<p>To everyone who was accepted: you made it to paradise. Last minute decisions as to which school you end up going to will change your life at this point. If you've gotten into the "top" colleges, some people may tell you, "you can't go wrong." That is false. </p>
<p>No matter what reason you come here for, no matter what you expect out of this place, you are in for the greatest treat of your life. Yes, I have a pile of work waiting for me as I write this. Yes, this place is amazing. This is not cognitive dissonance. This campus bleeds with joy, ambition, passion, intellect, music, genius, creativity. Welcome to the world.</p>
<p>But . . . but . . . but . . . this can’t be! You all are supposed to be miserable because Harvard is so ambivalent about its undergrads . . . :)</p>
<p>Honestly, my take as a parental observer and unabashed wannabe is that if your idea of paradise is the massive, throw-down, big-time party scene, you’d probably be more fulfilled elsewhere. But if your idea of a great time is having opportunities to go from one amazing student group experience to another, surrounded by incredible peers who do incredible things because they perceive no limits on what they can accomplish and they feed off one another’s energy, and if you’d love to have more of those opportunities than you can fit into 24 hours a day - then yes, H is the higher ed Disneyworld.</p>
<p>I was wondering–could you elaborate? I’m trying to decide between Harvard and Yale, and EVERYONE has been telling me that I “can’t go wrong”. What makes Harvard the better choice when “splitting hairs,” as everyone has been saying?</p>
<p>Almost all tutorials and seminars are taught by professors. In large lecture courses, teaching fellows will have small sections each week and will likely be the ones who grade your papers. The large lectures are not large by chance; there are no required lecture courses (unless you’re pre-med), and as a result large lectures are usually some of the best classes. There is also a “Q Guide” that comes with each course that has unfiltered comments and ratings on different aspects of the course. The report is semi-mandatory for all students to fill out the last week of classes (otherwise your grades are withheld an extra month), and is integrated with the course-search catalog. In addition to the ~ten days you have to shop for courses and the six or so weeks you have to add/drop, most students find classes with professors, syllabi, and coursework that work well for them. </p>
<p>@captivated, there are many aspects, for example: the integration with Cambridge, the influx of scholars, politicians, celebrities in every field coming to speak on campus in informal settings, the types of people you meet and the conversations you will have, the classes available including the thousands offered at the graduate schools, the amount of support you can get if you want to pursue anything, be it volunteering, starting a company, doing anthropological research in the country of your choice. There are many individual things that are excellent, but together they form an aura, an atmosphere that cannot be reproduced at other universities including Yale. Maybe other current students will be able to add more, unless you have more specific questions.</p>
<p>For the record, this is all true of Yale as well. So if any of these are going to sway you either way - just know that you’re no closer to getting beyond the “you can’t go wrong” truism.</p>
<p>rb3, I’d expect a Harvard student to come up with better reasons! </p>
<p>Seems like not only is all/most that true at Yale, but true at many universities that are not even Ivies. The uncensored course reviews are pretty awesome, though. Can’t really beat that.</p>