<p>who cares about what other peoples opinions are when it comes to which school to attend or if they themselves would go back? Only you can know whats the right place for you and that has nothing to do with what percent of past students would go back. And a degree from Yale= a degree from Harvard. A top school is a top school. Also, im sure most Harvard students feel no need to respond because they don't really care why one guy chose to not come to their awesome school.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Perhaps a lot of Harvard students prefer not wasting their time on this site and have better things to do.
[/quote]
Wow, you basically made a post that summed up exactly what eating food was talking about.</p>
<p>Nothing to do with being elitist. I know very few college students anywhere who spend much time on this site. Its primarily for high school students looking for college information or parents surfing this particularly in the parents forum.</p>
<p>thats not being elitist. thats the truth. Why would anyone care about why some guy found Yale to be a better school for him? im sure he's right, for him. not anyone else.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Perhaps a lot of Harvard students prefer not wasting their time on this site and have better things to do.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>N. Greg Mankiw.</p>
<p>I don't know enough about Harvard and Yale TODAY to comment fairly. It all seems pretty silly to me. </p>
<p>I went to Harvard and had a good experience. Several of my friends went to Yale and had good experiences. I went to good parties at Yale, and I went to good parties at Harvard. I saw some terrible rooms at Harvard and I saw some terrible rooms at Yale (those pie shaped ones at Morse) described in Wikipedia as "two rooms which have eleven walls, none of which is long enough to put the bed against and still be able to open the door". Mostly I preferred Cambridge, Harvard Square Boston and lazy afternoons sunbathing on the Charles River to the offerings of New Haven. Many of the supposed downsides of Harvard (Finals Clubs) had no impact on me at all. I think I knew one person in a finals club during my entire four years. </p>
<p>Visit both and decide for yourself which you like better. Or choose someplace else entirely - that's what my son did.</p>
<p>Wow, I go to Harvard and had to register just to respond to this post. This is one of the most inaccurate and immature things I've ever read. How can someone who's never been a Harvard student for a day in his life expect to know anything about how it really is to go here? I am happy to attend Harvard, I am not in constant academic competition with my friends, most of whom aren't even in classes with me, there are plenty of fun things to do in Boston and Harvard Sq. (how about New Haven??), how can you brag that Yale doesn't have RA's and harvard does when 1) we don't have RA's and 2) almost ALL universities have RAs, I don't know anyone seeing a psychiatrist, Harvard beat Yale again at the H-Y game this year... It's impossible to refute all of the misconceptions presented in this post about Harvard. I think Yale should be embarrassed to be represented by a student like this.</p>
<p>eating food - i don't think i'm being sarcastic... but most of the students here lurked on CC during high school and now have much better things to do. To me that's evidence enough in favor of our school. I feel that Harvard has its share of flaws, but that only an insider would really understand what they are and what they are not, not an ignorant yalie who had no understanding of harvard when he wrote his rant. People always have high expectations for Harvard and it is difficult for the school to live up to them.</p>
<p>love ya ochrasy <3</p>
<p>This is interesting too:</p>
<p>I've been observing this thread for a while, and just wanted to pipe up and say I'm a recent Harvard grad who absolutely loved my experience there. It had both positive and negative aspects, but I wouldn't change a minute of it. </p>
<p>I'm not going to refute the extremely long original post point-by-point, but am happy to answer any genuine questions people have. It's really disappointing to see how many posters are eager to believe the worst about Harvard based on the opinions of someone who never attended, even when there are plenty of actual students and alums on this board who have said plenty of good things about the school.</p>
<p>caramelkisses06: thanks for offering your help! I'm genuinely interesting to know what your take on everything is. I have a few questions:</p>
<p>1) What are the things you would change about Harvard?</p>
<p>2) What did you love about it?</p>
<p>3) Whats your opinion on the notion that Harvard provides a "weak undergraduate experience"?</p>
<p>eating food, </p>
<p>Some things I'd change:</p>
<ul>
<li>The weather, first and foremost. It was unpleasant, to say the least.</li>
<li>I was an English concentrator, and the two semesters of Major British Writers reeeeally irritated me. Most likely because I didn't enjoy that type of literature, and there was so much crammed in that I just memorized enough to regurgitate it for the exams, then move on. (The English dept. is getting rid of this requirement, so perhaps I'm not the only one who thought it was lame.)</li>
<li>Some of the discussion sections (gatherings of 12 to 18ish students, headed by a TF, to discuss the material for larger lecture courses) seemed like an epic waste of time. In many cases, no one wanted to be there, and nothing interesting came from the discussions because almost no one did the reading, and just wanted to say enough to get their participation grade for the week. This wasn't the case with all sections though, so I'm not saying to abolish them entirely. It just would've been nice if, for the courses that had awful sections, professors would've thought up another way to ensure that we engaged with the material apart from studying for exams. Then again, a way to improve sections might also be if my classmates and I actually did the reading (lol) and were prepared to have interesting discussions about it ... but we generally had better things to do. Which brings me to ....</li>
</ul>
<p>What I loved about it:
- Extracurricular life there was buzzing. If there was anything you ever wanted to do, or try, it was there for you. And if it wasn't available, people had no compunction about creating groups and activities on their own, with help from the resources (financial and otherwise) that the College doled out freely. Everyone was involved in multiple things, and usually very deeply involved in one or two. People's extracurricular interests made for interesting conversation, and provided information/entertainment/discussion/art/whatever to the rest of the campus at large.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The people! I made wonderful friends there that I'm sure I'll keep for a lifetime, and met a whole host of accomplished and quirky characters that couldn't be found anywhere else. </p></li>
