You’re totally right! In fact, Harvard undergraduates aren’t even allowed to take classes. They just show up in a room and read silently with a “teacher” (really just a minimal wage high school dropout) making sure they don’t talk.</p>
<p>But that’s not all, there’s a special email filter that causes all emails from undergrads to professors to get immediately deleted.</p>
<p>Not to mention, undergrads are banned from all of the libraries and athletic facilities (don’t tell the NCAA that the football team is made up of PhDs!).</p>
<p>Even if an undergraduate does make contact with a professor (an expellable offence), and convinces the professor to let them do research (a double expellable offence), the typical “research” job is mopping floors (something the undergrad has to pay for).</p>
<p>Let’s not even get into the “extracurriculars”… shining the shoes of b-school students, cleaning out the earwax from the med students instruments, etc.</p>
<p>Thanks for helping spread the truth, julienyu! </p>
<p>
If only Faust would axe the dead weight of the college already, I’m sure HLS could top YLS for #1, and HBS could create its own tier above GSB + Wharton.</p>
<p>My daughters would be very surprised to hear that. They’d wonder how the invitations to cookouts at faculty members’ houses got misdirected from grad students to them. They’d wonder why these faculty members keep accepting dinner invitations to dine with them at their Houses, or why they have no trouble getting one-on-one office time, even from some of the superstars. The daughter whose Nobel Prize-winning live-in House Master retired and was replaced in his live-in role by a current member of Time’s 100 Most Influential people in the world would find this fascinating. So would the sellout crowd of undergrads who go to listen to international movers and shakers at the Institute of Politics - the arm of the JFK School of Government that provides forums, study groups, conferences and other events that are specifically targeted toward Harvard undergraduates.</p>
<p>It’s especially interesting how, with this rampant disregard for undergrads, Harvard keeps supporting and underwriting undergrad-proposed ventures that are audacious in their scope - a student-run institute in Shanghai for the top HS students in China, the only student-run homeless shelter in the U.S., student-run Model Congress programs both in the U.S. and abroad, after-school tutoring programs for immigrant children in low-income Boston neighborhoods. It’s also remarkable that The Daily Beast recently named Harvard students as the second-happiest among students at U.S. colleges and universities.</p>
<p>This kind of superficial flaming of Harvard is par for the course - “Harvard is bad” always makes for more interesting reading than “Harvard is good” under the “Man Bites Dog” definition of newsworthiness. But to throw this junk out there in April, when conflicted admitted students are trying to make important decisions is really unfair to those students.</p>
<p>Did you not notice julienyu’s location? But yes, I agree that it’s better if we keep this sort of ridiculousness confined to the weekend before Thanksgiving. ;)</p>
<p>“But to throw this junk out there in April, when conflicted admitted students are trying to make important decisions is really unfair to those students.”</p>
<p>Realistically speaking, it’s not as if this junk will influence prospective students. Harvard is Harvard, and these kids will bite the bullet.</p>
<p>Oh, I just have to weigh in here. My son is a junior at Harvard and so far his primary teacher relationships have been TFs - some good, some not so good, some dreadful. Now that’s just the sorry truth. The TFs essentially run undergrad education.</p>
<p>That said, I suspect the crazy incoming talent level of Harvard students just means the kids emerge after four years well educated just by being together with other ridiculous minds, despite the lackluster involvement of the profs.</p>
<p>Admittedly, my kid is in a “big” major and maybe the whole eperience would be personal and different in a more arcane concentration.</p>
<p>Harvard is great simply because of being with other Harvard students.</p>
<p>Okay, if this conversation is going to get serious, then I guess I have to weigh in too. While I suppose it’s possible to get to your junior year and have your primary teacher relationships be TF’s (some of whom are excellent, btw), that certainly doesn’t have to be the case. There are a huge number of small classes at Harvard. </p>
<p>My son, who graduated last year, was also in a “big” major and never had a semester where he didn’t have at least one class taught by a professor with an enrollment under 15 (and quite a few under 10). After freshman year, he never had a semester without at least two such classes, and by senior year, this described almost all his classes. He developed close relationships with a number of professors, and did paid research work with a couple of them. Small classes were something of a priority for him, but it really wasn’t that hard to do. </p>
<p>While it was about 30 years earlier, I had the same experience at Harvard - majoring in a “big” department but nonetheless finding quite a number of small enrollment classes with senior professors, including a junior tutorial with the chairman of my department and an enrollment of 6, and a senior thesis with one of the world’s two leading experts in my thesis topic. Yes, it takes a little initiative, but the resources for undergrads at Harvard are really unparalleled should you choose to take advantage of them.</p>
<p>“That said, I suspect the crazy incoming talent level of Harvard students just means the kids emerge after four years well educated just by being together with other ridiculous minds, despite the lackluster involvement of the profs.”</p>
<p>“Yes, it takes a little initiative, but the resources for undergrads at Harvard are really unparalleled should you choose to take advantage of them.”</p>
<p>As a junior in a “big” major here, I can assure you the education is not bad. That said, some of the parents here interpreting things a little too rosily. In my experience:</p>
<p>1) Harvard is jam-packed with famous professors, particularly in my major. There is NO CORRELATION between the fame of a professor and his skill as a teacher on an undergraduate level. Some of the WORST lectures I have sat through here have been from Nobel laureates. In those cases, you have to teach yourself the material from textbooks or other materials. My best, most inspiring professors here have been eager junior faculty still excited by their material, and most of them know their days at Harvard will be relatively few given the miserable tenure environment.</p>
<p>2) My first two years, a good portion of the FEEDBACK I got on papers, problem sets, etc. were from grad students assisting in a course – some of whom were superb, others dreadful beyond description. It is galling to get a disappointing grade on a paper written in English from someone whose command of English is anything but nuanced, to put it politely.
There are SOME classes so bad here you can’t believe you are at Harvard, the Harvard you had in your mind when you applied.</p>
<p>3) Harvard is all things to all people. If you are a self-starter, no university can match the resources put at your disposal at Harvard. But I know many people who have had NO contact whatsoever with a professor outside of class, and it was their own doing. There are so many classes at Harvard, and so many large classes, it is possible to sort of hide here in large lectures below the radar to minimize pain if that’s what you want. And a surprising number of people do. I don’t think it’s any different any other major research university. I don’t believe it’s as easy to skate through, if you want, at say, a good liberal arts college like Amherst or Swarthmore or say Dartmouth in the Ivy league.</p>