These are generalizations. True for some, not for others. My older son doesn’t like Harvard. He stays because it’s tops in his field. My younger son is having a blast.
@notjoe, exactly. You can select happy and unhappy students at every school and draw generalizations from those carefully chosen reports. As with everything else in life, it all depends and each person’s experience will be different. It would be a mistake to attend Yale because you’ve been counseled that there you’ll be happy. It’s important to evaluate each school, your own personality and priorities, and choose accordingly.
I think Harvard has changed its approach since that article was written in 2003. For one thing Lawrence Summers is no longer University President.
Yale is different as well. New Haven is no longer the crime-ridden hellhole that’s described in that article and its audience is not solely the students at Yale. And while there’s been no change here, I’ve heard complaints aplenty from kids at Yale who feel they’ve been placed in a “bad” residential college and who don’t like the system that allows legacy kids to opt into the college where their parent lived. There are definitely some feelings of inequity.
I can’t speak to whether this continues to be true but it doesn’t appeal to every student.
I can only speak to what Harvard is like now.
My older son is a junior now, and my younger son is a freshman.
From my modest data sample (which also includes first-hand and second-hand observation of their friends), there are a few generalizations I would actually make about Harvard and its environment. The first is that most Harvard students I’ve met seem rather driven. Which leads to the second generalization I’d make: Most Harvard students are very stressed. I’d also add that many are continuously sleep-deprived. As well, the stress and sleep-deprivation are all voluntary. No one makes these young folks take on the activities and commitments they make - and generally keep.
Harvard does little to discourage this sort of attitude and behavior; it’s not like these students weren’t like this before they got there. I suspect that Harvard, wittingly or not, selects students who are driven.
But different people have different reactions to similar stimuli. My older son dislikes how much pressure he feels. Yet, he thrives, and getting him to cut back is painfully difficult. At the end of his first semester at Harvard, he came home for Christmas so exhausted, so worn-out, that he wound up in the hospital to be treated for physical exhaustion. And yet, persuading him to cut back in the spring semester was very, very tough.
My younger son is also driven. He came home for Christmas, holed up in his room, and we didn’t see him until he had to fly back for spring semester. I exaggerate. But not by much. I’d foolishly bought him a book on an advanced topic in math before the beginning of the holidays, and he spent the entire holiday working through the text, teaching himself the math, and researching internships for the summer. Again, no one had to tell him to do these things. That’s just part of who he is. During the school year, he, too, suffers from sleep deprivation and feelings of stress.
But he’s very happy. He makes every complaint the older guy makes, and every complaint pretty much every other Harvard student makes, but he makes them all with a twinkle in his eye. I’ll say, but it looks like you’re happy anyway, and he’ll quietly answer, yeah, I am, but don’t tell anyone.
As for drinking, I’d suggest that Harvard’s attitude isn’t all that terribly different from what I read about Yale’s. Although heavy drinking is discouraged, and underage drinking is “forbidden,” the school also maintains a formal policy that no one will be punished for seeking medical treatment for acute alcohol-related health issues, or for assisting other students in seeking treatment. Underage drinking occurs on campus, even in dorm rooms. But as long as no neighbors complain, it goes unnoticed. And if a complaint is made, generally, the students involved are warned to tone it down. You really have to go out of your way to get into real trouble over alcohol use.
The previous dean gave the game away when she said something to the effect that the administration wants to show students that there can be a third choice between wanton drunkenness and teetotalling: drinking in moderation.
thank you @notjoe. That’s a very honest post that sounds right to me. I think you’re right both that Harvard selects for that driven quality and that expression of it is not discouraged–from what you’re saying about your younger son, it sounds like it might even be encouraged. I can’t imagine that the stress level is all that different at other elite schools–they tend to look for the same qualities after all-- and I think that experiences vary more by personality, friendships, activities, and course of study than by school.
On the other hand there’s the Stanford ideal I mentioned earlier. The kids are just as driven and just as stressed but it’s not ok to show it. Instead of complaining about the sleeplessness and overwork, everything is supposed to be easy and manageable and the expectation is that one is always smiling. The Stanford Duck seems to be effortlessly gliding across the water while paddling furiously underneath, where the churn is out of sight. I suppose that’s both good and bad: it doesn’t lead to a community of openly stressed out people but it can leave an individual feeling that her anxiety is atypical and that she alone is unequal to the demands of her institution.
