<p>Since all of the other Harvard parents are commenting, I suppose I'll chime in as well. My understanding of how Ec10 was run last year is the same as what Twinmom described, although I understood that there were also a number of lectures given by professors other than Mankiw throughout the course. My D actually preferred the non-Mankiw lectures. She took both semesters of Ec10 and had a mediocre TF first semester and a much better one second. </p>
<p>As for advising, I have always heard it's a weakness at Harvard, but honestly I really have no idea what constitutes good advising. My D got much more help from an advisor last year as a Harvard freshman than I did at my LAC 30 years ago, but I think it's generally unfair to compare one ancient experience with another current one. I think it explains my uncertainty about what my D should have expected or looked for in an advisor though. Basically what she got freshman year and so far this year was someone to review her course selection and okay it. </p>
<p>As a freshman, she could have used someone to tell her not to take the combination of courses she had selected, which were unusually difficult in light of her extra curricular schedule and her level of high school preparation (okay, and also her time management skills). I have serious doubts as to whether she would have followed such advice, as she's pretty stubborn and certainly has never wanted to admit that she couldn't handle something. This year before meeting with her advisor, she played around with various course combinations to figure out how she was going to fit in the remaining core courses and the required courses for the concentration she hoped to be accepted to and how not to be hopelessly behind in her alternative concentration, if she didn't get into the one she wanted. I really don't know at this point what more she could have gotten from an advisor, but again, that's just my own ignorance of what good advising is.</p>
<p>^^The problem with Harvard's advising is that you apparently don't have to have any particular knowledge or expertise to become an advisor. So the result is very much catch-as-catch-can.</p>
<p>As I recall, D's freshman advisor was the dorm proctor - the equivalent of an RA at other schools. I can see Harvard's approach --> provide one go-to guy to answer all your Harvard questions, from personal safety to shopping tips to designing your academic curriculum. But that meant the same guy was academic advisor to a bunch of freshman who were concentrators in things as disparate as Physics and French. That was fine for kids who were concentrating in subjects similar to the proctor's. They probably thought they got excellent advising. But it was much more questionable for kids who were focused on more far-flung topics.</p>
<p>Anybody has experience with the new peer advising system at H?
I can see the problem from H's perspective: to promote diversity of interests, dorms cannot be filled with students who are prospective majors in the same fields; as well, many freshmen are undecided when they apply for housing and indeed, throughout freshman year (the reason for pushing concentration decision to sophomore year was to give freshmen more time to make a decision as to major). So the proctor was expected to help students with a huge variety of interests. The peer advising system, from what I read, was supposed to provide more targeted advice. It's been in place only since last year, so S did not have experience with it. He did have a good experience with his Freshman Dean, but it had nothing to do with academics.</p>
<p>I really do not have the experience to say that H's advising system is worse than others. My own experience was entirely negative. There was the dorm RA who only took care of housing issues; then there was the departmental advisor who seemed to only sign study cards. I was not even sent any materials regarding the writing of senior honors thesis (I did line up an advisor for that, but the advisor discussed only content, not deadlines, format, length, etc...). </p>
<p>S1 sort of fell between the cracks at his LAC. His original departmental advisor went on leave, so he got another one who was not familiar with his interests, record, etc... and focused only on departmental requirements. Which is how S got to senior year, one gen ed course short (the requirements had changed when he was abroad) and a couple of departmental courses too many. </p>
<p>By contrast, S2 has had pretty good advising. Granted, the proctor could not advise him on courses (she was not even a grad student in FAS) but was very good at organizing social activities in the dorm. He has had good advice through his department, some time by going to office hours, some time by emailing various profs. He has not really made use of the in-House advisors, but he gets regular emails about meetings for pre-meds,-pre-law, physics/math advising, history advising and so on.</p>
<p>So I find myself thinking that S2's experience with advising has been better than S1's. but much may depend on individual circumstances.</p>
