<p>By now, I've heard over and over again that Harvard is supposed to be this
great, amazing school. There's something about Harvard and its reputation
that makes people fawn over the education and prestige that come with it.
But after all these years of hearing about just how GREAT Harvard is, do I
really know much about the actual Harvard experience? </p>
<p>Not at all. I only know that Harvard ranks number 1 in almost every list of colleges
I've seen. But that doesn't tell me anything about the actual experience.</p>
<p>So I would like to ask current Harvard students to please share their experiences
at Harvard. Nobody seems to question the Harvard experience, since, of course, it's
Harvard and therefore flawless, right?</p>
<p>But really, please try not to leave out any flaws that you might see in the Harvard experience.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice.
I’m still interested in hearing about Harvard, and the Harvard experience alone. I would
like to read about student experiences and judge for myself whether something should be pro/con for a school.
I feel as though stats and information about OTHER schools (such as Yale or Princeton) wouldn’t tell me
much about Harvard. I want to know about Harvard because no one seems to question
the experience there. </p>
<p>I think it will be very interesting to see how current students respond.
What makes Harvard, Harvard? Are there any misconceptions? What should I as a
prospective student know before applying? Any regrets after choosing Harvard? + Student
opinion on dorm life, classes, faculty, and just LIFE at Harvard?</p>
<p>Comparative analysis useful because they allow you to identify what’s unique about Harvard. Surely I can talk about how Harvard has great and accomplished professors, but that is something you could get at 20+ other schools, let alone within the Ivy League. Harvard has ambitious and motivated students from which you learn much outside the classroom, but that’s not at all unique to Harvard.</p>
<p>I’m a current sophomore at Harvard so I can help. If you have any specific questions that would be helpful.</p>
<p>Common misconceptions? </p>
<ol>
<li><p>That going here is some instant ticket to success. I’m sure some percentage of students are jobless for a period after graduation, especially in this economy. </p></li>
<li><p>That Harvard students are in some “culture of wealth” that makes it difficult for poor kids to fit in. Harvard students are certainly more wealthy as a whole than a random polling sample of America, because wealth unfortunately seems to correlate with academic achievement in America, but wealth is not a subject of discussion by any means. You can go your whole freshman year without finding out if your roommates were formerly homeless or the offspring of billionaires…well maybe in the latter case you’d notice.</p></li>
<li><p>That professors are unapproachable and aloof. Yes, this is not a LAC. There are big lecture classes. However, big lecture classes also have weekly sections of ~12 people in which you can get a more personalized experience. All professors are required to hold weekly office hours and I’ve never met a professor hostile to meeting even the lowliest of new freshmen. I went on a Harvard-sponsored trip to a foreign country in March which was led by a professor. There were only 3 students on the trip (the rest were recent grads) so we got to know the professor really well. As it turns out, he’s a huge name in his field.</p></li>
<li><p>That everyone here is a genius/extrovert/overly-ambitious/future billionaire/aloof nerd etc. The point is that there is no “Harvard student” archetype. I don’t think there’s any one characteristic that ties them all together. Even ambition. I’ve met some pretty big slackers here who seem to not make good use of the opportunities around them.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>This isn’t a misconception but it’s a reality I learned which wasn’t necessarily advertised well in the admissions process: Harvard doesn’t hold your hand. You can get away in 4 years doing all of your assignments, getting a degree, and having absolutely nowhere to go afterward because you spent the rest of your time playing video games, you never got to know your professors, you never joined an EC, you never networked with people, you never found something you’re interested in. That’s entirely possible and probably a poor way to utilize Harvard’s resources. No Harvard official is going to email you sophomore year and say “hey, wake up!”. It’s up to you to find out what’s out there.</p>
<p>You don’t have to do all of the above. In fact, a lot of people spend way too much time in their ECs for my tastes. Many a student will tell you that they spend more time doing ECs than doing work, which I think is a horrible idea because while ECs are important in developing your interests and networking, you can help yourself a lot more by pumping that time into your GPA. Most employers will take the high GPA / no ECs over the crap GPA / EC president. Don’t quote me on that.</p>
<p>Hope that helps. PM me if you have any specific questions.</p>
<p>^Amen. I’d agree with everything except point 2. If you’re a low-income kid, (I’m talking sub-20), you can easily feel put-off by the ridiculous things that Harvard kids seem to take for granted. The population is (or pretends to be) overwhelmingly upper-middle class or upper class. Statistically, as well, income distribution at the school vs. America at large is quite different. I might be overly sensitive to class issues, but there are plenty of types who play up their wealth and connections for various reasons.</p>
<p>Maybe your experience was different from mine. I am a low income (under the federal poverty line) student and I’ve never felt out of place. I mean I don’t think I drop $7 on burritos for desert as much as a lot of people seem to do, but I’ve never had to politely turn down an invitation to yacht show-and-tell or something.</p>
