<p>Ok I’m going to take a stab at some of your questions, from the perspectives of a Humanities junior. </p>
<p>¶ Professors are accessible to undergraduates, for the most part. It will depend more on you going to office hours and you putting yourself out there; which people (myself included) do a lot less than they intended. As regards to research, I’m sorry, I don’t know. I do think professors pay attention to undergraduate students, especially since most (of my) classes are just undergraduates. I did have one weird set-up where a for-undergraduate class that didn’t have a subject equivalent for grads became majority graduates pursuing MAs or PhDs in the field. So what should have been a general, undergraduate introduction became a more discussion based class with way more previous knowledge. It would have raised the quality of the level of the class if these had been dedicated graduate students who did the reading and assignments (instead of relying on previous knowledge). Weird. </p>
<p>¶ Prestigious scholarships. Harvard (or is it the scholarship itself?) has a minimum GPA requirement for Marshall/Rhodes (3.7), so that’s all on you. Then you have to be endorsed by the school, and I’d imagine that’s competitive amongst the school population, but I would guess that a Harvard endorsement (you will get help from the House administrators) will put you well on the way. One plus of Harvard is the great post-graduate fellowships (especially for UK Oxbridge graduate schools) that are not instantly recognizable by name but are still great experiences. Anecdotally, Harvard has a pretty low Fulbright population for its size/quality of students. </p>
<p>¶ Funding is DEFINITELY available for summers & language study. There’s a Rockefeller scholarship . I actually got a summer language study course funded completely by the area’s funding budget leftovers (people who received funding then cancelled their plans). Harvard pressures its students to enroll in Harvard Summer School programs above other schools’ summer programs, and, I would say, above semester experiences. However, I would counsel you to think of language study beyond some weeks in the summer; study abroad over a semester or year opens you up more, is a more transformative experience, and I wish that culture could be inculcated more at Harvard.</p>
<p>¶ Community. Yeelch. There is and there isn’t, but really, it wouldn’t be one of Harvard’s best qualities. </p>
<p>¶ A (small) number of students I know have gotten involved in internships, volunteering, or working outside of Cambridge. I really don’t know how they have the time or energy. The best way to describe Harvard’s extra curricular culture is, well, rabid. These activities typically take up all the extra (and even social or personal) time of Harvard students. As far as students from other colleges, I don’t think people generally meet students of other colleges, but they might maintain previously existing friendships across Boston.</p>
<p>¶ Harvard is nowhere near as competitive as it might be portrayed. The studying/learning is more collaborative with problem set classes; most people get groups together for their empirical classes, though I’ve also studied for exams in groups (in a perfectly ethical way) for humanities classes. One of my favorite examples of students helping students was my freshman year. One other student and I were working on our calculus homework together, but this night we just weren’t getting anywhere. So about 2h30 am, we logged on to facebook to see who else was awake, and one of the students also online lived in the same dorm and was in the same class. He came down to teach us the material for over an hour, fully explaining it. That was absolutely wonderful. </p>
<p>Favorite things about Harvard:
-Intellectual enthusiasm of my fellow students. One of our favorite traditions is shopping week, when students can go to classes to check them out and see if it’s something they find appealing. Classes during shopping week are always super crowded. The number of students I know who just go to classes to check them out, thought they know they can’t enroll in that course, just warms my heart.<br>
-My classes. This might be because I have a rather loose concentration that lets me shape my own intellectual journey.
-The library system. It is awesome and I am always discovering new things to appreciate. I really hope this doesn’t change; President Faust’s approach to running the university is sometimes controversial and often against my own ideas about the role of the university in the world. Though might I just say that as a historian she is incredible; This Republic of Suffering is my favorite Civil War history ever.
Least favorite things about Harvard:
- Sorority culture is big. Final clubs get a lot of ink, but I think it’s perfectly socially acceptable for a man to not be in a final club and to still have an active social life. Sororities are so big that I think it’s sometimes weird for those of us who aren’t in sororities. Definitely something I hadn’t expected before going to college.
- Lack of female professors. In my sophomore year, I had seven professors and six of them were male. If we discount my math and biology classes, not that we should automatically expect male dominance in those fields, but just to underscore this point, I still had four male and one female professors in my humanities & social sciences classes. What’s up with that?!
- The administrative bureaucracy. Probably a characteristic of the American university system, but it’s weird at Harvard. My experience, for what it’s worth, is that there is a preponderance of administrators but a cloud surrounding what they do and how they can help you. It’s frustrating and I suspect, though I hope not, that it keeps people from exploring some of the non-traditionally academic opportunities.</p>