<p>My son, a junior, would like to know more about Harvard but we are not going to be able to visit. One thing he does know is that it has amazing math courses and that the math and physics departments are world class (as well as the music department).</p>
<p>Besides spending hours on their website, which is helpful, how can he get to know students there, get to know the feel of Cambridge, and basically feel like he knows what Harvard is all about. </p>
<p>He will be able to visit his other top choices (Penn and Princeton) this week, he'll visit Harvey Mudd in the fall, and he might be able to swing a flight to Vanderbilt and drive to Davidson, but no other schools on his list will get visited.</p>
<p>Some of the information I'm trying to gather for Harvard is:</p>
<ol>
<li> What kind of Evangelical Christian support is there on campus?</li>
<li> Do students spend a lot of time off campus in Cambridge and Boston? Do they need cars to get around?<br></li>
<li> How are the dorms? Are there any substance-free dorms/floors/halls? How are roommates chosen? Do students fill out a survey? Do the dorms each have a different feel?</li>
<li> How is the chess team? Is it active?</li>
<li> Is the diversity evident? Do people "mix it up"? We're from So Cal. where it's not only laid back but very diverse in a variety of ways.</li>
<li> I heard a rumor they hand out condums to incoming freshmen. Any truth to that rumor? Anything else "interesting" we should know that incoming freshmen might encounter?</li>
<li> What type of music scene is there? When can a student audition for the symphony? Are there chamber groups? Jam sessions?</li>
<li> I would love to hear from math majors anything you want to share.</li>
<li> Is there a way to show interest in Harvard without visiting?</li>
<li> What are some of the greatest things about Harvard (clubs, groups, buildings, activities, etc.)</li>
</ol>
<p>Most students I know spend very little time in Boston. And since “off campus” in Cambridge generally means at max a 12 minute walk, a car is absolutely unnecessary. For the occasional trip to Boston, the public transit system (the T) is easy to use.</p>
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<p>There are no substance-free dorms/floors/halls to my knowledge. Roommates are randomly assigned freshman year, but for subsequent years a student can form a “blocking group” of up to 8 people that is guaranteed to be in the same house, which is randomly assigned to each blocking group. After that, the group can split however it wants according to what rooms are available (singles vs triples vs doubles vs quads etc)</p>
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<p>Every 2 weeks or so I get an email informing me that the “Condom box has been refilled” in my upperclass house. I’ve never heard of anyone forcing anybody to take condoms, but there’s nothing “interesting” about widespread support for the idea of contraception on a college campus given that a majority of college students are sexually active. This will happen in nearly all college campuses except perhaps those Christian colleges that require a signed “morality agreement” of sorts that would (theoretically) make contraception a non-issue.</p>
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<p>Apply. Nothing I’ve seen or heard seems to indicate that Harvard takes “interest” very seriously as an admissions criteria.</p>
<p>Dwight,
Are you saying most/all secular campuses hand out condoms? I went to two secular colleges some 25+ years ago and I don’t recall that but I suppose most students were sexually active.</p>
<p>Thanks for the information on the Christian support on campus. I can assume if my son wanted to talk with some students from these organizations, he can email them and get more in depth information. We have contacts at Princeton and Penn but none at Harvard so it’s more difficult getting information.</p>
<p>I would love to hear more about math, physics, and music as well.</p>
<p>25+ years ago is a long time on the free condom issue. Most schools have adapted something of the sort in the last couple decades. I’m not sure when Harvard did.</p>
<p>“Are you saying most/all secular campuses hand out condoms?”</p>
<p>Yes. The visibility will differ from school to school (and dorm to dorm). Some will have a basket in every bathroom and outside the door of every RA, some will only have them in the health center, many will fall in between those extremes.</p>
<p>25+ years ago is when college sexuality crossed over from being a matter of morality to a matter of life and death - literally. That’s when free condoms became standard operating procedure on college campuses. </p>
<p>The diversity and mixing is incredible. It’s a model of how the 21st century larger world should be.</p>
<p>“Roommates are randomly assigned freshman year.” Unless things have changed since my son ('09) was a freshman, this is not true. Freshman roommates were “hand-matched”; I read an article once that said Harvard is one of the few schools to still do this. (One example I remember reading was that two chess players would be assigned to the same floor or entryway, but not the same room or suite, to encourage them to get out.) My son had five suite-mates freshman year; four of them lived together all four years. This not uncommon. They are all still close; S stays with one whenever he is in New York, lunches at Google with another and talks almost daily to a third, both being grad students in a similar area. (His freshman suite was a mini-UN.)</p>