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<p>Maybe, though it’s more for the stupid reason that there are less classes/professors in Middle Eastern history at Harvard than there are at Yale, where I was also accepted. I don’t think my overall experience would have been too different, and I’m happy enough with Harvard that I wouldn’t want to gamble on switching if I had the chance. Ask me again when I graduate.</p>
<p>Actually, just because Harvard is ranked number 1 doesn’t mean it will meet all of your expectations. This past summer, I met a Stanford alumnus who also went to Harvard. He told me he spent two years at Harvard but absolutely hated the experience there. I don’t remember the exact details, but it was more about the classroom experiences. Needless to say, he disliked being at Harvard so he transferred to Stanford.</p>
<p>Hey tunaroll! I’m a current Harvard student, and I’m happy to share a bit about my experience. Overall, I’m really thrilled with my first semester. I’ve made great friends, had some really interesting coursework (though this is certainly not true of all of it), and I’ve become involved in some activities that I’m really passionate about. Harvard’s location is wonderful – there really aren’t many places that maintain a distinctive campus feel in an urban setting. Some of the opportunities that I’ve taken advantage of are in the city of Boston – had I attended a rural or small-town school, I couldn’t be a part of them. I also really love that Harvard has more than enough money to ensure that all of its students can take advantage of the opportunities that it has to offer. I’m currently looking to study abroad, and I don’t fear that money is going to hold me back because Harvard has the funding to give me the money that I need. Speaking of study abroad, one negative (for me) was discovering that the majority of Harvard students don’t study abroad during the academic year and that Harvard generally encourages students to go abroad during the summer rather than a semester. Had I known this before, it may have affected my college decision. Another negative I have experienced is that some (a significant number) of the professors are pretty terrible at teaching. But, as DwightEisenhower said, this will not be different at any other research university. And though I’ve been frustrated by some poorly taught and disorganized courses, it really hasn’t affected my happiness here – I often feel that I am being more educated outside of the classroom, and that is absolutely okay with me. </p>
<p>Sometimes I wish that Harvard students had more original, diverse interests. Lots of people here want to go into business, medicine, or politics, and there’s of course nothing wrong with these fields, but I think that people here are really concerned with financial security and don’t consider all of the careers that are out there. An extremely high percentage (perhaps even a majority) of Harvard students end up becoming investment bankers, which I think is really a shame. We’re too talented a student body to have such a homogenous, arguably inconsequential influence on the world. </p>
<p>Given the choice, I would absolutely choose Harvard again. Despite the negatives, it has been a very pleasant and enriching experience. That said, I don’t think that everyone could be happy here. I know DwightEisenhower disagrees that there is a “Harvard type,” but I believe that the majority of Harvard students are go-getters – they’re really involved in extracurriculars, and they seek out opportunities for themselves. I know some people who have felt very overwhelmed by this fact. It takes a good deal of soul-searching to determine whether you can be happy in such an atmosphere – like Dwight said, no one is going to hold your hand here.</p>
<p>@eliana: I agree that it is a shame that more people don’t pursue different careers, but I wouldn’t blame the students, I would blame the job market. Lets admit, we all go to the top colleges to be financially secure. You can say all you want about discovering yourself and everything, but in the end, its about financial security and stability. It’s no wonder so many choose these popular careers, because they’re so much more safe than, lets say, a literature major or russian literature major. The demand for those extraneous majors in the job market are so low its embarassing.</p>
<p>it’s sad really, but the job market these days is losing the connection with the traditional “quest for knowledge” attitude of traditional education. more education is job-based now.</p>
<p>^ I completely disagree with “Lets admit, we all go to the top colleges to be financially secure.”</p>
<p>I am going to a top college to be challenged by my teachers and peers, something that would happen far less at a ‘lower’ school. One reason I want this education is that I see myself going into academia (a notoriously low paying profession).</p>
<p>As for too many people going into investment banking, politics, medicine, etc., I took a course on Russian literature last semester and most of the people in my section were history and literature majors. I know someone doing a joint concentration in music and archeology, and I have a friend who’s sure he wants to major in classics and another, Japanese. I think this goes back to what DwightEisenhower said about there’s no such thing as a typical Harvard student-----there are probably more people going into one of those popular pre-professional fields than optimal but if you’re looking for people of more diverse interests, you would have no problem finding them as well. The problem is that Harvard is such a big school that there is no way anyone can possibly know everyone else on campus, so my perception of the school is inevitably going to be colored by the very specific group of people whom I do happen to meet, as it would for everyone else.</p>
<p>Just to clarify, I am looking solely at post-college careers, not at majors. Though one could certainly make the case that Harvard students far too often major in pragmatic fields like economics, I only intended to speak to the careers that they choose after college. There are certainly plenty of students majoring in more obscure fields, yet most of them still go into the same tired, typically Harvard career tracks.</p>