<p>Do many people applying to Harvard have a passion for East Asian countries; mainly, China?</p>
<p>I don't know if <em>many</em> people have a passion for East Asia, but Harvard has the best East Asian studies program and faculty in the country. The faculty is distributed into departments such as East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Anthropology, Government, History, Sociology, Religion, Economics. In addition, the professional schools have faculty specializing in East Asia. There is siginificant funding available as well for students wishing to spend a summer or semester or year in an East Asian country.</p>
<p>Marite is absolutely correct. Harvard's EALC Department is really unparalleled. The Asian languages here are absolutely amazing, I have heard. I have also taken a seminar in pre-modern Korean history and that was really great. It is a very laid-back department with top-notch professors, and funding is readily available - my upperclass friends who applied for funding in East Asia got more than they applied for!</p>
<p>Funding how? You mean just to visit and absorb the culture and take classes, or like for a research project? And if so, what kind of research projects? I'm very interested in China or Japan. I can't wait to get to Cambridge this fall!</p>
<p>You can do any of these things (and not just at Harvard; other colleges have similar deals). You can go for a summer of language immersion; you can get funding for doing summer research that will feed into your senior thesis; you can decide to spend a semester in China or Japan and take classes for credit. You can decide to just travel for the summer. I also know of students going for trips during spring break that are organized by student organizations and funded by the university. There are also possibilities for internship in private companies, NGOs, etc...</p>
<p>I'm really interested in East Asia too (I'm Korean actually) and my dad (who is a prof specializing in Central Asia-ish) assures me the East Asian dept. at Harvard is excellent (I wasn't really worried, though!). He's friends with some of the profs there and they're all brilliant, obviously :) Anyway, one of them told me that starting next fall, it will become much easier for undergrads to study abroad. Apparently Harvard was convinced that no credit at any other school could match up to credit given out at Harvard (lol) so it was difficult to arrange study overseas. But they've decided that this is no longer the case and they will begin encouraging study abroad more enthusiastically. Which is great news for us.</p>
<p>He also said that Harvard has so much money that sometimes they invent awards or grants to give away to students. Lol.</p>