<p>“Are you saying most/all secular campuses hand out condoms?”</p>
<p>I’m not sure what’s it’s like in So. Cal, but here in New York City, all HIGH SCHOOLS are mandated by law to have free condoms available for students. That’s the reality in 2011! So yes, much has changed in college (and high school) in the last 25 years.</p>
<p>“As part of the mandated New York City DOE HIV/AIDS Prevention Program, all high schools are required to have a Health Resource Room where free condoms, health information, and health referrals are available to students.”</p>
<p>“Harvard’s Faculty is large, diverse, and, by any measure, an accomplished group of women and men. Each faculty member is both a noted teacher and a scholar, for first-rate scholarship is an essential ingredient of great teaching. Harvard students learn in classrooms and labs from professors who are leading authorities in their fields. In this academic community, all members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, including the most prominent scholars, teach undergraduates as well as graduate students.”</p>
<p>One of the things that drew my D to select H last year was the considerable time and effort put into matching roommates. Other schools have cursory surveys with a few simple questions but H’s information gathering is much more detailed and the kids even write an essay. Five weeks each summer are devoted to putting freshmen into rooming groups. My D was very impressed with how well the four girls that she stayed with on accepted students weekend seemed to get along and she really likes the girls she has roomed with this year. She loves the fact that there are many kids at H that enjoy doing the same things she does on weekends - fun stuff in the dorms, games, baking cookies, watching a movie, building snowmen, attending campus events, etc. There are many musical performing groups that a student can try out for - we have heard the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra and the Bach Society Orchestra and they are wonderful.</p>
<p>One of the things that drew my D to select H last year was the considerable time and effort put into matching roommates. Other schools have cursory surveys with a few simple questions but H’s information gathering is much more detailed and the kids even write an essay. Five weeks each summer are devoted to putting freshmen into rooming groups. My D was very impressed with how well the four girls that she stayed with on accepted students weekend seemed to get along and she really likes the girls she has roomed with this year. She loves the fact that there are many kids at H that enjoy doing the same things she does on weekends - fun stuff in the dorms, games, baking cookies, watching a movie, building snowmen, attending campus events, etc. There are many musical performing groups that a student can try out for - we have heard the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra and the Bach Society Orchestra and they are wonderful. You would not want a car - I don’t know where you would park it. The diversity is one thing my D really wanted at a school and definitely found it here. Some of the wonderful things my D has found at H are the amazing students, the many levels of advising, the shopping period to select courses, the incredible events on campus, and she has loved her professors. She chose H over Princeton and two other excellent small liberal arts colleges. Can you visit H when you come to Princeton?</p>
<p>Second everyone else on how they do such a detailed job of matching roommates. I think I made an off-handed remark in my housing app that I like putting pictures on walls, and I ended up with roommates who all cover their walls with photographs :D.</p>
<p>Thank-you for the link to the music groups, xr. I’m sure Harvard is full of amazing musicians, nationally and internationally renowned. That’s not my son-ha!-but he will thrive at a campus that has a rich music offering. Though he’s classically trained, he also plays rock, worship, and jazz with his violin and guitar, so it’s nice to see so many types of groups available.</p>
<p>I’m very glad to hear of Harvard’s commitment to trying to help match roommates. I think this is very important; it’s not that students are looking for carbon copies of each other. My son’s friends are extremely diverse in many ways but there are certain qualities in a roommate that would make living together a lot easier.</p>
<p>I wish we could swing a visit to Harvard, JMMom, but we are on an extremely tight schedule. Fly into Philly late on Wed (like midnight), see Penn on Thursday, drive up to Princeton Thursday night. See Princeton Friday, drive to Brooklyn late Friday night after the Princeton Fellowship is done, then visit my cousin and aunt Saturday morning, drive back to Philly and leave in the evening. I think I’m tired just typing it. My son had a very small window of opportunity. His university physics class is on break this week but he’s still missing a baseball game and a lit class and I chose these dates to get the cheapest flights possible ($170 round). It’s the best we can do. If he’d gotten into RSI (he didn’t), he could have visited but it wasn’t meant to be.</p>
<p>I’m grateful to get all the information I can from you all.</p>
<p>I have no idea what basis Harvard used to group my roommates and I together. On the surface we were all pretty different but 4 out of the 5 of us blocked together the next year so they probably did something right.</p>