research can certainly be a 9-to-5 enterprise. If anything, I would think that a lab rotation during PGY1 for someone in her position would allow for ample family time. Many residency programs with physician-scientist tracks set aside “protected” lab time for the residents. If the resident in question is trying to juggle bench research, clinical time on the wards, and overnight call on top of being a new mother…then I would agree that such a schedule might be too demanding for her. She could always transition to a straight clinical track, right? She could always complete a research fellowship upon completion of the clinical residency. In fact, some would argue that such a trajectory is preferrable to the short-tracking that occurs in a physician-scientist track residency program.</p>

<p>People take “gap years” in medical training all the time. M.D./Ph.D. students complete their Ph.D.s in-between the 2nd and 3rd years of med school. Depending on how a student structures his/her fourth year of med school, clinical time with patients in an in-patient setting can be rather light – a situation comparable to taking a year off prior to an internship/transitional year. I’ve known colleagues who take a year or two off from the med school-residency trajectory to try out consulting, join a biotech start-up, or start a family. It’s not the norm, but it happens. Does it hinder their professional development as physicians? I don’t know. I think the biggest travesty in academic medicine is that some people are allowed to run a basic science research lab 11 months out of the year and then play attending physician for a month…then repeat this process year after year. With such a schedule, is it possible to prevent clinical skills from deteriorating and keep up on the changing trends in clinical medicine?</p>

<p>With regard to my comments regarding MIT, please allow me to clarify. The MIT students with whom I spoke felt compelled to cross-register at Wellesley to take core classes in the humanities (music, the arts, literature, history, etc.). Such classes are readily available on-campus at Harvard for Harvard undergrads. It’s not fun to have to hop on a bus several times a week to get to class. One-way, the trip on the Exchange bus from Kendall Square to Wellesley takes 50 minutes.</p>

<p>Out of curiosity, have you personally attended any of the schools in our discussion (Harvard, MIT, Wellesley)?</p>

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<p>Bartleby: Are you a resident? I am a professor in a highly ranked medical school. As I said before, I have no relationship with all three schools you mentioned. However, I do have collaborators in HMS and MIT, and know their science quite well. I am quite puzzled that your MIT friend needed to go to Wellesley for the humanity core, because many humanity and social science departments in MIT are highly regarded, including music, political science, linguistics, management and economics. It should be easier to cross-register in Harvard for a MIT student if Harvard also provides similar classes (and obviously not). To my knowledge, MIT requires eight humanity classes to graduate. The HASS programs are excellent. I don’t think that they lag in educating their students for humanity. </p>

<p>Those people taking gap years in residency to pursue other interest seldom come back, and we rarely readmit them.</p>

<p>This concludes my involvement in this thread.</p>

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<p>@underarchiever: No, I’m not a resident. I’m basing all of my comments on personal conversations I’ve had with members of the medical community (physicians, residents with whom I’ve worked, med school classmates, college classmates).</p>

<p>If you read my previous post carefully, you’ll see that I make no mention of taking gap years during residency. However, I did refer to gap years between med school and residency. As you know, once a med school graduate begins a residency program, there is a commitment to finish the program on-time. If a resident drops out, decelerates, or takes time off, rotation schedules would likely get thrown off, resulting in an increase in workload for the house staff (possibly) and other residents in the program (almost certainly). </p>

<p>Having PI-level collaborators at an institution gives one very little insight at all into the undergraduate curricula at that particular institution. I suppose that’s why I find the tone of certainty in your posts so surprising.</p>

<p>MIT students are not forced to cross-register at Wellesley or Harvard to fulfill core humanities requirements. They can choose to take the offered on-campus courses to fulfill the humanities requirement. In fact, that’s probably the “path of least resistance” for MIT undergrads. It should be mentioned that the cross-registration process is not always so easy. Students affiliated with other institutions are not typically given priority for course registration. This means that if the class is popular, the cross-registering student will probably not be lucky enough to get into it. Moreover, the academic schedules for the institutions involved may not be perfectly aligned. This can make it difficult logistically, from the cross-registering student’s perspective.</p>

<p>Although MIT may have some specific strengths in a handful of areas within the humanities, that does not translate into strong liberal arts course offerings across the board.</p>

<p>You pointed out that MIT requires 8 humanities classes to graduate. If that’s the case (and it very well could be), that stands as a minimum requirement. I would assert that most college students interested in obtaining a liberal arts education would want to take more than 8 humanities courses during college. If you have the time, I encourage you to peruse the course catalogs for the schools in question. Among them, you’ll notice an incredible difference in the depth and breadth of course offerings in the humanities.</p>

<p>I don’t mean to disparage MIT at all. It’s a fine school – very strong in the sciences. The UROP program is fantastic. The student body has a playful attitude toward science that surely resonates with anyone having geeky/nerdy inclinations (myself included). Their hacks are pretty damn funny. Their frat parties are something to behold. Graduates get to wear a cool ring, uniquely designed by the ring committee for their class. Regardless of which school the original poster chooses, I’m sure he’ll have a great college experience.</p>

