<p>
</p>
<p>1) I’m not a grad, I’m an incoming Freshman.</p>
<p>2) The guy told me so.</p>
<p>^</p>
<p>I’m guessing this wasn’t the proprietary trading desk at Goldman Sachs- just a summer job for a HS student…</p>
<p>Ace2209- the real world doesn’t work that way- of my three friends at HBS who graduated this year, two are presently looking for work and another took a job he’s not crazy about. Unfortunately (or I guess, fortunately), no school sets you up for life.</p>
<p>swarthmore.</p>
<p>I’m not saying “it sets you up for life”. All I’m saying is that sometimes the reputation gives you a helpful bump.</p>
<p>Regarding an allegedly “iffy” undergrad experience:</p>
<p>Our experience is that most of the daunting stereotypes about Harvard aren’t accurate, and that the experience offers as much support and warmth as a student could hope for.</p>
<p>The stereotypes about Harvard abound - elitist, sink-or-swim, inaccessible faculty, lack of attention to undergrads (I’ve asked on CC what exactly this is supposed to mean . . . no one who’s been concerned about it has ever been able to describe for me what it might look like if they were to encounter it!). But having gone this route with two daughters - a rising senior and a rising sophomore - I can tell you that the stereotypes just don’t pan out. We’ve been floored at the support, the generosity, the willingness to return e-mails and address special situations, and the incredibly supportive nature of the students towards one another. Snobbery and elitism seem to be rare; I’ve read opinions on CC that say because the admissions system has evolved into such a meritocracy, any atmosphere of entitlement has become a thing of the past. The Harvard students compete all right, but they mostly compete to out-do one another in the spectacularity of their extracurricular endeavors. My D1’s House Master in her residential college has lived with his wife in the attached apartment and eaten in the Commons with the students for 13 years, and he has a Nobel Prize. He’s stepping down from that role and his replacement has just been named by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. The advising for freshmen is four levels deep, all the way from senior faculty down to upperclass student Peer Advising Fellows. The undergraduate college is only 6,000 students and the opportunities and resources are too numerous to describe.</p>
<p>My D1 never considered Harvard, but being a singer, decided as an afterthought to e-mail choral directors at all the Ivies to see if they’d have any interest in meeting with her if she were to visit the campus. Four never replied, two sent one or two-line responses, and the departmental secretary at Yale responded “Our faculty do not meet with prospective students.” The faculty member from Harvard responded with several pages of glowing testimony about the campus, its students, and how he might be able to assist in the admissions process if she could audition for him. And that level of response to students has been the norm as far as we can tell.</p>
<p>Harvard’s not for everyone. Yes, the dominant personality there is Type A, and since students are chosen because they’re dynamic, I think it’d be considered more condescending than nurturing there to engage in “hand-holding” students. But that environment is stretching my D2’s comfort zone, getting her more assertive in seeking out the opportunities she wants. Since going to Harvard, D1, a Government concentrator with a Latin American emphasis, has been to Peru, Argentina, China (to teach about Latin American political movements), and is now in Brazil - mostly arranged and paid for by the university. D2 is headed to Buenos Aires tomorrow night - same deal. It’s a remarkable undergraduate experience - one that leaves in the dust my own experience at a school with 2900 undergrads that’s supposedly renowned for its “undergraduate emphasis.”</p>
<p>the engineering news doesn’t surprise me too much. As I look at what “Type A” means, and after visiting both, I can’t see whether I’m a Type-A or not. On the other hand, an admittedly stupid part of me finds the power to say, “I go to Harvard”, really alluring. I shouldn’t find that important, but I find myself vacillating on that issue. On the other hand, I don’t know if I’m the super competitive type( that is, I don’t get pumped or motivated by the prospect of “beating people” , since that energy is in and of itself very draining). I’ve visited both, and liked the freedom of movement granted to being in a city (which seemed limited at Swarthmore, due to its small size), and I HATE being confined or feeling limited, which I’m afraid I might be if I’m stuck on a suburban campus all the time. People have told me that you can get “lost” at Harvard very easily-but is this really true? and if so, what exactly does that mean?