@notjoe - Thanks for an awesome post. I suspect that the reason there are so many driven students at Harvard is not just because Harvard selects them, but because driven students select Harvard - both during the application process - and, for those who were not “one and done” SCEA applicants, during the decision process. On top of this, there will be a percentage of students who attend Harvard not because it’s the best fit for them, but because it’s Harvard. I’m guessing there are fewer of these students at Harvard’s peers.
@gibby - my sense from following the Harvard Freshman’s Dean Office website since the beginning of the academic year is that Harvard really does make an effort to arrange fun activities, at least for freshmen. Perhaps that’s not the case for the upperclass houses - I cannot comment on this.
To get an idea of some activities available to Harvard freshman, see http://fdo.fas.harvard.edu/news
I suspect many Harvard students are simply too busy and driven to have time for much organized fun, or perhaps the organized activities miss the mark.
@notjoe Very helpful post. I’m beginning to think that although students at all the top schools may be driven, the focus of that drive differs somewhat from school to school. Perhaps at Harvard it’s funneled into academics, whereas at Yale students (reportedly) spend more time on their extracurriculars than on their courses, and maybe at Stanford it’s a mixture. These are all just generalizations, of course, but there may be some truth to them. For students who just want to focus on academics, Harvard may be the best choice; for those whose goals include a very active extracurricular life, Yale might be better. But I’m sure both types of students exist at both places (and others).
@Planner - There are enormous opportunities for extracurriculars at Harvard - perhaps Harvard students are (on average) more driven and intense than Yale students? The high schools seniors who chose to apply SCEA to Yale are not the same ones who apply SCEA to Harvard.
@BldrDad I didn’t mean to imply that Harvard didn’t have plenty of opportunities for extracurriculars—I’m actually quite familiar with them, and clearly many Harvard students take advantage of those opportunities. I was just suggesting that Harvard students, in general, may perhaps devote a greater percentage of their available time to academics, whereas the percentage Yale students devote to academics might be less because they choose to spend more of it on extracurriculars. Just a theory.
I’m curious about your statement regarding seniors who chose to apply SCEA to Yale vs. those who did so to Harvard. Based on my (limited) observations, I agree with you. Although the students are equally qualified in every way, the ones who choose to apply SCEA to Yale do so more because Yale “speaks” to them in some way—through its particular offerings, campus culture, or whatever. Those who choose to apply SCEA to Harvard do so because of its name and perceived future benefits in terms of “opening doors.” Again, this is just a theory. But if there’s truth to it, the types of students Harvard and Yale students will be associating with over their four years may well be quite different. Every Yale SCEA applicant is likely aware that Harvard has a slightly (or even significantly, depending on your point of view) bigger name, but that doesn’t matter as much to them as other factors. That’s why they chose Yale.
@Bldrdad: At Harvard, have you met your child’s house master? How about the head tutor? Or, the dean? I know when my daughter was at Harvard, we didn’t met any of these people, although we’ve met their counterparts for my son at Yale – and see them every August at drop-off during an open house at my son’s master’s home within his residential college. As a parent, I guess that’s why my blood oozes blue and not red. Yale makes parents feel welcome. And they do the same for their students – much more so than Harvard. During my daughter’s sophomore year, the lack of kindness was so bad that the administration instituted a “Freshman Pledge” which was quickly kicked to the curb, as the faculty thought it un-scholarly like: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/9/1/pledge-freshmen-students-harvard/
That’s basically the environment my daughter experienced during her time at Harvard. Maybe that exists at Yale too, but my son hasn’t experienced it.
@3girls3cats,
Most of the Harvard students I’ve met like to complain about how tough school is, how much pressure they’re under, etc. There’s little effort to be a “Stanford Duck” (I like that one, I’ll have to borrow it). I’m pretty sure that most of them take a certain relish in bemoaning their fate.
I don’t think Harvard’s for everyone. Here are a few issues my older son has with the place: The weather and environment are awful. He hates the cold. He hates how little sunlight there is during most of the school year. He feels like most of the businesses in Cambridge aren’t very oriented toward students. He went to high school less than two miles from the University of Maryland, College Park, and remembers all the good mom & pop cheap eats places that litter Route 1 from the Beltway to the DC line. He just doesn’t think Cambridge is a great college town. For him, the stress of life would be assuaged if he could get a great, cheap gyro or a huge $5 carton of lo mein.
For my younger son, he couldn’t care less about any of that stuff. Who needs cheap restaurants? The dining halls are open late, provide free food, and as much as he wants to eat. He loves cold weather. Since he’s usually inside working, he doesn’t much notice whether the sun is in or out, high or low, weak or strong.
