<p>Hello! I was accepted EA and I have a few questions about the Harvard life (I know this is kind of early!):</p>
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<li><p>I'm 90% sure I'm going to go to Harvard, but there's still 10% of me that is not sure. Should I wait until April 30, after I've visited all the schools I've been accepted to, to officially make my decision? Or should I just make my decision now? Are there any perks to making my decision now? I'm kind of worried that if I do not accept now and sign up for FOP for pre-orientation, there might not be enough space for me (I REALLY want to do FOP!). Should that even be a worry? Or is there no maximum capacity for FOP? (Also, will it allow me to sign up for on-campus jobs first?)</p></li>
<li><p>What percentage of the undergraduates would you say come from families whose incomes are below $50,000? I've heard that the majority of kids who go to Harvard are beyond rich, which makes me feel kind of uncomfortable.</p></li>
<li><p>Is there a casual cross-country running club at Harvard? </p></li>
<li><p>How often do Harvard students go to Boston? How often do Harvard students interact with students from other colleges? </p></li>
<li><p>What does the financial aid package entail? Does it entail prices of books and travel expenses to fly home over breaks?</p></li>
<li><p>How's Harvard's study abroad program in terms of financial aid? If you want to study abroad over the summer, does Harvard give you a scholarship for that or do you have to pay for it yourself? What about over winter break? Or during the school year? Also, would it be possible to graduate in 5 years (four years at Harvard and use the last year to study abroad)? Or would that not be ok? </p></li>
<li><p>Is there anything you would recommend doing over summer before Harvard? (Traveling is out of the question because it's too expensive -- I applied for a local job but I haven't heard back yet. I might apply for an internship)</p></li>
<li><p>How long did it take you to make real friends at Harvard? </p></li>
<li><p>Is there anything you wish you'd known before going to Harvard?</p></li>
<li><p>I'm not sure what I want to do in life. I'm thinking maybe psychology or computer science or writing. With that said, I'm not sure if I'm going to go to graduate school or if I want to after undergrad. Would it be a good idea then to take the hard over easy classes at Harvard (example: skip intro philosophy classes and jump into harder ones) and care more about learning the material and learning as much as I can, rather than care about my GPA so I can get into a good school after undergrad?</p></li>
<li><p>[For Computer Science people] So I know C programming and basic computer science stuff, but I heard that CS50 is the quintessential CS class at Harvard and that I will be missing out if I don't take that class. Would you recommend skipping CS50 for a freshman fall class or will I regret that? (If I did skip CS50, would i be able to participate in their Hackathons and get the cool CS50 shirt and all that?)</p></li>
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<p>Question 2: More than 60% of Harvard students are on some form of Financial Aid, so it’s safe to assume that 40% of Harvard students are from families able to afford paying the full fare. So, the reality is the majority of kids ARE NOT from rich families.</p>
<p>Question 4: This will vary; some students get into Boston once a week, others once a month, and others once a semester. Many Harvard students are very involved with their on-campus extracurricular activities – and between those activities, classroom work, and possibly work-work, there isn’t that much time to get into the city of Boston. </p>
<p>Question 6: Harvard college is home to approximately 7,200 undergraduates and at any given time about 350 to 400 of them are studying abroad. The take away being: relative to the overall campus population, not many students go abroad during the school year – and that doesn’t have anything to do with financial aid. See: [Study</a> Abroad: GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP STARTS HERE…AND THERE](<a href=“http://www.fao.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k51861&pageid=icb.page246750]Study”>http://www.fao.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k51861&pageid=icb.page246750). Harvard students only get 8 semesters of financial aid, so if you opt to graduate in 5 years, 2 of those semesters will be without aid, or you will have to petition the committee on FA why they should grant you additional aid.</p>
<p>Question 7: Relax and have fun!</p>
<p>Question 8: Between 5 minutes, four years and a lifetime!</p>
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<li><p>I would wait to visit all of the schools you’re seriously considering. Especially if you haven’t been around the Harvard campus yet. Its very distinctive if you aren’t used to the city.</p></li>
<li><p>Supposedly the percentage is quite high, but frankly I feel like I’ve never met anyone. Its not really something people talk about. More than anything else one gets the vibe of upper middle class. Coming from a family that makes well under 50K, I have definitely felt uncomfortable every once in awhile, especially given that some of them really put their paternalistic attitudes on display. I wouldn’t let it deter you though.</p></li>
<li><p>I don’t know if there is a specific club, but there’s a big community of runners (from Harvard and Cambridge) and a weekly cambridge race I believe. </p></li>