I also don’t believe the “automatic job/grad school” thing about Harvard- it’s not true in fact. I’m trying not to overthink grad school yet, because I don’t want to loose track of the more pressing task at hand (doing well at whatever college I go to). That said, I just want to be happy over the next four years, to feel fufilled when I graduate from wherever, knowing that I worked to my fullest potential.</p>
<p>goes to show that actual work experience amounts to more than undergrad schooling, be sure to get those internships done, no matter which of these 2 universities you choose.</p>
<p>obiCello - Perhaps this is a helpful analogy. </p>
<p>Would you like to live in New York City or in small town New Hampshire? New York City has <em>everything</em> to offer in terms of jobs, entertainment, diversity, etc. There, it seems, the sky is the limit. But it’s also easy to feel alone and detached amongst the bustle (cue “The Only Living Boy in New York”…).</p>
<p>Small town New Hampshire, on the other hand, has little to offer in terms of jobs, entertainment, diversity. Sometimes, it seems, there’s like there’s nothing to do and nowhere to go. But you know all of your neighbors, and they have a tendency to stop by your house with freshly baked cookies if they haven’t seen you for a while. No matter what happens, you know the people here care about you and you belong. (Cue “My Hometown”…)</p>
<p>This is obviously exaggerated (perhaps Swarthmore is more like a comfortable suburb to a large city), but I think the essential point is important. Are you more worried about “topping out” and not quite reaching your full potential, or about falling through the cracks and feeling out of place and isolated?</p>
<p>These are hard questions with no right answer… but I think they’re the things to be thinking about (instead of prestige).</p>
<p>(And Harvard students are definitely not motivated by “beating people” - but they are quite driven, and can prioritize goals and success over personal relationships at times)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Swat is 10 minutes away from Philly, n.b.</p>
<p>O.M.G.
i’m gonna punch ya in the face if you’re not ■■■■■■■■!</p>
<p>I’ll second what Gadad said. My D had to choose between Swat and Harvard and several others. It was no contest. And yes, the Pfoho house master and Nobel prize winner is just “Jim” to the kids.</p>
<p>OP, why haven’t you also asked this question in the Swarthmore forum?</p>
<p>obiCello, you mentioned that you hate feeling kind of claustrophobic, and you even put “hate” in capital letters. If you hate it that much, I suggest that you go to Harvard. True, Swarthmore is 20 minutes by train from Philadelphia, but most people I think don’t go there too often, maybe on average around once a month. A closer getaway is the Crum Woods, which is right next to the main campus and where some people like to walk around once in a while. Even with Philadelphia, I think that everyone feels claustrophobic once in a while, because the campus is quite small, and so is the village of Swarthmore next to the college. We have the absolute worst college town there is. I think that Harvard’s location is much better than Swarthmore’s.</p>
<p>As for undergraduate experience, I think it’s hard to beat Swarthmore’s. We have professors who are dedicated to teaching undergraduates, and it’s a very pleasant feeling, to feel that we are cared for more than graduate students are. Of course, there are bad teachers here; there are bad teachers at every college. Being dedicated does not mean being good at explaining. Nevertheless, professors are generally very accessible and I like the small class sizes. When I visited Swarthmore, a psychology professor who went to Harvard for undergrad talked about how he didn’t like how the professors didn’t seem to care about him, and that is a reason why he teaches at Swarthmore now, although he taught at Harvard and UCLA. But I think you can get a great education at Harvard, it just may be harder. You’ll probably have to be more aggressive, but you’ll be taught by well-known professors. There really are very, very few famous professors at Swarthmore.</p>
<p>^ small clarification from above, the Pforzheimer House master James McCarthy hasn’t won the Nobel Prize. He is a foreign member of the Royal Academy though.</p>
<p>I can’t disagree with the first few people. Talk to some professors, meet some undergrads, talk to the local alumni chapters: see what meets your life goals</p>
<p>James McCarthy was co-chair member of the IPCC group that won the Nobel Prize for its work on global warming, shared with Al Gore.</p>
<p>
[The</a> Nobel Peace Prize 2007 - Press Release](<a href=“http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/press.html]The”>http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/press.html)
[Center</a> for Health and the Global Environment](<a href=“http://chge.med.harvard.edu/about/faculty/mccarthy.html]Center”>http://chge.med.harvard.edu/about/faculty/mccarthy.html)</p>
<p>Besides being House Master of PfoHo,
</p>
<p>thanks Marite for the context- no doubt McCarthy has an impressive bio, but I don’t think one could call him (personally) a Nobel Prize winner.</p>
<p>If he were MY House Master, I would sure as hell consider him a Nobel Prize winner.</p>
<p>Dudley Hershbach, Chemistry Nobel Prize 1986, was Master of Currier House 1981-1986.
Now 77, he still teaches and does research. He also presides over the annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony every fall:
</p>
<p>
[Harvard</a> Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology](<a href=“http://www.chem.harvard.edu/herschbach/dudley.php]Harvard”>http://www.chem.harvard.edu/herschbach/dudley.php)</p>
<p>Prof. Roy Glauber, 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics, teaches a freshman seminar and continues to do research.</p>
<p>Roy Glauber is probably the only active Nobel recipient in Harvard SAS campus now. Hershbach has retired ([Harvard</a> Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology](<a href=“http://www.chem.harvard.edu/herschbach/index.php]Harvard”>http://www.chem.harvard.edu/herschbach/index.php)). Amartya Sen spend most of his time in India to revive Nalanda University. I doubt that he will come back to teach soon. Merton is in HBS. In terms of active Nobel prestige, Columbia appears better in both total number (78) of awards and active (9 versus 3 for Harvard). Harvard’s neighbor MIT appears to have 7 active Nobel recipients, all in science.</p>