<p>I'd really like to hear from people who have close experience or specific knowledge of students' experiences. I'm wondering because from my observation H students seem to have more work and less time for fun. Also the H grads we employ seem somewhat socially aloof and all about the work. Thank you.</p>
<p>@myyalieboy I don’t see how you could tell. What discipline do you hire from (as in what degree do most of the people you hire hold), because I suppose you could go do things like find course websites and compare. I know that Harvard and Princeton have some extraordinarily tough science and math courses (my interest), but so does Yale (however, from what I’ve seen, Harvard and Princeton seem slightly tougher, but even that is department/instructor dependent). It may also reflect the students each admits. Harvard may, for example have more students opting to take advanced/higher level freshman offerings in a discipline so they may be the types that enjoy more academic rigor. I also believe that Yale has a higher grade inflation than Harvard and Princeton (both have significantly higher inflation than Princeton) so that may have an influence. This is just really hard to tell, because the students are the same caliber, but may just have different personalities and that can influence the types of courses they take. As in, it may not be the overall academic rigor of the school so much as the level of rigor that students choose to engage because at almost all top privates, it is relatively easy to dodge unusual levels of rigor especially if outside of STEM. Admittedly, places like Duke, Chicago, Yale, and Harvard are also known for tough economics departments (which is a social science). </p>
<p>*finally, I shouldn’t really engage this conversation because you may be trying to induce a flame war of some kind as suggested by you referring to H grads as somewhat “socially aloof” as if the ones you hire or know reflect most H grads. In addition, you also assume that schools with higher than normal rigor cannot churn out socially adept students. Many top universities in Europe are extremely rigorous (Places like “Oxbridge”, Imperial College London, and many others are likely more academically rigorous than many very top schools in the US) and yet I don’t imagine their graduates being describe as “socially aloof”.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine anybody who actually had to choose between Harvard and Yale choosing on this basis. Somebody might choose based on the quality of a particular department.</p>
<p>Having one child at Harvard and one at Yale, I can attest that the workload is the same. My son at Yale works just as hard as my daughter at Harvard and vice-versa. It’s true that each school does has a different academic schedule – In the fall, Yale’s starts their school year about a week earlier than Harvard, so Yale’s administration can give students the week of Thanksgiving off. In the Spring semester, Yale starts back up two weeks earlier than Harvard, which allows for a two-week Spring break, rather than the one week that Harvard has – but students at both schools spend the same amount of time in the classroom and are equally stressed with a demanding schedule.</p>
<p>FWIW: Harvard requires 32 credits to graduate (4 courses per semester times 8 semesters). Yale requires 36 credits to graduate, which most students accomplish by taking 4 courses for freshman and sophomore years, and 5 courses for junior and senior years. So, the stress is a bit different at each school, but still the same intensity. </p>
<p>There is more variation from class to class within each school, much more, than there is from ‘like’ classes between the two schools.</p>
<p>Additionally, student effort to a great extent will dictate the amount of work required. It is not very difficult to escape either school without pushing yourself too hard. Like anywhere, you get out what you put in.</p>
<p>There’s literally no way to measure this. At each school the academic rigor you experience is so dependent on your course load that there’s no way to generalize. If you asked about a specific discipline more concrete (but still pretty generic) answers could be given.</p>
<p>Thank you. I was not trying to start a war. I have a son at Y and a daughter looking into H. Just want both to be happy. There is a common belief that Y grads love their school and that that is less true at H. I was wondering whether rigor could be part of the reason.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The reason for that belief has nothing to do with rigor, but with differing administrative philosophies that have created campuses with distinct “social tones.”</p>
<p>The “social tone” of a college results from decisions, large and small, made by the administration on issues such as physical space and its use, housing, how freshman are welcomed and integrated into campus life, what role upperclass students play as advisors and mentors, what role graduate students play, how readily faculty members volunteer to host events or trips, etc.</p>
<p>Yale’s administration goes out of their way to create a vibrant campus environment that fosters hard work, unity and FUN. For example, Yale’s administration, has arranged move-in day so that upperclass students move onto campus first and HELP freshman lug stuff up to their dorm rooms. That creates a “big-sib, little sib” feel to the campus from day-one. Harvard does just the opposite, so freshman and upperclass students have little interaction or connection.</p>