<li><p>It varies immensely on the student. </p></li>
<li><p>Full financial aid won’t cover books or break travel. It does however include a winter coat fund, and free student event tickets. There is free scanning in the libraries, and there is almost always a way of getting by without buying books.</p></li>
<li><p>Harvard covers full study abroad if you’re on full financial aid. They will cover up to the full financial aid package of Harvard + 5000. You can’t graduate in five years, but you can graduate in four years spending 3 at Harvard and one abroad (I’m doing that myself, am abroad now)</p></li>
<li><p>I’d spend it relaxing. Summers get stressful once college starts.</p></li>
<li><p>I was lucky enough to get a great bunch of roommates and we were friends almost instantly. There will be lots of opportunities to meet people in the first semester. </p></li>
<li><p>I’d have to think about that for awhile. </p></li>
<li><p>A lot of academic disciplines have very particular writing styles which the introductory classes are meant to teach you, so I wouldn’t skip them. The important thing to keep in mind is to make sure you don’t get too over your head with classes. Speaking as a philosophy concentrator, its easy to take a seminar that you don’t have the historical background to appreciate the content of. One smart strategy is to send the professor a brief email asking what background they think is required to get the most out of their class.</p></li>
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<p>Congratulations! I’m a Harvard senior procrastinating writing a paper, so I’ll answer some of your questions.</p>
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<p>When I applied there wasn’t any EA, so I don’t know how that has affected the filling up of pre-orientation program slots. But I can tell you that where you go to college is about a gajillion times more important than whether or not you do FOP, so I say wait until your 90% becomes 100%.</p>
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<p>This is a good article in the Crimson for your question:</p>
<p>The writer says: “If we do assume that almost all students from families making less than $200,000 annually applied for financial aid, we come to the stunning conclusion that approximately 45.6 percent of Harvard undergraduates come from families with incomes above $200,000, placing them in the top 3.8 percent of American households. Even more shockingly, only about 4 percent of Harvard undergraduates come from the bottom quintile of U.S. incomes and a mere 17.8 percent come from the bottom three quintiles of U.S. incomes.”
(my emphasis added)</p>
<p>I come from a family making well below 60k a year. It’s not very common. But I do not feel as though my family background has been an obstacle to my success as a student here. Financial aid isn’t a total equalizer but it comes pretty close. The financial aid program office was exceedingly helpful in allowing me to study abroad, and they’ve provided me with nice things like computer loans.</p>
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<p>I’ve met very few students who go into Boston frequently. Boston is great to have nearby if you want a change of pace, but most students are simply too busy on campus to do much outside of it. I’ve only really gone into Boston for Red Sox games, bars after I turned 21, and dates. Then again, I grew up in the Boston area so I’m quite used to it. Your mileage may vary.</p>
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<p>Depends on individual circumstances. Even for families under the 60k threshold, not all “full rides” are created equal. For example, students from the lowest income families can get their student health insurance premiums subsidized, while others can’t.</p>
<p>I’ve found the way that the financial aid office tabulates their data to be very confusing and counter-intuitive, but basically yes, Harvard covers “personal expenses” in its aid award. But part of its aid award assumes a student contribution from a summer and term-time job. So if you don’t have such a job, you’ll owe Harvard money rather than the other way around. </p>
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<p>You can get your financial aid to carry over for semester study abroad, but not for summers. For summers you can take out low-interest loans (almost identical to Perkins loans) that you pay back after graduation. But it’s often quite easy to get non-financial aid funding for summers abroad, such as from the David Rockefeller Grant. During my sophomore summer I had a budget of 7k, for which I received a grant for 6k and took out a financial aid loan for 1k.</p>
<p>I don’t know the details about studying for more than 4 years, but I’m fairly certain you wouldn’t get it covered by financial aid. You also can’t take a bonus 5th year abroad, aid or not. Once you take 4 years of Harvard classes, you get a diploma and you’re no longer at Harvard.</p>
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<p>My first close friends were my freshman year roommates. Some people made enduring friends as early as their pre-orientation programs. </p>
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<p>Take advantage of every opportunity you can. There is no hand-holding. You can graduate in 4 years and do the absolute minimum and no one will stop you. I only fully internalized this around my junior year, I think, and so I didn’t really use my first two years to their potential.</p>