<p>My D experienced the Peer Advising Fellow (PAF) program last year. She met with her PAF once a month, I think, and really liked her, but I don't know what sort of advice she got, other than I know she got some advice on sororities (which my D was not interested in). That's definitely going to be an experience that varies depending on individual circumstances - both with who the PAF is and who the freshman is. </p>
<p>This year my D's best friend is a PAF, and my D was commenting the other day on how her friend's perspective is coloring the quality of the advice she's doling out. Her friend, the PAF, got an email from a very stressed out freshman wondering if his experience was normal, and the PAF told my D she was going to tell him that it really was not normal to be feeling that way and that he should consider dropping one of his courses or maybe not trying to do all of the reading. This PAF had taken an extremely light course load freshman year and had a light EC load and hadn't felt a bit of stress. She apparently had no idea that her best friend, my D, had been feeling pretty overwhelmed for a lot of the year. Some of that is because my D didn't think her own reactions to the stresses of freshman year were "normal" and did a good job of putting on a cheerful, stressfree face 99% of the time. I know that if my D had been a PAF to this current freshman, that she would have had much more sympathy and appropriate advice for him. Fortunately the PAF did modify her response to the freshman after her eye-opening talk with my D, but I am certain that there are other PAFs whose own experiences just don't give them the perspective that their advisees need. On the other hand, the PAF is just one part of the advising system, so I would hope that the other parts would complement the PAF.</p>
<p>My D's advisor freshman year was her proctor, too, and he certainly had no idea about her particular academic interests. What he was good at was lending a sympathetic ear to students in times of stress -- academic and otherwise -- and knowing where to hunt down assistance for them. He was much more help than I got from the RA-types that lived in my dorm freshman year. I guess what was missing in my D's situation was the advice she didn't know she needed and therefore didn't know to ask for. And of course, since she did such a good job of generally covering up her stress, I don't think the proctor could be faulted for missing it. And again, it's much more advising of any sort than I got at my LAC. A lot of the disappointment with advising seems to stem from expectations, and we basically went in with lowest expectations.</p>
<p>It looks like the revised Harvard curriculum is going to make the advising worse. It seems that, for many students, useful advising started once they picked a concentration and were assigned an advisor in their department. By delaying this choice, students will go farther before they have someone to help. The complexity of the requirements only contribute to this problem. It is a shame that the FAS faculty did not accompany the new plans with a more comprehensive approach to advising.</p>
<p>A thousand years ago I observed an uneven system. I had a great advising experience, but that was because my assigned advisor first year was in my eventual concentration, and I stayed with him the whole time. Classmates who arrived with no clear idea of major were pretty much on their own.</p>
<p>I was thinking the same thing, Marite. I really can't recall any advising I got at Williams as a sophomore who had not yet declared a major. And I don't recall at the time feeling I had any need for advising. I think I thought I was just expected to figure things out with the course catalogue, which is the way my D is proceeding at H.</p>
<p>Back in the day, the most valuable advising I got in college was a mimeographed list (remember mimeographs?) of courses that I needed to take in order to graduate that was handed out by the department office for my major. Where my flesh-and-blood advisor came in handy was for agreeing and signing off on that certain other courses could be substituted for some of the courses on that list. If he signed it, the department was obliged to honor it.</p>
<p>It's probably not just your daughter, DocT. I don't really know what sort of confusion there might be, because I haven't kept track of the exact requirements or changes myself, but anytime you start cross-referencing various requirements it gets confusing. </p>
<p>What my D did right before she went back to school this fall was to figure out what courses she needed for her two possible concentrations, a possible secondary concentration and remaining core courses. She wrote course names on index cards, with some sort of notation for the core courses as to whether the core would be required for each of the concentrations, and sat for a good while arranging them on the floor. She tried to plan out the last three years of college, just to see how things fit and to see how much room she would have for "just for fun" electives. It looked like an elaborate game of solitaire, but it did help her get a better grasp of the requirements (core and concentration) and how they fit together.</p>
