<p>Hello, I was just wondering whether anyone could offer their thoughts about the undergraduate experience at Harvard. Harvard is, perhaps, the "emblematic American university" (as one USNews article stated), but I am beginning to seriously doubt that it deserves its number one ranking as an undergraduate institution. I was fortunate to get into Yale too and am hearing how it is much more undergraduate focused.</p>
<p>Here are just two excerpts from the recent USNews edition:</p>
<p>"Tenured professors prefer to teach courses that tend to track their research, even their latest book, rather than boning up on introductory material they left behind in graduate school. As a tenured professor responded when asked to teach an introductory art history survey, "No self-respecting scholar would want to teach such a course."</p>
<p>"Since worship of research was key, Summers asked individual departments to justify the time and money invested in them and their facilities. The faculty rejected the request. As one professor said, 'Once someone is a tenured professor, they answer to God.'"</p>
<p>It sounds to me that Harvard is not the place to go as an undergrad.</p>
<p>There are only about a gazillion threads on this board touching in some fashion or another on Harvard's alleged lack of "undergrad focus" (whatever that even means). As someone who attended both Harvard (undergrad) and Yale (grad), and knowing many others who have attended or are currently attending each at each level, I would say that there are far more similarities than differences in the undergrad - and grad - experience at the two schools. If you want to get down to specific programs, professors, etc., you can find some differences, but the generalization that Yale offers a better undergrad experience than Harvard - or conversely that Harvard offers a better grad experience than Yale - falls into the category of urban (or perhaps New Haven) myth.</p>
<p>IMO, no group is in a better position to give credible evidence on the reality of the Harvard undergrad experience than recent former students. </p>
<p>Read this, from the Boston Globe, and note that it derives from "an internal Harvard memo."</p>
<p><< Student life at Harvard lags peer schools, poll finds</p>
<p>By Marcella Bombardieri, Globe Staff | March 29, 2005</p>
<p>Student satisfaction at Harvard College ranks near the bottom of a group of 31 elite private colleges, according to an analysis of survey results that finds that Harvard students are disenchanted with the faculty and social life on campus.</p>
<p>An internal Harvard memo, obtained by the Globe, provides numerical data that appear to substantiate some long-held stereotypes of Harvard: that undergraduate students often feel neglected by professors, and that they don't have as much fun as peers on many other campuses....</p>
<p>Ah yes, another article that's already been posted about a gazillion times. The statistical flaws in the survey have already been discussed at length (not to mention that it's outdated - a survey of seniors in the Class of 2002 - and that Harvard students are notoriously difficult to please), so I won't bother with a reprise. What I found interesting, though, is the seriousness with which the issues raised in this survey were taken by Harvard's administration, and the extensive efforts that have already gone into addressing them. Just to take one example, only about 10% of freshmen in 1998-1999 (when the Class of 2002 were freshmen) participated in the freshman seminar program. Now there are enough freshman seminars for everyone to participate (and about 90% do so). Just this one change makes a significant difference in the freshman year experience - ensuring freshmen the opportunity to have direct contact with their professor in a small group setting. There have been many other reforms as well, and many in the works.</p>
<p>I have no doubt that this thread will continue to attract more Harvard bashing, which does seem ubiquitous around this time of year (though it hasn't been as bad as last year so far). My advice is, if you're smart enough to get into both Harvard and Yale (or another similar school), you're smart enough to make your own, informed, decision. My other advice is that, as between schools such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, the great likelihood is that you'd happy at any of them. So don't allow the choice to cause too much angst.</p>
<p>P.S., congrats on your admission, and good luck wherever you end up. :)</p>
<p>I certainly do not want to invite any Harvard "bashing." I am just trying to cut through the many myths concerning the undergraduate experience there.</p>
<p>There's DEFINITELY not a big difference between Harvard, Yale, & Princeton undergrad programs. The only places that have a right to say that they focus a significantly larger amount of resources & faculty on undergrads are schools like Olin.</p>
<p>More than 3/4 of common admits to Harvard and to its chief "rivals" - Stanford, Yale, MIT and Princeton - choose Harvard for their undergraduate education. Top students, obviously, see a clear difference.</p>
<hr>
<p>"Last year, nearly 23,000 students applied for admission, and 80 percent of those admitted chose to attend, compared with 72 percent at Yale and 68 percent at Princeton. Given a choice between Bulldog and Crimson, most students put their chips on red: nearly three out of four students accepted to both Yale and Harvard find themselves in Cambridge come fall, says one veteran of the admissions game."
