If "Harvard undergraduates don't get the attention", who does?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
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<p>"Anyone with both undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard is qualified to make the statement that “Harvard doesn’t focus on its undergraduates.” </p>

<p>Not really…such people might be able to make an informed comment about how much attention Harvard undergrads get as opposed to Harvard grad students, but that really isn’t the issue…the main issue is how much attention do Harvard undergrads get as opposed to undergrads at other colleges. Nobody is trying to decide between going to H for a B.A. or an M.A., right? They are trying to decide whether to go to Harvard or Williams (or Berkeley or Wellesley, etc) for a B.A.</p>

<p>And yeah, this applies not just to Harvard, but any schools you want to compare. The bottom line is there is a gigantic amount of speculation on the relative merits of various schools on college confidential…which is ok as long as everybody knows it’s wild speculation based on what is usually really spotty information. It’s when people make assertions of ironclad fact and precise rankings that things go way beyond bull****. You don’t have to search very hard on CC to find otherwise sane adults fretting over the Forbes and USNews rankings…as if there is a way to come up with an accurate ordinal ranking of things as monumentally complex as universities.</p>

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<p>I have read that, in response to some criticism in the past ( 8-10 years ago ?), Harvard has put a lot of effort into improving the undergrad experience, particularly in the area of support and advising.</p>

<p>Teaching quality seems excellent. I do not know if improving teaching was also part of the effort to improve things for undergraduates. </p>

<p>Faculty everywhere have to produce research and publications in order to progress in their careers; at Harvard (and elsewhere) many are also working in their fields.</p>

<p>Other students are a wonderful resource, yes.</p>

<p>Whatever was done, it seems to have worked. We have absolutely no complaints, and were pleasantly surprised overall.</p>

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<p>It’s very interesting that most of the defense (or defensiveness) of Harvard’s undergraduate “focus” seems to be coming from H (Harvard? helicopter?) parents, not students or alums.</p>

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The brother of one of my best friends is a rising junior at H. He characterizes his H experience as “fine” but that upon reflection he would have probably had a better college experience had he chosen Bowdoin. He said that the focus at H is tilted towards the grad students and that undergrads should not expect much in the way of personal attention.</p>

<p>Of course that’s merely his perspective. Another student might, as some others have suggested, thrive under an environment where they sort of pave their own path and might actually be bothered by the “hand-holding” of LACs. And undeniably, while this guy may feel his college experience would have been better elsewhere, beyond college his degree from Harvard will carry considerably more weight. Perhaps though it’d be even better for some to stride along the medium and try to have both name recognition and a balance between intimate and “open” environments. Like Princeton :)</p>

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<p>It’s interesting that most of the offense criticizing Harvard’s undergraduate “focus” is coming from students, alums, and boosters of rival schools with no connection or experience with Harvard and not from Harvard students, alums, or even (helicopter) parents.</p>

<p>In any case, here is a previous thread on the same topic with several Harvard students and alums offering opinions:</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/635800-undergraduate-quality-harvard.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/635800-undergraduate-quality-harvard.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>^ This.</p>

<p>(10 char)</p>

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Isn’t that how it is with most things? Generally speaking, those familiar and inclined to a certain approach will almost certainly be in support of it, and those unfamiliar and subjected to their own predispositions will almost certainly go with what they’ve heard and not experienced. I’m sure though that the reality probably lies closer to the former perspective - I find it hard to believe being an undergrad at Harvard is a mediocre experience, just perhaps not for everyone.</p>

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<p>Your highly anticipated (by me) response (to me) only served to confirm my theory and observation. Who knew I’d find a willing and able participant in my little “experiment” so fast?</p>

<p>That said, I am genuinely touched that a strong Harvard booster such as yourself actually acknowledged that the “Big H” had any rivals (or peers). Your generosity will not be soon forgotten. Good day, kind sir or madam!</p>

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<p>That ?</p>

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<p>Your theory is debunked by the thread linked in post #25.</p>

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<p>LACs aren’t the best ug institutions for ALL students, just certain ones, just like big research universities aren’t for everyone. From what I can gather, here’s theimpression I got regarding the difference (I’ll use an analogy):
LACs are like boutiques with personal shoppers, that you can call ahead for a consultation, who will then pick out a rack of outfits based on their impression of you. When you get to the boutique, the personal shopper then greets you and offers you the outfits, attendig only to you and helping you to find the outfits you’ll like. Harvard is like a (very nice) department store. There are friendly attendants at every turn, and much more variety than the boutique. If you need help, the attendants are friendly and more than happy to help you, but you need to be proactive and Ask for the help; they won’t be following you around the store helping you shop. Therefore, for busy people or people that hate shopping, the personal shopper is the best option, because they don’t have to search for what they like, it is right there for them. For shopaholics and those that love to browse malls and find hidden gems, the department store is the better option. The former would feel oberwhelmed and have an unhappy experience, the latter too restricted and coddled. As such, while LACs offer ug only attention due to their small size and lack of grad institutions, those attracted to that would attend. But for those that wish a larger variety more dependent on self-initiative, Harvard would be better. It is an individual thing that cannot be covered with blanket statements–especially those based on rumors and isolated excerpts:)</p>

