<p>Just wondered if people decide there is a better fit somewhere else .</p>
<p>A few do, but only a few. </p>
<p>I knew a couple of classmates who left. I still hear about one of them from time to time. She doesn’t seem to have many regrets.</p>
<p>I assume you’re asking because you’re thinking about your daughter. What you’ve shared here has often made me question whether she and Harvard were right for each other.</p>
<p>Sent from my DROIDX using CC</p>
<p>I’m a rising junior and I don’t know anyone (or OF anyone) who’s transferred out. I’m sure there are some, but it’s very rare.
That’s not to say that people don’t realize that it’s not the best fit, though. A lot of people are unhappy, but feel pressured for one reason or another to stay.</p>
<p>Very few. The freshman return and graduation rates are extremely high for HYP.
Those are verified measures of student satisfaction - and very low transfer out or drop out rates</p>
<p>[Harvard</a> College Admissions § About Harvard: Frequently Asked Questions](<a href=“http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/about/faq.html]Harvard”>http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/about/faq.html)</p>
<p>“Harvard graduates 97 percent of its students, among the very highest graduation rates in the nation.”</p>
<p>BTW: While a graduation rate does indicate an element of student satisfaction, many students, like my daughter, are not happy, but they just cannot bring themselves to leave because it’s Harvard. So, they slog away when they might be having a happier experience elsewhere.</p>
<p>Absolutely true. I actually respect a person who has enough sense of self to say, “I know this is Harvard, and I know a lot of people would give up a lot to be here, but it’s really not for me.”</p>
<p>I wish my daughter could say that! She’s a straight ‘A’ student, but absolutely miserable, and doesn’t have the courage (or the maturity) to say it’s not really for me. Two more years to go – and hating every minute of it!</p>
<p>gibby- Why isn’t she happy ?</p>
<p>My daughter loves her classes and professors, finds her house (Mather) depressing and hasn’t really connected with any of her fellow classmates in a deep personal way. She’s also interested in theater, which Harvard does not grant a degree in, so she ended up choosing a concentration that she’s not passionate about – so much so that she’s thinking of switching to something else next year. When we suggest “Hey, why don’t you transfer to Yale, they grant an undergraduate degree in theater,” she cannot fathom leaving. It’s damn frustrating when your child no longer listens to you.</p>
<p>I have no personal experience with Harvard, whatsoever, and what I’m about to say is kind of unrelated, but when I was in high school I was working at a drug store and I met a girl who had recently dropped out of Harvard after only 1 semester. As a college hopeful this sounded like blasphemy to me at the time. When I asked her why she left, she said that it was because H was full of rich snobs and she didn’t want to be around that. This might not fully answer your question, but I guess some people never find their place at Harvard and don’t find it worth it to stay and be unhappy so they just leave. This particular girl that I spoke to seemed EXTREMELY free spirited and she spoke about going to Harvard like it was a trip to the grocery store. I was in awe and she repeatedly told me “it’s no big deal; I’m really not that smart.” She didn’t take herself seriously at all and I can see why she might have hated it there. She might have been a better fit at a LAC or maybe even Yale.</p>
<p>Miami, I hope you won’t take it badly if I remind you that it’s dangerous to extrapolate from only one data point. Certainly, I did know some rich, WASPy people at Harvard (and some more who weren’t quite Thurston Howell III, but *really *wanted to be), but they weren’t anything like a majority. In my day, they were quite outnumbered both by very artsy free spirits, who wore black and smoked clove cigarettes, and by people who were neither SoHo nor the Hamptons. </p>
<p>As for taking oneself seriously, I think most Harvard undergraduates learn pretty quickly not to. If you spend four years at Harvard constantly thinking you’re the smartest person in the room, it’s a very good bet you’re constantly wrong!</p>
<p>Gibby, for what it’s worth, you know Yale College’s degree in theatre is nothing like the Yale School of Drama’s M.F.A., right? The M.F.A. is a performance degree, but the College’s B.A. in theatre is very academic. A little bit like Harvard College’s A.B. in Music, which is not a performance degree at all. Back in the '80s, at least, the joke was that Harvard believed its Department of Music should be seen and not heard.</p>
<p>But I’m sorry your daughter isn’t happy. I’m sure that’s not fun for either of you!</p>
