<p>I am going to join this discussion. In the interest of full disclosure, I have to note that my DD is a freshman at Harvard. Allow me to first say that I agree with crazy mom that the Harvard tour, as opposed to the information session, was not the best of the schools that we visited - we visited Harvard in August of '06. The office of admissions was very hard to find, and, as Crazy Mom described, we experienced lawn mowers in the yard that drowned-out the tour guide (interestingly enough, the same thing happened when we visited Stanford). During the tour, both my DD and I were taken aback by the number of tourists that were in the vicinity of the yard. There were, in fact, two bus loads of Asian tourists milling around and taking pictures of everything they could. The Harvard tour was also very limited in scope: the yard, including the infamous statue (no, we did not touch the foot); the science center, described by the tour guide as an ugly building (we were able to hear that); we were allowed to peek through a window at students eating in Annenberg; and assorted facts and figures about Harvard. All in all, the tour was a disappointment, and DD remarked that there were far too many tourists around. There were, in fact, more tourists than students when we visited, and the few students that we saw were trying to get out of the way of the hordes of tourists.
Fast forward to the pre-frosh weekend in March or April, where DD overnighted with a Harvard student (I have a suspicion that her host was someone who is a regular on CC), ate at Annenberg, walked around when there were fewer tourists, and liked what she saw.<br>
Another fast forward to ten days ago when we dropped her off and got to meet some of the students and their parents. While helping her move into her room, which faces the yard, I could clearly hear from her room the tour guides and their entourages going by, and memorized what they said about the room where JFK used to live (no longer there, it was destroyed to make way for an elevator…). I said to myself that I would hate to have to hear that every Saturday morning. I know that this is anecdotal, but the young people and their parents that we encountered were not elitist, and were quite a diverse group. Oh, and as I was taking a picture in front of the “pit” in Harvard Square, a young man came up to us and graciously asked if we wanted him to take a picture with all of us in it.</p>