<a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=509886%5B/url%5D">http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=509886</a></p>
<p>"The only reason Harvard stays competitive, according to Harvard football's recruiting director Westerfield, is that its Harvard. Three out of four students who get into Harvard and either Yale or Princeton choose Harvard, and its no different with high-scoring athletes. Typically, if I want a kid, I get him, Westerfield says. I didnt lose any kids last year."</p>
<p>You - very obviously, scottie - can't go on the basis of real world evidence and point to a clear pattern of decision-making by informed educational consumers, so you have to scratch around and look for negative stories about higher-ranking colleges via Google, etc hoping to prove that you're right and the world is wrong!</p>
<p>When kids (or their families) are investing upwards of $200,000 in a college education, they quite rightly do a lot of research before they decide where they spend their money. The best evidence, I's say, of where they see real value lies.</p>
<p>But that's OK... you do what you gotta do, I guess!</p>
<p>"For one thing, although Harvard University has a huge endowment, Harvard College and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) do not. FAS is currently in a budget deficit of around $40 million, and its endowment was only $10 billion (at the time the overall endowment was $22 billion), a fraction of Harvards nearly $26 billion total. In fact, Harvard ranks behind peer institutions like Princeton and Yale in terms of arts and sciences endowment per student."</p>
<p>Harvard fundraisers like to make this point. </p>
<p>It is a very clever way to counter those who say: "Harvard doesn't need the money ... Harvard has more money than the Catholic church ... more money than 3/4 of the countries in the Uniten Nations .... almost as much money as Bill Gates !!!"</p>
<p>"so you have to scratch around and look for negative stories about higher-ranking colleges via Google, etc hoping to prove that you're right and the world is wrong!"</p>
<p>sounds more like your own m.o. than mine. you'll note i've never created a single thread in any forum besides my "home" one. you, on the other hand, just one week ago, created a thread in the princeton forum entitled "more bickering about the 'eating clubs'" - evidently trying to raise alarms about princeton's social system!</p>
<p>Ultimately, though, it comes down to the department. For example, biophysics at Harvard College is abysmal--utterly disjointed and meant more as an add-on to the main physics department (the Department of Biophysics only looks after graduate students). However, Yale has an excellent biophysics program managed by the Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, the same department that does the graduate program in biophysics. It could be that, in your case, Harvard offers a better program in your major than Yale does.</p>
<p>Do you know how many are currently waitlisted at Harvard for the freshman class of 2006? Any ideas on how to get off the waitlist? How many were admitted off the waitlist last year? Thanks for the feed back</p>
<p>There is a separate thread about waitlists. I suggest you post your question there. This thread is exclusively for those who want to attack Harvard on the Harvard page ... like the OP, JoeBobHalley, and friend scottie, the Princeton spokesperson.</p>
<p>For what it's worth, here are my two cents' worth (as the parent of a very happy Harvard freshman):</p>
<p>--I think you're looking in the wrong places for guidance. Where things like US News and CC can be very helpful in figuring out where to apply, at this stage of the decision-making process, I think they're just about useless - or worse. Do you really want to, in effect, delegate your decision about your life to what some article in US News says, or to what some grown-ups (or students) with too much time on their hands (myself included), and with who-knows-what biases and agendas, have to say on an anonymous forum like this?</p>
<p>--I think that the way that you phrase the question - number one at the undergrad level (?) - is not at all helpful for the decision that you have to make at this point. It suggests (1) that there is a particular institution that is "number one," and that your task right now is to figure out which institution it is; and (2) that you would be best served by going to whatever school you determined was "number one." Each of these premises is, at best, deeply flawed.</p>
<p>--How much time have you actually spent on these campuses? While others might disagree (I know that Byerly, for one, pooh-poohs the whole notion of "fit"), I think that the best single thing that you could do at this juncture would be to spend as much time as you can on each of these campuses: stay in the dorms overnight, go to classes, hang out, wander around, imagine what life would be like for you if you were to spend the next four years there. (Last year, after my son spent three days and two nights on the Harvard campus, staying with students and sampling the student life for himself, he knew that it was the right place for him - and, in light of the way things have been going for him this year, he seems to have made a very good choice for himself.)</p>
<p>--You are more fortunate than you may know. Trust yourself; trust your gut. At this point, almost everything else (including this post) is noise.</p>
<p>I do, indeed, "pooh-pooh the notion of fit" on the ground that, as studies have shown, 99.44% of all students are happy enough with their college eventually, no matter what haphazard route they took to get there.</p>
<p>But on the other hand, I am a firm believer in visiting - as extensively as possible - schools to which you have been admitted and at which you are considering enrolling.</p>
<p>The only caveat is to keep in mind what I call the "Blind Men and the Elephant Syndrome:"</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Just because the sun is shining/the rain is falling on the day you visit, does not mean that's the way it is every day;</p></li>
<li><p>Just because the food is great at the party for visiting students does not mean its that way all the time;</p></li>
<li><p>Just because professors and administrators and others chat you up, and there is a band playing into the night with wild dancing, does not mean it will be like that every day for 4 years.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>The problem with trying to make any decision on the basis of a sample is that, as Byerly points out, the sample may not be representative. </p>
<p>That's why, in my view, you might want to avoid - or at least not limit yourself to - "admitted students' days" when you're doing the sampling, as they may be the least representative times of all.</p>