<p>What are some of the less popular majors?</p>
<p>What you're doing is naughty.</p>
<p>You can find out that information for yourself at <a href="http://www.registrar.fas.harvard.edu%5B/url%5D">http://www.registrar.fas.harvard.edu</a> and following the links to the Student Handbook.</p>
<p>Again, for example, if you say you want to be an English major but your Science grades are comparatively higher and all your ECs and teachers speak to your "science prowess" - well, that would work against you, would it not?</p>
<p>um..The Ace is Back... NO, I'm not trying to apply to some random rare major in hopes of increasing my chances. Don't make conclusions so quickly</p>
<p>Intriguing.</p>
<p>My guess is that the least popular concentration is Folklore and Mythology. From what I've heard the number of concentrators in that program is in the single digits.</p>
<p>^^Which is probably good, since the job opportunities directly related to that field are likely in the single digits too.</p>
<p>That's crazy though. That sounds like a really interesting major and would be fine to do if you go onto grad school. Then again, I won't do it because my parents would never fork out 40k a year for me to study Folklore and Mythology ;)</p>
<p>Didn't the fat comic book guy from The Simpsons graduate from harvard with a degree in folklore and mythology? That would help explain the sarcasm and psuedo-intellectual garbage. "Oh that was fresh..." "Worst major ever" :)</p>
<p>Yeah, even from Harvard, a folklore major is a death sentence in the job market. There was a girl a couple years ago who wrote in a national newsweekly guest article about her long span of unemployment after getting such a Harvard degree.</p>
<p>Yeah...it's a pretty useless major...unless of course you're about to inherit a fortune from your great-aunt Martha.</p>
<p>Statistics (a rather useful degree!) also has single digit concentrators.</p>
<p>I'm surprised.. thought music would be more concentrated.</p>
<p>There are plenty of musically talented people at Harvard, but I guess they decide it's better as a hobby. I'd say that in general the "supernerd" and extremely obscure liberal arts concentrations will have the lowest number of students. For example, check out astrophysics and germanic languages.</p>
<p>The few music concentrators at Harvard are extremely talented people- but they generally veer towards composers and maybe some theorists/historians wannabes (in other words, academics) </p>
<p>Most performers I know do not major in music- as there are no performance professors at Harvard; several famous performers did indeed graduate from Harvard, ranging from Yo-yo Ma to Joshua Redman.<br>
Both became professional musicians though neither studied music. Yo-yo was I think a history concentrator while JR graduated Summa in Social Studies on a pre-med track.</p>
<p>So music at Harvard is more of a the theory/composition type? Less emphasis on performance?</p>
<p>Yep (10 char.)</p>
<p>Yo-yo Ma was already a virtuoso by the time he got to Harvard, so he didn't really need to major in music.</p>
<p>Here's a Crimson article that does an excellent job of explaining the philosophical position of the Harvard music curriculum. It's a few years old, but not out-of-date (except that the collaborative joint program with NEC is now in its infancy):
<a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=102668%5B/url%5D">http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=102668</a></p>
<p>Composers to graduate from Harvard's music department- undergrads.</p>
<p>Some major names: Leonard Bernstein, John Coolidge Adams, John Harbison, Elliott Carter, Frederic Rzewski </p>
<p>Several composers who recently graduated who are having very good careers (or are in early phases of their professional careers):
Christopher Trapani (who was mentioned in the article posted by gadad) and Anthony Cheung...</p>