<p>Sikorsky, thanks. I realize that Yale’s B.A. in theater is not the same as the M.F.A. performance program, but I was grasping at straws. Currently, my daughter is concentrating in physiology (which she doesn’t have much interest in, but it was the concentration she hated the least). She’s going to try to switch to Film Studies, through the Visual and Environmental department, in the fall. Harvard’s policy of making students pick a concentration during the 1st semester of sophomore term – and mapping out all the courses needed to get that degree – has made for a rocky 2nd year. And you’re right, it hasn’t been been fun for anyone.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>This aligns with my repeated observation that when a student is really miserable at a college (any college, not just Harvard) it is almost always for social (haven’t made any close friends, doesn’t fit in with the dominant social scene, etc.) rather than academic reasons: </p>
<p>Having professors they don’t like, or having trouble getting the course they want, or being hassled by the school administration, or having a long walk to class, etc. will cause students to be annoyed. By contrast, having no close friends will cause students to be miserable.</p>
<p>Gibby - has your daughter looked outside her House for friendships? When she was at Harvard, my elder daughter found her life-long close friends right there in her freshman dorm. They became block mates and have remained close friends to this day. But my younger daughter (at another Ivy) found her close friends from EC organizations rather than from her room and dorm mates. And until she found them, she was pretty miserable.</p>
<p>^^ Yep, you got that right! Also, attending a college that does not grant a degree in your passion makes it doubly-miserable.</p>
<p>@Gibby
- There are tons of opportunities for the theater junkies at Harvard, and many go on to work professionally. In a show I produced junior year, the lead was subsequently nominated for a Tony, and the set designer went on to become one of the top on Broadway.</p>
<p>2) I’m not actually sure Yale does have an <em>undergrad</em> theater major. Check before you suggest this. My own experience of Harvard’s theater life is that it is much more extensive and flexibly combined with academic majors (vs a program managed y its faculty).</p>
<p>3) If Mather is bumming her out, is there any possibility of a change to another house? I dont know if that is possible.</p>
<p>4) I’m really sorry she’s so sad. It will definitely get better!</p>
<p>5) Vis Stud might be a good fit!</p>
<p>6) If she’s really sad in the way you describe, encourage her (if you have not already) to seek counseling. She might be surprised to find the number of people she knows who have been helped by this</p>
<p>All the best
caesarcreek</p>
<p>Gabby, I’m sorry to hear about your daughter’s unhappiness. I second the house transfer suggestion: it’s pretty common to transfer houses, and it often helps to have a change of environment.
Anyway, I hope things get better for her soon.</p>
<p>@caesarcreek: </p>
<p>You’re quite right that Harvard’s theatre scene is more about learning by doing as opposed to rigorous conservatoire-style training. If you want to learn to direct/act/produce while being guided by specific courses or professors, or be in productions where the director or music director is a professor, or especially a carefully planned out degree program, Harvard’s not the place for that. You go to a Northwestern, or a Juilliard, or a Boston Conservatory for that. [And you can. Many Harvard grads go to MFA/MM programs that are more specific to a particular profession]</p>
<p>With that said, Harvard’s method is clearly nothing to sneeze at. She’s turned out everything from (as Caesarcreek points out) composers and lyricists to actors and actresses and tv writers and directors and critics. Most took very few [if any] courses in practical art making. They all learned through doing in the various extracurriculars. </p>
<p>To be honest, Yale is not much different, at least on the undergrad level, as the professional schools in music and drama are somewhat separate from the college. </p>
<p>Of course, all of this only answers the passion problem. It doesn’t address the social misery problem…:P</p>
<p>Though Harvard doesn’t offer a theatre concentration, it does offer a secondary field in Dramatic Arts and, in addition, there are several extracurricular opportunities in theatre.
[Theater:</a> Office for the Arts at Harvard](<a href=“http://ofa.fas.harvard.edu/theater/]Theater:”>Theater | Office for the Arts at Harvard)
A special concentration might offer another option for work in theatre.
[Special</a> Concentrations at Harvard College](<a href=“http://www.specialconcentrations.fas.harvard.edu/]Special”>http://www.specialconcentrations.fas.harvard.edu/)
Harvard student also can cross-register at MIT, which does offer a theatre major.
[MIT</a> Theater Arts](<a href=“Massachusetts Institute of Technology |”>http://theaterarts.mit.edu/)</p>
<p>@Sikorsky I definitely don’t take that one experience as being really meaningful in determining what type of place Harvard is. That’s why I made sure to emphasize that I had no personal experience with Harvard, whatsoever and that I am going PURELY off of what this one person told me three years ago. Harvard wasn’t the right place for her, but to someone else, it could be the perfect place! Anyway, I never inferred that Harvard was full of WASPy kids - again, that’s what this person told me.</p>