<p>[part 1 of 3]</p>
<p>"Visiting Harvard University, one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in world, is an unforgettable highlight of my life. For a Filipino graduate student like me, the visit was not only very memorable but a rare privilege and a highly intellectual and overwhelming experience...." </p>
<p><a href="http://www.mb.com.ph/SCAU2006061066471.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.mb.com.ph/SCAU2006061066471.html</a></p>
<p>"this wanderlust has always dreamed of visiting the world-famous Ivy League schools, the long-established universities in the east and west coasts of the United States, widely regarded for their high scholastic and social reputation."</p>
<p>I think she mistook Stanford and maybe even Berkeley or UCLA as schools in the Ivy League....</p>
<p>I'm sure visitors are more impressed with say, Stanford or Princeton as visitors due to the more pristine campuses. </p>
<p>The hordes of overseas tourists around the Quad each morning might be an indicator.</p>
<p>Perhaps. But campus preference is really very personal. My campus tour of Stanford was actually the biggest thing that turned me off of the school--I felt as though it was way too self-contained. I wanted to go to a college whose campus was able to find a balance between centralization (the yard) and exposure to the outside world (Harvard Square).</p>
<p>This is also quite good for my coffee addiction--I can hop from coffee shop to coffee shop all day long!</p>
<p>And re: tourists...We have them at Harvard too. EVERYWHERE.</p>
<p>Stay around through the summer if you want to see tourists ... busload after busload, cameras in hand, waiting to have their picture taken rubbing John Harvard's foot!</p>
<p>I haven't visited all the famous campuses of the United States at consistent times of the year, but, yes, Harvard gets lots and lots of tourists. And most of my business trips to elite United States college campuses were dictated by the preferences of foreign visitors to the United States (for whom I was providing interpreting services), and Harvard is the college I have visited most often.</p>
<p>What language(s) do you specialize in?</p>
<p>I am a second-language speaker of Mandarin. Most of the work that brought me to Harvard was on contract for the (then) United States Information Agency, as part of the International Visitor Program that has now been folded into the State Department along with most of the rest of U.S.I.A. I have a touristy snapshot photo of the John Harvard statute--fortunately I didn't touch its foot! I have since heard the story about the three lies concerning the John Harvard statue, from a Harvard College alumnus (and fellow former law clerk for the MN Supreme Court) whom I regained acquaintance with at a Harvard information meeting in my town.</p>
<p>Very interesting!</p>
<p>Have you ever read "Harvard Girl Yiting Liu" in the original ? (5 million copies sold!)</p>
<p>sunglasses, ever been to downtown palo alto!?!?!</p>
<p>Yes, I have. I spent several weeks at Stanford the summer before my senior year of high school. A lot of people love the Stanford campus and its apartness from Palo Alto, but I did not. </p>
<p>This year--in my freshman year at Harvard--my dorm overlooked both the Yard and Mass Ave. I could walk out one way and be in the center of the Yard (further still into the neighborhoods above the Yard), or I could walk out a gate and be in Toscanini's Coffee Shop or steps from the River Charles. This flexibility is--to me, at least--what makes Harvard's campus fantastic.</p>
<p>Sunglasses! Yes, yes yes! You just summarized the most awesome part of the Harvard campus...I went into college visits this year with every school in mind except for Harvard. But, every campus I visited just didn't feel "right". Yale was gorgeous, but it felt kinda unreal...you were in a gothic style cathedral one minute, a few blocks over, you were in an area in which I personally did not feel comfortable. And Princeton? The city consists of one street! Everything is too centralized. I felt the same about Stanford - it looks idyllic, but where's the city integration? I think a lot of people whine about the Harvard campus in terms of decentralization and the "tourists", and there is certainly truth behind at least the latter (during my visit, I saw a group of 60 or so French middle school kids trouncing around the campus and running over me everywhere I went), but how can you not love a city so diverse and relaxing as Cambridge? Diversity is key to me - I live in Houston and we've been called the most socially integrated city in America. I felt comfortable walking around in Cambridge, something I couldn't say in a lot of other college towns. Harvard just does such a great job of incorporating everything a girl could ever need and making it so accessible to the school.</p>
<p><em>sighs</em> I'm a Harvard groupie already.</p>
<p>Actually, living in a tourist fishbowl is one of few things about Harvard my daughter doesn't like. </p>
<p>The most egregious example that I have heard about came her freshman year when she got up early one Saturday morning to go running with a friend. She stepped out of her dorm into the Yard to begin stretching. Even at that early hour there was already busload of Chinese tourists there, and when they spotted her they came hustling over and stared at her from only a few feet away and took pictures -- a REAL Harvard student! to show the folks back home.</p>
<p>That's happened to me several times stretching after a run, because my dorm this year was right inside one of the gates. It's not that big of a deal. Every Harvard student likes to tell his friends and family how annoying the tourists are, but secretly, I think we all love it. It makes you feel like a bit of a celebrity.</p>
<p>sunglasses, did you end up in a river house or were you Quaded?</p>
<p>Haha. Adams! So I can continue to revel in my proximity to the Square. In fact, next year I'll probably be living about 250 meters from my room this year.</p>
<p>Also convenient for your extra-curricular activity!</p>
<p>Haha. YES INDEED!</p>
<p>The tourists could be a little weird sometimes . . . </p>
<p>But when it started to get "cold" and they didn't come as often, oddly enough, I started to miss them.</p>
<p>I was in Grays, the easternmost corner, right next to the pathway that leads to the area of Mass Ave where the buses drop their busloads most often. (Also one of the only gates open to the yard at night, so I was sometimes assaulted by the sounds of drunk freshman stumbling home at 3-4 am when I was trying to sleep.)</p>
<p>Some of the tourists were pretty cool. And sometimes it was nice to be knocked out of the Harvard bubble by the realization that the place I called home was, for some, the Disneyworld of academia. </p>
<p>On the other hand . . . I'm glad most tourists won't ever make the hike to the quad.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>In fact, next year I'll probably be living about 250 meters from my room this year.<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>Hmm...were you win Wigglesworth this year?</p>