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<p>Underachiever, I know of several member of my residency program at the Brigham who took extended time to do bench research and one who spent a year doing medical missionary work in New Guinea. Every single one came back and unlike whatever department you come from, our department was encouraging before they left and welcomed them back with open arms. (BTW-- I have kept up with all of them, all of them are now prominent academic physicians in either clinical/basic research or public health-- I myself did a long research fellowship at the Kennedy School which resulted in winning a major fellowship after I finished my residency.) </p>

<p>Did it cause problems in the program? No, not really, because there was a tradition of people doing such things so their places were taken up by those residents from previous years who were returning back to clinical practice. And as far as I could tell, none of them missed more than a slight step at the outset getting back in the clinical swing of things.</p>

<p>I have since switched fields and a good amount of my time is working with students who are dealing with these sorts of questions. Most frequently I encourage them to explore-- I had one student who took 3 years off to get her law degree and now back finishing up her psychiatry residency–that the program will always be here. </p>

<p>Thankfully, medical education no longer has the “macho” aspect that a resident has to “gut it through.” That style of education produced too many horribly warped people who felt as if they were “owed” for having given up everything and making it through what was like a multi-year Butan Death March. Read the “House of God” (about Beth Israel at Harvard in the late 1970s). At first the reader is laughing but by the end it isn’t funny at all–it has become clear how psychotic and sick residency education is. I rejoice that such practices are on the wane.</p>

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<p>@etondad: Thanks for sharing your experience. It’s good to know that some residency programs are supportive of their residents, even if their plans diverge from the one initially laid out by the program.</p>

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<p>@underarchiever, just curious about your username. It doesn’t look like yours.</p>

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<p>I’ll stand up as the MIT alum who was very happy with the humanities/social sciences offerings at MIT. It’s certainly not true that most (or many) students feel the need to go to Wellesley for liberal arts courses – actually, I can’t think of anyone I knew who did that. A few people I knew took courses at Harvard, but mostly during the summer, when MIT does not offer classes. </p>

<p>I was mostly interested in the social sciences, so I took courses primarily in anthropology, psychology, and linguistics to fulfill my HASS (humanities/arts/social sciences) requirement, although I also took courses in literature and foreign language. It’s true that the eight-course requirement is a floor, not a ceiling, so students who are interested in taking a wide variety of courses in the humanities, or in adding a second major or minor in a humanities field, can certainly take more courses. Most students at MIT are primarily interested in science and engineering, but many people have a strong avocational interest in the humanities and social sciences. </p>

<p>For the OP’s interests in particular, the MIT political science department is outstanding and is typically highly-ranked. The biology department is, of course, top-notch. I was an undergraduate at MIT in biology, and am now a biology PhD student at Harvard, so I’m in an excellent place to comment on both programs – they are both world-class programs, and a student certainly doesn’t need to sacrifice academic quality or research opportunities by attending either. The MIT EECS department is, of course, the best in the world.</p>

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<p>@molliebatmit: So if you were in the OP’s shoes, which would you choose: MIT this fall or Harvard after a gap year?</p>

<p>Was MIT your first choice school for undergrad? If so, why?</p>

<p>Having spent time on both campuses, have you noticed any difference in the personalities of the students?</p>

<p>My impression from talking with MIT students is that, on the whole, they were not very interested in taking humanities classes. Such classes were seen mainly as requirements for graduation. I didn’t find this too surprising given the focus of the school and the type of student that the school attracts.</p>

<p>Good luck with your Ph.D. program.</p>

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<p>When I was applying to college, I was accepted to MIT and waitlisted at Harvard. I visited MIT after being accepted, and immediately felt at home – I loved the atmosphere, was thrilled by the classes, and everyone I met was so welcoming and smart. I had an absolutely fantastic four years, and I would go to MIT all over again if I had the choice. If I were the OP, I would absolutely go to MIT now, rather than waiting a year to go to Harvard, unless there were cultural fit issues that made the OP think he/she wouldn’t like it at MIT. </p>

<p>My contact with Harvard undergrads has been limited to those who work in my lab or take the course I TFed for two years – all biology majors (MCB, SCRB, Neurobio, etc.). In general, I think there’s a lot of overlap between the types of people who major in biology at Harvard and at MIT, although Harvard has more pre-meds, and therefore the Harvard students with whom I have contact are considerably more concerned about their grades. MIT students tend to work themselves crazy by double-majoring, or taking a zillion classes, or spending hours at their research jobs; Harvard students tend to work themselves just as crazy in their extracurriculars. </p>

<p>

Sure, but the option to take large numbers of humanities classes is still there. For those students who are interested, there are a huge variety of courses offered, and the vast majority of them are small seminar-style courses where students get direct attention from professors (since the humanities departments have very few majors). I should point you toward posts by oasis, who used to be very active on the MIT board until he went to medical school – he was a double major in biology and history, and has some great posts on being a science/humanities double major at MIT.</p>

<p>

Thanks! I’m finishing up – I’ll be defending my thesis this fall.</p>

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<p>Take a gap year if it means doing something meaningful or if you think it’s worth it. It comes down to which school you see yourself fitting in better. I will say though that MIT is a school you must love and have a very deep passion for, because otherwise it will make you very depressed very quickly.</p>

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<p>What did you end up doing? I was just accepted to the class of 2017 and I think I’m going to take it!</p>