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<p>Not sure it’s worth it to feed the ■■■■■■, but I’m a very recent alum who thinks that the “undergraduate focus” stuff is bogus.</p>

<p>I think that - like all persistent rumors - there are some elements of truth to the complaint. For example, at Williams (where my brother attends) - undergrads sit on hiring committees for new professors, profs take attendance (even in many lecture classes) and call out students who skip, and the president of the school knows many undergrads personally (my brother included).</p>

<p>At Harvard, none of these things are true, but I don’t think that means the university is any less focused on undergraduate education – it’s just a LAC/research university difference in style.</p>

<p>Would you ever say that a LAC “isn’t focused on undergraduate education” because the course offerings are limited, the extra-curricular activities are smaller in scope, or the on-campus research positions are scant? Of course not – even though these things are true (in comparison to Harvard) - it’s not a result of a lack of focus, just the educational model the school was built around.</p>

<p>Last but not least, I do strongly believe that there are departments at Harvard that are not sufficiently focused on undergraduate education. Economics is my prime example - there just aren’t enough professors, given the huge number of concentrators, to have small enough classes, good advising + enough quality thesis advisors. The econ profs I know (with some definite exceptions) also tended to be a bit overly rational, and made it somewhat obvious that they cared about their research/grad students more than their undergrads.</p>

<p>On the other hand, the smaller departments (i.e. Philosophy, Math, Linguistics…) have a very LAC-like feel, as concentrators get to know all the faculty very well. And most larger departments (Psychology comes to mind) do a much better job of being undergrad-friendly than Econ.</p>

<p>So, perhaps the reason you don’t see current students jumping on the “Harvard hates undergrads” bandwagon in either direction is because the truth is far more nuanced than the rumor…</p>

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<p>^ Interesting point about economics. My brother’s friend whom I mentioned on the previous page is an Econ major; perhaps that is the main source of his misgivings.</p>

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<p>Re: Econ (+ Princeton) - [Greg</a> Mankiw’s Blog: We’re number one!](<a href=“http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2010/08/were-number-one.html]Greg”>Greg Mankiw's Blog: We're number one!)</p>

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<p>I’ll give a concrete example of the LAC-research university divide. I was recently at a party that included a bunch of Swarthmore alumni of my generation (late 40s, early 50s) interested in literature, and a former chair of its English department. A number of the alums were reminiscing about a young professor they had had whom they considered brilliant. The faculty member agreed. He said he, personally, had recruited the younger man out of the Harvard grad program (the ex-chair had been a young professor himself there when the other started grad school). He thought the younger man was the single best scholar the Swarthmore English department had had during his 35 years there. But he hadn’t gotten tenure. Why? His teaching evaluations were “mixed”. Not bad, “mixed”. Obviously lots of people had liked him, because some 30 years on most of the people at this party remembered him as a good teacher. But “mixed” teaching evaluations was a kiss of death at Swarthmore.</p>

<p>At Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, Princeton, teaching evaluations are part of the tenure process, but they are a joke – no one takes them that seriously. Mixed teaching evaluations would be more than fine – maybe better even than uniformly good ones, which might be thought to indicate that the person was spending too much time and attention on undergraduate courses. Really bad teaching evaluations would be an issue, but not necessarily fatal, not if the person in question were thought to be a first-rate scholar.</p>

<p>Personally, I would rather have access to a first-rate scholar than to a great teacher who was not a first-rate scholar. I don’t need spoon-feeding or entertainment; I want ideas, information, sophistication. I would much rather attend an institution that overlooked bad teaching evaluations because someone’s scholarship was good than one that kicked out its best scholar because he was below-average as a teacher. That makes me a research uni guy. But not everyone agrees with me, and that’s why there are lots of different institutions out there.</p>

<p>Now, this has nothing to do with Harvard vs. Yale or Princeton. On this issue they are all on the same side of the line. I think the whole issue of “undergraduate orientation” is wildly overrated in discussing those schools and their peers. I do think there is some culture at Harvard of more professors spending more time than most professors elsewhere do being public intellectuals, and that takes time and attention away from their interactions with both undergraduate and graduate students. On the other hand, it means they are famous, and that’s fun and exciting for undergraduates. But the differences are slight, and the effect is hardly absolute. My most important faculty relationships in college – not at Harvard – were with professors who essentially didn’t teach undergraduates, and who spent vast time on their non-teaching activities. That meant that it took work for an undergraduate to get their time and attention, not that they were fundamentally unwilling to give either.</p>