Actually, most of the students I know there are deeply involved in many extracurriculars. My older son has three or for main extracurriculars to which he dedicates significant amounts of time, and then there are activities where things are blurred between his academic work, his paid work, and what he just loves to do. His best friend at Harvard has a joint concentration between two very different and demanding fields (he needs to take more than the usual four courses per semester to accomplish the joint concentration), and he still finds time to be very active in their formal social groups, as well as participating in student theater. In fact, I’ve read in the Crimson articles expressing anxiety that too many students shortchange their academics for the sake of their extracurricular activities. Because of all the recent snow storms, they’ve missed a lot of class time, and the administration put something out asking students to consider temporarily re-balancing their priorities to de-emphasize extracurriculars a little so that everyone can catch up with the academics.
You are right that there’s a lot of stuff for students to have fun. Past freshman year, many departments have lively social scenes. My older son loves to go to his department’s Friday evening parties, as there’s always plenty of free beer and decent food (and it’s not dining hall food!). Also, there’s a lot of social scene that revolves around many of the extracurriculars. For anyone on the Crimson, there are weekly events that often entail refreshments and a party atmosphere. Many of the study groups are basically institutionalized parties. Both my sons have participated in weekly study groups where the first hour or so serves mostly a social function, followed by a couple or three (or five or eight) hours of actual study. Both found this especially in math and science. Most folks don’t belong to final clubs, and the Greek scene is very limited, so those sorts of social opportunities aren’t prominent. But there’s just a large amount of combining work (whether academic or extracurricular) with socializing.
I am 100% with your son @notjoe. I grew up in the northeast and now live on the west coast. If my only continued exposure to snow is by youtube, I’m good with that. I hate the gray, endless winter. If I were looking for colleges, anything north of the Mason Dixon line would automatically be cut from the list and I’d be looking seriously at the Claremonts. OTOH, when we get a wet year out here, the prolonged rainy period can drive you just as crazy as the cold, gray east coast winter. Too bad Yale doesn’t give you any respite from this either.
I also love good, cheap food. I could live on Toscaninis though. That’s a disappointment that Cambridge is not seen as student-oriented. Many kids choose Harvard at least in part because they think of Cambridge as a vibrant college town.
A lot of the students at Harvard are intense and the weather at least this February is awful. But the school is not that tough once you get in. The atmosphere is extremely collaborative. All the people are extremely friendly. The resources at Harvard are beyond amazing. The opportunities to the student as a result of going there are also incredible. And most of the students enjoy themselves at Harvard.
@Planner - I think you are right on with your observations. @notjoe, thanks for your perspectives. My daughter immersed herself in extracurriculars from the start, and then discovered how difficult it was to find time for all she wanted to do, and ended up cutting back on the ECs in order to devote more time to her studies.
@gibby - I’m the parent of a freshman, and I was only in Cambridge for 36 hours (we live 2000 miles away), but in that time, I had conversations with my daughter’s proctor (who is also her academic adviser), two peer advising fellows, and briefly spoke with the dean of the college. It was nice to meet them when I was in the process of seeing my daughter make the transformation from 18 years at home with her parents to a new life, when we no longer play the same central role.
I’m not what sure chance I’ll have to meet the equivalents in the house she ends up in after freshman year, because it’s likely I won’t be back on campus for a couple of years. My perspective is that it is her life - these people are here for the students, not for the parents. I’m OK with that. I know that when I was in college, my parents met none of these people - in fact, they were likely unaware of their existence.
Harvard and Yale are both fine schools, and neither is for everyone. While I know little about Yale beyond its excellent reputation and beautiful campus, my impression is that the substantive differences between the two schools are relatively slight, and those who bemoan how things are at Harvard relative to Yale are perhaps exaggerating the differences. I have seen little evidence that the Harvard College administration is doing less than its best to meet the needs of the students. There are of course structural differences - Harvard having freshman dorms and upperclass houses vs. four year residential colleges at Yale, Harvard being a few subways stops from the center of Boston vs.Yale being in New Haven. I suspect the different environments and self-selection play as much a role in the differences as the administrations do.
I don’t know about recent changes, but historically – and recognizing always that the ways in which the two colleges resemble one another are far more important than their relatively trivial differences – it was at Yale that students devoted more attention to academics and Harvard where ECs were paramount. Even in my relatively relaxed day, the comping process for the Crimson or the Lampoon, or the Glee Club, or whatever at Harvard was considered brutally competitive. At Yale, very few people were excluded from anything they wanted to do, and there were lots of outlets to match different levels of commitment and ability.