<p>Harvard’s administration strongly believes that students are on campus to work and their job isn’t to supply the fun – Harry Lewis, who was Dean of Harvard College ten years ago, actually said something to that effect during his tenure. So, Harvard’s administration – and the decisions they make – come across as cold and uncaring. Whereas, Yale’s administration acknowledges that students are in college to work and to have fun. IMHO, Harvard’s “social tone” would be much improved if the school were run by Yale’s administration, or at the very least, Harvard adopted a more student-centric approach to campus life.</p>
<p>Several years ago, before her untimely death, Marina Keegan wrote a wonderful piece called "The Opposite of Loneliness”: <a href=“KEEGAN: The Opposite of Loneliness - Yale Daily News”>http://yaledailynews.com/crosscampus/2012/05/27/keegan-the-opposite-of-loneliness</a></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Most Yale students feel the same way as Marina Keegan – and much of the credit must go to Yale’s administration which fosters the kind of environment Marina writes about! Suffice it to say that no Harvard student ever has written a love-letter to their administration!</p>
<p>When I was on the Yale tour, someone asked the guide the difference between Yale and Harvard. Without missing a beat, she replied, “Students at Harvard are very proud of their school, but students here love Yale.”</p>
<p>When I was at Harvard, the video they showed bragged on how a student was using the same sink as FDR–and it did look that old. I did get the impression that the attitude was, “Hey, we’re Harvard. We don’t care.”</p>
<p>My kid was more attracted to the other Cambridge school, MIT, “This looks like a lot of fun.”</p>
<p>A kid we know was set on Brown, until she fell in love with Harvard on the tour, which she now happily attends. </p>
<p>There’s no accounting for taste. </p>
<p>
When my wife and son came back from the school visit, they remarked on that video.
I replied “That’s nothing! I can go to our kitchen sink right now and get at least one molecule that was once in Cleopatra’s pee.”</p>
<p>DS had texted Mom “could they be any more pretentious” a few minutes into the presentation. The FDR thing was the icing.</p>
<p>It seems that Harvard students have no problem with coming up with creative ways of having “fun”. Look at housing day for example. While it makes Harvard less fun centric to not have the administration rigorously assist in that aspect, it does make room for some interesting traditions facilitate by the student body. </p>
<p>@Hunt: I think you’re right, but often at those schools, departmental rigor is also associated with quality. Surely people are familiar with physics, math, and maybe chemistry at Harvard, Chicago, and Princeton (I’m excluding technological schools) and it is unsurprising they draw extremely intense (not only brilliant, but very intense) students in those areas (seems like a significant amount of Math, Physics, etc. Olympiad winners end up at Harvard for example, taking math 55, physics 16) who end up taking extremely intense courses early on (I mean some of these courses even have a reputation not only among current students, but incoming ones). However, maybe they have no knowledge of these things and indeed Harvard could just be attracting at least slightly more quirky types (a couple of visits could likely make a person aware if they are a “fit” there).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I agree. Student’s at Harvard have plenty of fun – it’s just that Harvard’s administration doesn’t go out of their way to help supply the fun. So, student’s must come up with their own ways of having fun and unfortunately, with something like housing day, this results in the Administration becoming a policeman, rather than the event coordinator: <a href=“The Harvard Crimson”>http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/3/13/river-run--tradition-housing/</a></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Regarding workload, etc.</p>
<p>This observation is about 10 years old, and comes from one data point, but I will share it anyhow. I have a friend who did the Social Studies major at Harvard then went on to Yale for a PhD in one of the social science disciplines. At Yale he of course served as a TA in a number of undergraduate courses in his department.</p>
<p>His observation was that reading lists in the humanites and social sciences tended to be longer at Harvard, but no one really expected anyone to do all the reading. Part of the game was learning to skim, read selectively and strategically, integrate etc. - perhaps fairly similar to grad school.</p>
<p>At Yale he noticed that reading lists were shorter and more focused, but that profs were more likely to expect that students actually did it all and mastered it. He thought it was a little more like high school where instructions like “the midterm will include only pages 38-92 of this book and will not cover Chapter 7 of this or this or that”. He found it a little weird at first.</p>
<p>Anyhow, not sure how fair this view is, but it does come from one fairly experienced person.</p>
<p>BTW, he did love Yale and actually preferred the undergraduate atmosphere at Yale over Harvard’s. He thought students were bright, kind, and less angst ridden.</p>
<p>Arboretum - The Yale advice seems consistent with what my son experiences and the Harvard advice is consistent with what I experienced there. Thanks everyone.</p>