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<p>I haven’t been paying much attention to LACs and I wonder if I miss something. My perception is that the kids that are attracted to LACs are different than the rest in needs and family background. Are the students at LACs more homogeneous?</p>

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<p>I don’t think students at LACs are more or less homogeneous than students at research universities, especially if what you are comparing is the top LACs with Ivies and equivalent. If anything, the LAC students tend to be more sophisticated – if they hadn’t known a lot more about colleges, they would never have applied there. One of the reason fancy private schools have much better college admissions outcomes than the best public schools is that they siphon a significant number of good students into great LACs. Top LACs can give great financial aid, too, to students with need, but they have to know enough to apply. In general, I think LAC applicants tend to come from more educated, more affluent families, although the LACs work hard to find and attract students from disadvantaged backgrounds as well.</p>

<p>If you care about prestige – not with your taxi driver, but maybe with your bank president – and you want to carve a little place for yourself in the Establishment, then a good LAC is a great option. There’s no place you can get to from Harvard that you can’t get to from Amherst or Williams, and (assuming you are a great student, etc.) you have a better chance of admission at Amherst or Williams, and probably a better chance of coming out with a strong record, too. Certainly a better chance of coming out with real faculty mentors who will really go to bat for you. Compared to research universities, there are fewer courses offered, and fewer, less sophisticated research opportunities, but much closer personal relationships and a guarantee that you will get solid training and support for going to the next level. There are very, very few students who are really going to outgrow the educational opportunities at a good LAC much before they graduate.</p>

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You make it seem so black and white. Generally, great teachers (as seen by top students) aren’t the ones that grade the easiest (in fact I’ve found it’s generally the opposite), are the nicest to students, or only show movies in class. They’re the ones that can teach, inspire, captivate, and demand you’re very best. Even if they’re not outputting top research papers or winning Nobel Prizes. </p>

<p>But I guess you don’t want that.</p>

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<p>Well, a mom here of a rising Harvard senior. I think this is a useful discussion. My husband and I went to our state U’s and had really no knowledge of Ivy schools or LACs. Son was accepted pretty much everywhere - had no idea where he should go so it pretty much came down to the rankings/prestige stuff. I know, I know. A terrible way to decide. He was so busy senior year of hs - was doing a lot of interviewing for scholarships that spring at schools that offered merit, for one thing. And the acceptances at schools like Harvard came as a surprise to him and us.</p>

<p>Anyway, it was clear very quickly he (and we) had chosen badly. Harvard was really not a good place for him. He was a very broadly engaged scholar at that time - into science and social science and humanities - not ready to strike out on a particular passion. Ridiculous scores but not a true prodigy in any one area - at least he tells us that - and so going to Harvard where so many kids are ready to hit the ground running into lab science or performing arts or whatever was really awkward for him. He needed to dabble a little still and Harvard is not a place for dabblers! He would have probably been more comfortable and better served by being at an LAC that was more personal in its approach to its students and encouraged more open exploration, less commitment early to a particular direction.</p>

<p>It’s still gone well objectively - grades are strong, well along to graduate, two good summer internships. Outwardly it all looks fine but I sense that internally Harvard has not been the best place for him to traverse young adulthood. So I really think this sort of thread is a good idea. And yes, I think professors ultimately set the intellectual tone of the school. I think the faculty establishes the ethos at Harvard. It’s perfect for many but not all of the students it accepts.</p>

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<p>^I feel the same way as your son seems to have felt. Multi-dimensional, unsure of what I want to do, etc. I’m not at Harvard fyi. So many people at my university came in knowing what they wanted to do, what classes they wanted to take. Heck, at the end of freshman year a lot of my peers were finishing up their four-year plans. Picking which quarter for study abroad and which study abroad they were going to do and what classes to take while there (which considering as they have to apply to each program seems a bit presumptuous). Looking at which classes conflict in time slots for junior year.</p>

<p>Some even have their lives planned out until age 30, including what year they’ll get married! </p>

<p>Heck I don’t even know what tomorrow brings, or next week, or next year. And I’m okay with that. But I feel slightly alienated knowing that other people are not. It even got to the point where my roommate criticized me for wanting to have a broad education (at the time I was taking classes in philosophy, biotechnology, applied math, design, and history). I said I wanted to keep my options open, but he rebutted that only weak people do that. Actually Harvard was his number one school and they waitlisted him, but I digress. </p>

<p>So I don’t think this is just a problem with Harvard. In fact, I know many students at some top LACs that have similar attitudes. It seems to be more a problem with today’s students in general.</p>