<p>This goes double for you since you come from a low-income background. Not to undermine the achievements of Harvard students, most of whom are brilliant and talented, but it’s not always about individual achievement. A lot of them are either well-connected or have been raised to know how to make good connections. I don’t mean to make guesses about your background, but often low-income students don’t have those connections or haven’t cultivated those skills. You’ve been high achieving enough to get this far, but it’s not over yet. It’s just the beginning.</p>
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<p>I would never take a class just because it’s easy, but I also wouldn’t load my schedule up with 4 hard classes at a time. It’s good to find a balance, and there’s no shortage of classes that you’ll find fulfilling even though they’re on the easier side in terms of workload. Gen eds are often good for this because (usually) they’re easier than your concentration classes will be.</p>
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<p>CS50 has two “tracks”, i.e. they release the standard pset for beginners and the “Hacker Edition” for students with exposure to the material. There’s no harm in shooting an email to the CS50 staff and telling them about your background and asking them what they think you should do. Try going to cs50.net and looking at the Quizzes and Hacker Edition psets and seeing for yourself. I don’t think you get a shirt if you don’t take the class! :)</p>
<p>Hi (and congratulations)! Thought I’d give these a shot since they’re questions many of my friends and I faced just last year.</p>
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<li><p>As has already been mentioned, you should definitely wait. There are no perks to deciding now, and it’s nice to be able to lay out all your options on the table. I believe there is a cap on the number of students in FOP (and all the other pre-orientation programs) but your spot won’t depend on when you decide, so don’t let that rush you into a premature decision. (Sidenote about FOP: I really hope you get in if you decide to come; my roommate and several of my close friends did it and it was definitely one of their favorite experiences at Harvard and in general :))</p></li>
<li><p>Most people are actually not beyond rich, and those who are usually don’t flaunt it. I’ve very rarely found wealth to be a differentiator here: like gibby said, most students are on some form of financial aid.</p></li>
<li><p>Not entirely sure about a club (though there probably is - and even if there isn’t, you can get funding and start one yourself!), but there’s a pretty significant running culture/community at Harvard and in the Boston area.</p></li>
<li><p>This really just depends on the individual and how busy one’s semester is. People go to Boston anywhere from nearly every weekend to never, and interaction with other college students is similar. Often students from other schools will come to parties here and vice versa - I happen to have been to MIT quite a bit, but Boston is a college town so there’s a lot of inter-college interaction.</p></li>
<li><p>Financial aid covers some travel - they give a “standard allowance for travel expenses” - but not books; however books can be obtained pretty cheaply through Amazon, upperclassmen, or sometimes from the library.</p></li>
<li><p>This was answered thoroughly already: basically, Harvard gives really, really generous aid in pretty much all contexts, though it does have its limitations (only 8 semesters of aid, for instance). You can, however, petition for more, if I remember correctly.</p></li>
<li><p>Definitely relax! Spend time with your friends, take local road trips, read all the books you’ve been meaning to read (believe me, as much as you try to convince yourself you will, you won’t have time in college). Get a job or internship you enjoy; if you think it’ll be tedious just don’t bother. This is a summer to have fun and recharge before the whirlwind that is college.</p></li>
<li><p>I was lucky and have absolutely incredible suitemates with whom I’m very close; I met my other blockmates very early on (during the first couple of weeks). There are tons of opportunities to meet people at Harvard, from pre-orientation programs to all the bonding activities during freshman week to classes and extracurriculars. At the beginning of the year in particular it’s perfectly acceptable to sit down with someone random in the dining hall and start up a conversation, though that does become awkward a few weeks in. Still, it’s important to remember that everyone is in the same boat and trying to make friends, etc., so don’t worry about it!</p></li>
<li><p>Nothing in particular comes to mind except the standard “study habits independence blah blah blah” that would apply to any college. I suppose one thing might be that I underestimated just how many opportunities there are here, how many classes sound interesting, how many activities I want to participate in, how many people I want to meet. Understanding and coming to terms with the fact that it’s completely impossible to take advantage of everything Harvard has to offer would have been nice; in many ways I’m still having trouble coming to terms with it now.</p></li>
<li><p>Ideally you’d find a happy medium, but I’d say err on the side of getting the most out of your time here. GPA is important - though, I think, less so than many say - but at the end of the day you only have four years, and taking all “easy A” classes would be a real waste. Still, intro courses are important from a number of standpoints, so I definitely wouldn’t skip them entirely.</p></li>
