<p>Harvard students are significantly less happy than their peers at certain other Ivy League schools. I think the reason isn't really due to Harvard itself, it is due to the fact that Harvard's campus is fragmented, students live in areas that are way, way too far apart from one another (which is a problem especially in the winter when it's cold) and it's just not a place that anyone wants to hang out at. It's really a problem that is shared by other campuses located in very large cities. </p>
<p>Try spending a few days at Harvard, going to a few classes and spending a weekend there, and then doing the same exact thing at a school like Yale. It's like night and day.</p>
<p>I spent several years at Harvard and several years at Yale. It's like day and day. They're both terrific schools.</p>
<p>posterX wins my nomination hands down for worst poster on these boards. Even a bunch of monkeys at typewriters would occasionally compose a worthwhile post by accident.</p>
<p>And JoeBob, I'm glad you've discovered the Harvard-bashers' holy grail. But next time just post a link, like the 20,000 previous posters citing that article have. The copyright laws don't permit reprinting in full.</p>
<p>posterX, what are you talking about? for undergrads, the campus is not fragmented at all! people get together at like 3 in the morning just because! if by far away you mean the quad? which is like a ten minute walk and reachable in five by shuttle? oh yes, we're all so isolated at harvard.</p>
<p>and forget boston and cambridge. what crappy cities. no one likes them. they're so awful. just being in them makes me depressed. I hate having every resource at my fingertips. it's a MAJOR drag. I would be so much happier in rural connecticut.</p>
<p>That's not the only article. Anyone here ever read "The Cult of Yale"? It was a lengthy expose article (well, more like a book) written by Harvard students and published in the Harvard magazine, trying to explain why Yale students were so much happier than their depressed counterparts in Cambridge. Apparently it was written to try to get the Harvard administration to change a few things, but like I said before, I don't think it's Harvard's admin's fault.</p>
<p>Sunglasses, Harvard's dorms aren't miles from each other, but compared to a campus like Yale where all of the undergraduate dormitories are basically across the street from one another, they are certainly more remote. And Yale is hardly in "rural Connecticut" - it's in one of the best college towns in the country. Despite Yale's nearly $2 billion annual budget and enormous endowment, by overall enrollment it isn't even the largest university in the city that it is in. Many of the 50,000 students in the area flock to downtown New Haven, specifically the area right around Yale, every weekend to party. If you've been there recently, you've seen the buses from other colleges in the area driving up and pouring students into the area. The area is a haven for young professionals and wealthy older residents as well, as reflected by the hundreds of luxury apartments and million-dollar condominiums opening around the downtown area every year, and the hundreds of expensive restaurants, the packed 7-screen luxury downtown cineplex and theaters, and bookstores, boutiques, lounges and cafes sprouting up everywhere. However, if you do actually want rural, Sunglasses, New Haven has a distinct advantage over a larger city such as Boston in that within a short 5-10 minute drive or short bicycle ride, you can actually escape the urban sprawl and be in the middle of the beautiful countryside, open meadows, 100-mile long hiking trails, salt marshes or expansive, sandy beaches.</p>
<p>Does posterX seem happy? Are happy people that defensive?</p>
<p>Some Yale students, while happy on an absolute scale, seem to live in fear that they are relatively less satisfied than their counterparts in Cambridge (clearly, this is not all of Yale). I don't see this phenomenon at Harvard (exception: a few "I wish I were at Stanford!" moans during the worst of the winter).</p>
<p>Haha, oh CC. How I've missed you. Still recuperating from finals pd.</p>
<p>I think it's interesting that the issue of "happiness at Harvard" keeps coming up lately--certainly moreso than when I first started visiting these pages as a young high schooler. </p>
<p>First of all, the argument that Harvard students are unhappy due to the spread of the campus and location of the dorms is silly. Harvard, like Yale, has all of its freshman centrally located (even the Union dorms are pretty nearby, considering); and, like Yale, builds larger house communities for its upperclassmen to identify with. It doesn't matter that Mather House and Cabot House are far away from each other, because students in Mather House have both their house peers /and/ Dunster peers right next door /and/ the rest of the river while Cabot house residents have the whole of the smaller, tightly knit quad to identify with. Harvard's dorm life relies on these smaller communities, and it works. If people are dissatisfied with that, tell them to get a bike. That's all there is to it, really.</p>
<p>The rampant type A personality at Harvard should be reiterated--and, to emphasize an important, but implicit point in a crimson editorial from a graduating senior that was posted earlier in this thread, we have to recognize that Harvard's culture is, quite simply, a complainer's culture. I would elaborate but you really have to hang around with some of these kids to get the best idea of it. Or, read that notorious editorial that posterX hastened to mention. Or, look at the fact that so many people are complaining about Harvard before they even get here. </p>
<p>And then realize that Harvard, superlative as it may be, is in at least one sense no different from any other college: it's only what you make of it. So make something of it. And then move on.</p>
<p>"If people are dissatsfied with that, tell them to get a bike. That's all there is to it, really."</p>
<p>^Oh, Saxfreq, I wish it were that easy. A recent Yale University study revealed that college students who own bicycles are less happy than their wheel-less counterparts. And we can't argue with science.</p>
<p>Gosh, I screwed up. Cambridge is the brakes.</p>
<p>"The College has made significant progress in improving the Harvard social experience"</p>
<p>Published On Wednesday, June 07, 2006
By THE CRIMSON STAFF</p>
<p>Social life for Harvard undergraduates defies easy categorization. For some, social life means late nights packed in the ground floors of certain Mt. Auburn St. mansions (or mock-Flemish castles), and for others, it means room parties and events organized by House Committees (HoCos). For many, social life means long hours spent with ones extracurricular activity of choice, and for the campus, it means the occasional school-wide event. The latter three incarnations all saw, by and large, improvements this year as the College deans office, the presidents office, and the Undergraduate Council (UC) crafted a few simple but far-reaching improvements in the way that social activities are funded and planned. The results promise to continue improving what can reasonably be called an expanding social scene at Harvard...."</p>