"For HARVARD, luring students is all in the brand" (news item)

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
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<p>.... “We put up ‘America’s Intellectual Powerhouse’ on the screen, and everybody says Harvard. Everybody,” says Hesel, a principal of the Art & Science Group, a consulting firm that specializes in marketing for higher education. “We put up ‘Free-Choice Curriculum,’ and most people guess Brown.”
Prestige, celebrity, presidential pedigree—you name it, “Harvard’s got it,” as Hesel says. And in a nation obsessed with image, the marketing power of a collegiate Cambridge setting—red bricks, ivy leaves, and Veritas—is second to none.</p>

<p>Last year, nearly 23,000 students applied for admission, and 80 percent of those admitted chose to attend, compared with 72 percent at Yale and 68 percent at Princeton. Given a choice between Bulldog and Crimson, most students put their chips on red: nearly three out of four students accepted to both Yale and Harvard find themselves in Cambridge come fall, says one veteran of the admissions game." [exerpt from long story]</p>

<p><a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=509886%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=509886&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>the same article says </p>

<p>
[quote]
“Kids won’t pass up Harvard, even though they may not be elated the entire time they’re there,” says Katherine Cohen, founder of IvyWise, an admissions counseling service in Manhattan.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>How is this a good thing?</p>

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<p>Depends what your motivation is in going to college, I guess.</p>

<p>If you want a "party school", you'd apparently be best off at SUNY-Albany, Washington & Lee, or the University of Wisconsin.</p>

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<p>University of Kentucky will probably give you some decent spare time too.</p>

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<p>"nearly three out of four students accepted to both Yale and Harvard find themselves in Cambridge come fall..."</p>

<p>Hmm. Has a consistent >80% Harvard fraction of H-Y cross-admits fallen to the lower 70% neighborhood in the last year or so?</p>

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<p>What happened to your vaunted "86.7% ocachoy," Byerly? It must have decreased considerably from a couple of years ago, then. </p>

<p>As for the article, Byerly, I'm sure you thought I would love the opening section, and I absolutely adored it:</p>

<p>"For Kendrick, Harvard’s package, printed mostly in staid black-and-white, paled in comparison to the colorful, “stylish-looking” collection she soon received from her suitor on the West Coast. </p>

<p>“Once I got Stanford’s packet, Harvard’s didn’t seem that exciting anymore,” she writes. “It was in a glossy red folder, with...well, class of 2009 refrigerator poetry, perhaps that says it all.” </p>

<p>Stanford’s rah-rah style tempted Kendrick, but ultimately Harvard pulled rank. Sometimes the best brand in the business just can’t be beat."</p>

<p>So other than the bizarre "rah-rah style" remark, it seems as if this person had no reason to choose Harvard other than the "brand," meaning the name. And a brand with poor marketing, indeed! Maybe she'll come to realize her egregious error sometime in the future and come to the land of refrigerator poetry and sunny skies.</p>

<p>I also liked this part:</p>

<p>"And an internal Harvard memo from 2002 revealed that Harvard students rate their campus’s social life below many of their peers at other elite schools. The memo, first reported in The Boston Globe, ranked Harvard 26th out of a survey of 31 colleges in student satisfaction with social life. </p>

<p>Even Fitzsimmons admits that Harvard isn’t the warmest of places."</p>

<p>A brand, indeed.</p>

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<p>byerly, the university of wisconsin is not a place where kids go to get drunk and party their asses off....just because they have athletic programs that arent complete **** like harvard doesnt mean they dont offer some fine academic opportunities....the political science departments at a number of big 10 schools rank among ivy league schools alone</p>

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<p>zackalacka: don't get defensive. I think byerly mentioned wisconsin in this vein...</p>

<p><a href="http://www.princetonreview.com/college/research/rankings/rankingDetails.asp?categoryID=3&topicID=26%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.princetonreview.com/college/research/rankings/rankingDetails.asp?categoryID=3&topicID=26&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Well zephyr, I'll refer you to a recent case where not going to Harvard proved to be a fatal flaw. </p>

<p>I speak of the Harriet Miers debacle. A huge reason for why Harriet Miers was disparaged was because of her lack of "qualifications". </p>

<p>Now, answer me this, if Harriet Miers had attended Harvard Law School, would the ciritcs have attacked her as viciously for her lack of credentials?</p>

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<p>Oh, PLEASE!!! Miers lack of qualifications had to do with NEVER HAVING BEEN A JUDGE AT ANY LEVEL, not where she did or did not go to college!</p>

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<p>I beg to differ. A good justice need not have judicial experience. It was the way in which Miers had climbed the career ladder that was her downfall--via state and national bars and Texas cronyism.</p>

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<p>and the blank wall with no "Harvard" on a diploma in it. We dont want another Stanford mistake do we? <em>Cough</em> O Connor <em>Cough</em></p>

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<p>...and Renquist.</p>

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<p>Oh no. He just happened to mail the acceptance forms to the wrong address : )</p>

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<p>i think that yale, princton, and stanford are tied now for presitge but harvard just barely edges them all out for every catagory. mit is up there also. thats just off the top of my head and from what ive heard people say.</p>

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<p>prestige dubbed by who?....the average american who doesnt even understand how these schools are evaluated?......i will give you, harvard has more prestige on the level of which school is recognized more by your common man....but when it comes down to the people who actually matter (employers, agents, intellectual spectators), everyone recognizes the top ten, even twenty names......so yes, harvard is more prestigious on the brand name level, that's it</p>

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<p>Exactly. If you want a school that allows you to brag to your friends and neighbors (not that there's anything wrong with this,) then Harvard is the obvious choice. This does, of course, not mean that it is a bad college because it's famous, there is a reason for it. However, this does not mean that other colleges can't be better, such as Brown for the free curriculum.</p>

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<p>"We dont want another Stanford mistake do we? <em>Cough</em> O Connor <em>Cough</em>"</p>

<p>You have got to be kidding me. </p>

<p>And as for Miers, she's as unqualified as Clarence Thomas is, which is saying something. It had nothing to do with her education but instead with her lack of experience with anything regarding the Supreme Court other than prepping previous nominees. </p>

<p>It has nothing to do with Harvard at all. If you had even bothered to follow the nomination process and eventual withdrawal in even the remotest sense, you won't be quite so arrogant.</p>