<li><p>House life. I lived in Dunster, and I loved it to pieces. My house was the center of my life to an extent: I slept there, ate there, socialized with roommates and friends there, and even studied there! After dining hours, the dining hall became as much of a study hub as any library, but much more low-key, with more chatting, snacking, Youtubing, etc. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>On the subject of a "weak undergraduate experience," I'm never sure exactly what people mean when they say that. But if you want to learn at Harvard, you'll learn. If you want to interact with world-class professors in a meaningful way, their doors are - quite literally - open. There are an abundance of small classes to take, and I had many amazing professors who not only taught me about literature (or whatever else) but took the time to give meaningful feedback on my work, and made me a better writer and thinker. If anyone graduates from the school feeling like they received no attention from professors, or never having taken a class that wasn't a huge lecture, or just somehow feeling they didn't learn anything ... it's not because Harvard doesn't care about it's undergraduates, it's more likely that the student was just doing it wrong. </p>
<p>Does that answer your questions?</p>
<p>caramelkisses06, thanks for the post.</p>
<p>Except for the STUDENT FREEDOM section there was nothing remotely useful in that post. What a waste of 10 minutes.</p>
<p>@ caramelkisses06 : How much student-professor interaction is there at Harvard? From what I've read here it seems as though people on this forum view Harvard professors (for undergraduate) as very cold and indifferent about their undergrad classes. However, I am not entirely sure if that is true or not. I am a high school junior right now and I have been on the fence about Harvard. It is a great institution, but I do not want to end up in a situation where most of my classes would be taught by TAs or disinterested professors.</p>
<p>Correct me if I'm wrong, but I really doubt that the student body varies that much between the two schools. It seems that top students apply to the majority, if not all, of the Ivies, and then go to the one they get in. Many kids don't get accepted to more than one. But in cases where a kid is lucky enough to get in both Y and H, since their academic reputations are nearly identical, I would guess the decision is probably based on very personal reasons that only the individual can assess. One might be closer to home, or have more kids from their high school attending, or have stores they like nearby, etc. Many of these reasons would be irrelevant to everyone else. For example, D visited both and liked both a lot. But she's an athlete and Y's team had not had good performances in recent years and the coach was extremely dispassionate. Also, H's facilities are newer and nicer. No one else would care about those factors, and they do not make H the better school overall. Just maybe better for her.</p>
<p>To answer your questions, cicero_oratore:</p>
<p>There is as much student-professor interaction as the students choose to participate in. Professors are not cold or aloof, I personally can't remember ever having a single professor that didn't hold regular office hours and encourage - in some cases practically BEG - students to come to them. In those office hours, students are more than welcome to come in and chat about the course material, get help with ideas for papers, and, with some professors, just talk about academia and their interests in general. Beyond these office hours, I know the English department had frequent (something like monthly or weekly) Readings in the Parlor, when students came into the department offices for tea, cookies, etc. and to hear professors and other authors read literature and discuss it with them. I can imagine other concentrations had their own regular events like this as well.</p>
<p>In addition, each semester, every single house has a student-faculty dinner, a night when students can (individually or in groups) invite a professor to come eat with them in the dining hall. It's a sit-down, plated dinner (not like the d-hall's usual buffet style), but costs the students and professors nothing. From all I've ever heard and seen in passing (I never went to one myself) the dinners are always packed, and professors are thrilled to accept students' invitations.</p>
<p>Apart from these regular events, there are countless one-time panel discussions with faculty members held by student groups and other university departments. Also, in several of the student groups I both participated in and heard about, students would invite faculty members to their meetings and they were generally happy to attend. </p>
<p>In response to the concern about classes being "taught by TAs" - there is no such thing as a course taught by a TA! In very large courses, professors will lecture - and the lecture is where you generally <em>learn</em> the material - and students meet in smaller groups ("sections") led by TFs (teaching fellows, the name for TAs at Harvard) at another point in the week. In sections, you're mostly reviewing or discussing material that was taught in lecture. Also, in many cases, professors take questions from students during the lectures, so there's actual interaction and discussion happening, not always just passive absorption. </p>
<p>In classes that aren't large lectures, there is of course much more personal with professors. No one ever seems to pay attention when this is said, but THE OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF COURSES ARE SMALL!!! A direct quote from the admissions website: "Of the 1,430 courses offered last fall, 1,109 of them enrolled 20 or fewer students."</p>
<p>So, as I've said before, if someone comes out of Harvard feeling as if they never interacted with their professors, then it's because they didn't take advantage of the abundance of opportunities to do so. It's not because the professors were unavailable.</p>
<p>Stop arguing everyone. We all know that Stanford is better than both Harvard and Yale...</p>
<p>I thought the thread was very informative and corroborates some other things I've heard about the Harvard vs Yale thing. As a prospective student I like hearing all viewpoints. And since very few on this thread has said anything to refute or counterbalance these opinions, let alone bring up many of the positives about Yale, I am led to believe that they are more true than some would like them to.</p>
<p>My impression has been that while people LOVE and RAVE about Yale, people at Harvard are just like "I had a good, time, it's a good school, just like any other". Whether or not the Harvard point of view is more correct or down to earth, I would rather leave, from what I've heard, feeling the way Yalies feel.</p>
<p>My S's experience this past semester. One class of one (independent reading); one class of two (another independent reading); one class of twenty (wonderfully amusing prof); one class of 200 (awesome, prize-winning prof). His favorite? the 200-person class. But the one-person class is "taught" by a prof who's invited my S to his home for dinner and has given him tons of advice, written recs for him, and so on.
On the social side, he's gone out regularly with members of his blocking group to restaurants all over Cambridge and Boston, eats his meals most days with his roommates, is involved in a performing arts group that draws members from all over campus, and visited friends at nearby colleges.</p>