Meanwhile, at Yale people talked about academics all the time. They tended to be really engaged by what they were studying, and expected to be interested in what their friends were doing, too. Lunch conversation usually revolved around the morning’s lectures in popular classes. I remember being at a party where the captain of the football team was earnestly explaining what he was doing in his senior thesis on pre-Socratic philosophers. I got to know my future spouse trading reading lists of U.S. vs. French feminist theorists. I’m sure that happened at Harvard, too, to some extent, but the people I know who went there never talk about it that way.
With the recent number of snow days: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/2/19/snow-days-student-activities/
I made a similar decision between Pomona and Yale (I’m at Pomona now). I think you’re going to meet really great people at either school. I wouldn’t buy into the idea that people at Harvard are somehow brighter than people at Pomona or that Harvard will be more challenging than Pomona. People don’t talk about applying to college much once you’re in college, but I know several of my close friends were deciding between Pomona and Ivy League schools.
I am very happy with my decision to go to Pomona, but I was worried that I made the wrong one at first because of all of the pressure to choose Yale. I think that the most significant benefits to choosing Harvard are (1) name recognition in the general public (within academic circles, Pomona is well known) and (2) connections. The larger departments may also be a draw simply for the variety of professor interests, although I don’t know whether all professors teach undergrads (you could find that out). On the other hand, some departments at Pomona become very close-knit, so that’s really nice.
A major benefit to going to Pomona is that it offers extraordinary room for academic and personal exploration. I’m not saying that Harvard wouldn’t, but a big part of my experience has been talking one-on-one with professors and in discussion classes. It’s nice that professors are completely focused on us (less research and no grad students).
The culture at Pomona is collaborative and has challenged me to think about issues in a more thoughtful way. I think I’m a better person than I was when I got here. I honestly don’t know anything about Harvard’s culture. I was worried about the big-money, legacy feel at Yale, and from talking to someone who went there, I don’t think the worry was entirely unfounded.
People from Pomona get into top grad school and get great jobs. As I said before, though, Harvard’s name will beat out Pomona in most circles, with the likely exception of those in which there are people who went to LACs and grad school admissions. In my opinion, you shouldn’t go to Harvard just for the name (“the come on, it’s Harvard” argument doesn’t cut it), but also don’t let people tell you that you shouldn’t go there because it has too big/snooty of a name…
I would choose Pomona if I were to make my decision again. But I also think I would have been happy at Yale. So much depends on the friends you meet, the classes you have and the professors you connect with.
May I ask if you know what your potential majors/interests are?
@redhippo Thank you so much, this is very helpful! I think it will all come down to the people I meet when I go to Harvard’s visiting weekend, and if I enjoy them as much as the people I met at Pomona. I think both schools are academically and socially a good fit for me though. I don’t have a problem fitting into different social groups, and I think the California vibe and the New England vibe are both pretty cool.
I’m not really into the whole research thing, so I don’t think that will be a major factor in my decision.
One thing that is swaying me towards Harvard is certainly the alumni connections, and how Boston is super accessible. There are also many many college students in the area, and it’s always great to meet people your age outside of your regular school circle. I went to a very small high school, so I think that would be a welcomed change, and I am definitely a city girl. In the past, I dreamed of going to Columbia, but then I realized when I got there, the only thing I really liked about the school was the location. With Harvard though, I like the city, and everything else the school has to offer.
On the other hand, the city has always been a little distracting to me, and LA is a good enough distance away from Pomona to the point where it’s there if I want it, but I don’t feel pressure to go out and explore all of the time. Also, Pomona and the other Claremont colleges have the best food, hands down. I’m a pretty clean eater, and I was super impressed by all of the healthy options available, and that is very very important to me. The weather is also great, which means I can run outdoors year round, something that I’ve always been able to do at home, but definitely isn’t something I’d be able to do in Cambridge. I also felt that at Pomona, there wasn’t an elitist vibe at all. Even the kids who I could tell were very very wealthy didn’t talk about or display that wealth in the same way that some kids do at my high school, and I would assume they do at Harvard. But again, I don’t know for sure.
I really don’t know what I want to major in. I am definitely interested in the real estate world, which is what I ultimately want to end up doing. Buying, developing, and selling property world wide. I guess I’d have to study business and finance and at least one or two other languages, for any of that to happen, though I don’t think it matters so much in undergrad, because I have plans to get an MBA afterwards anyway.