<li><p>I took CS 50 and was actually disappointed. There’s a lot of hype around the class that I didn’t really buy into, which I think detracted a lot from my experience. That being said, I don’t regret taking it for that very reason: it is a “quintessential” Harvard class and helped me decide whether or not I wanted to pursue CS, which was valuable in and of itself. I would shop it (another great thing about Harvard) and decide from there, though know that the class lures you in with promises of cake and happiness and then reveals its true self conveniently after add-drop period ends.</p></li>
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<p>I hope that was helpful! Once again congratulations, and though I know you’ll have a fantastic experience wherever you go I do hope you ultimately choose Harvard it would be wonderful to have you here in the fall.</p>
<p>I think most of this has been covered already, but some sort of casual running club was postering up a storm the first couple weeks of the semester, so they still exist and are looking for members. (Sometimes it’s hard to tell from websites, and I haven’t checked theirs to see if it looks updated or not.)</p>
<p>I was unusual, but I didn’t make my friends here until late, late. As you see from the other posters on this thread, most people find good friends early and/or click forever with their freshman roommates. (I do like mine, but not bffls.) But if you find yourself still a little adrift in October, never fear, there is hope! </p>
<p>As of now, I have two main groups of friends, one of which I live with (sort of–my house has single rooms) and one of which I don’t. I became friends with the first one of any of these people only late in freshman March, which was too late to room. I only made my House friend group last spring, but really, more this year. I had plenty of friends before that, including my freshman roommates, but even if it takes you a while (and I was a definite outlier), it can happen! So I hope you do get on with your freshman roommates wherever you go to college, but in the unfortunate and unlikely event that you should hate them, I hope my story provides a counterpoint of hope.</p>
<p>I want to reiterate something DwightEisenhower said. My kid is in her junior year and she receives Harvard’s most generous financial aid package. I am a single mother and earn quite below the famous 60,000 a year. This includes health insurance and random perks, like discounted tickets. She has never felt left out of things because of money. However, there is a subtle difference (or not so subtle) between the students level of confidence, I notice. She’s just not as sure of herself as some of her wealthier friends. We were so happy she got into Harvard and are so very grateful for their generous financial aid, but I wish I could give her the steady confidence in her future some of her friends seem to have. She’s made great friends across the economic spectrum, by the way. No one seems to care, but I do see a difference in the attitudes. I would advise to remember who you are and how you got there and take advantage of all there is! Dwight, congratulations on your senior year! I’ve read your posts over the years and I wish you well!</p>
<p>This thread is really interesting. Just a question concerning integration when you come from a low income background : have you ever witnessed situations at Harvard or any top schools where students were put aside because of their (very) limited financial resources ? I mean, for example, unable to take part to social events, more or less major, or is Harvard financial aid sufficient to overcome this gap (while I’ve understand it is limited but until where does it go ?)</p>
<p>Not really. I’ve met very, very few Harvard students inclined to “flaunt their backgrounds.” I can really only think of this happening if your roommates all want to take a spring break trip overseas and you may not have the cash for it. But it’s not like most students expect their roommates to fly to Australia for a weekend. So it’s not outside of the realm of possibility for a student to save up for a once-per-semester trip to New Orleans or something like that. Just because Harvard students may be wealthier than their peers nationwide doesn’t mean they’re all heirs to billions; they don’t spend extravagantly in everyone’s faces. </p>
<p>The only time I’ve really been conscious of wealth differences in the day-to-day is having to do a term-time job. I work 14 hours a week and there are many students who don’t have to do that. 14 hours is probably even excessive for me, but I get to do homework at my job most of the time so it’s manageable.</p>
<p>^Well said. I’d add that - at least in my experience - some students from slightly better-off backgrounds elect to get a term-time job to cover everyday expenses/to have their own spending money, so that isn’t always an indicator of wealth or lack thereof either. I happen to work to cover part of my financial aid, but I have several better-off friends who also have jobs (the point being that outside of close friends, no one knows who has a job for financial aid reasons and who has one just to make some extra money on the side).</p>
it would be wonderful to have you here in the fall.</p>
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