<p>there will be a period of transition between the old core and the new gen ed; I'm not sure how things will work out--I doubt the faculty knows as nothing has been decided yet. For the next year at least, students should assume that the current core requirements are in effect. My understanding is that courses will be grandfathered, so that courses that were taken to fulfill the core will be valid for the new gen ed. In fact, many if not most of the current core courses will count under the new gen ed system. But many current departmental courses as well as new courses will count as well.</p>
<p>At least, at H, students get a list of the core requirements they have fulfilled already and of those they have yet to fulfill so what happened to S1--coming into the last semester of his senior year with one more gen ed course to fulfill that he did not know about-- would not happen at Harvard.</p>
<p>From what my daughter tells me, the core requirements are unlikely to change for the Class of 2010, which, in her opinion, is unfortunate. My daughter does a lot of the same kind of figuring as Nceph's daughter, albeit not on index cards.</p>
<p>I don't think my daughter had anything to do with the PAF last year. She had an advisor in her concentration (not the proctor) or perhaps it was in a related field; I don't quite recall. Either way, the person was totally unhelpful, and I'm thinking the advisor might have left midyear. </p>
<p>This year she seems to have a great advisor linked to her house who is accessible and spent some time with her before she shopped for classes.</p>
<p>I do agree with Nceph that the PAF advising would likely be contingent upon the experience s/he had freshman year. I can see how that could be dangerous to a freshman, in light of what Nceph described.</p>
<p>My son, who is at an LAC, was assigned an advisor, a professor, in the department he had expressed interest in once he had enrolled. As he declared in that major, he was able to keep the same advisor. He basically figures out his requirements (for the school, which are minimal) and his major the same way ... but he has an educated, professional ear to bounce his plans off of. So far it's worked out well for him. Maybe he was just lucky; I don't know.</p>
<p>Another bone of contention - although Harvard students do not have to declare until the end of the first semester of sophomore year now, many concentrations still require that the tutorials be taken the first semester. Makes no sense.</p>
<p>I'm not sure I get the timing of the required tutorials before the students have declared a concentration, especially with the concentrations that students have to apply to and be accepted, which won't happen till late in the fall semester. I not sure how it worked when they had to declare a concentration before they had even enrolled in one of the sophomore tutorials either. We talked quite a bit this summer about what plan B would be if my daughter didn't get accepted to her choice of concentration. She has a back-up plan, but she'll definitely be irritated that she spent (wasted) a course in a concentration that didn't want her. I guess we'll see how things go.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Obviously, the listing of requirements is not a universal practice, so it is not a case of H vs. the rest or of Ivies vs. non-Ivies, or universities vs. LACs (S1 was at a LAC).</p></li>
<li><p>yes, there are some concentrations that still require tutorials in sophomore year. I think Social Studies is the main one. I know some departments were very unhappy with the switch from end of freshman year to middle of sophomore year. But that is the norm in other schools, so I still would like to know what happens in these schools.</p></li>
<li><p>I don't know when the core rules will be relaxed to allow students to substitute departmental courses for core courses or when more courses will be created to fit into the new gen ed categories. It is possible all these things will happen more or less simultaneously. It may not benefit the class of '10 (it certainly won't affect the class of '09) but it may affect subsequent classes.</p></li>
<li><p>Some students have profs as freshman advisors, others have members of the administrative staff, still others have proctors. The luckiest ones have advisors in the areas in which they have an interest, but even faculty advisors may be mismatched with their student advisees, especially those who either did not declare an interest or changed interests soon after arriving. For example, it is not impossible for a prof in the English department to be advising a student wanting to major in Psychology.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I think at Yale students have to apply to the Ethics, Politics and Economics major, and it sounds as though about half of the students who apply get in. I don't know if Yale has other majors like that.</p>
<p>A few majors require applications. Visual and Environmental Studies is another one, and History and Literature was in my day - I assume it still is.</p>