<p>I was talking to a lot of people and they all say that while Harvard is a super awesome school, it is kinda snobby? And by kinda, I mean the most annoying stuck up snobs on the planet. I haven't been yet, so I don't know if it's true. So can anyone please tell me if this is true. Honestly. </p>
<p>Also, some people say the campus isn't so great. Again, be honest!!</p>
<p>A lot of people believe that Harvard is home to many “snobs”, but from what I’ve heard, (I haven’t actually been either) most people there are friendly. There will obviously be exceptions, but I can’t imagine any college not having a snob or two.</p>
<p>yeah, that’s true. i just dont want to go to a school where everyone is like completely stuck up and annoying about the fact that they go to harvard.</p>
<p>for example, when i visited yale and talked to people, that were clearly just as smart and motivated as the people at harvard would be, but they were really chill and down to earth about it. same at brown and columbia. we’ll see though… and i’ll be sure to keep you posted!</p>
<p>If you look hard enough I’m sure you can find every sort of person somewhere at Harvard, including a snob. But in my experience, snobs are no more common at Harvard than anywhere else. </p>
<p>I think a lot of Harvard’s negative reputation and stereotypes come from what OTHER people project onto Harvard kids and onto the school itself, based on centuries of being the oldest and most famous school in the country, rather than on any real characteristics the students actually have. </p>
<p>That’s particularly true about this comment: “…and annoying about the fact that they go to harvard.” The way one Harvard student put it to me: “It’s nice here on campus, because here <em>everybody</em> got into Harvard - which leaves us free to talk about other things.” In other words it’s <em>other people</em> who want keep obsessing about how they got into Harvard, not the Harvard kids themselves.</p>
<p>If I were to generalize about the typical Harvard kid based on knowing several dozen of them fairly well, I’d say they are very smart, VERY hard working, polite, very witty, well-read, and very devoted to their friends. But snobby? No, I haven’t met any snobs yet.</p>
<p>Check out the article in the flybyblog about the Hasty Pudding Club punches (neophytes) doing the assigned stunts to become members of this private club for a few select Harvard freshmen. Membership is determined before a student even sets foot on campus, based on prestige of their (New England) prep school, fame or wealth of parents, and legacy connections. </p>
<p>Membership in the Hasty Pudding then eases the path to Final Clubs. Exclusivity or snobbery? Perhaps a matter of semantics.</p>
<p>^^The Hasty Pudding Club is a minuscule part of Harvard. And other than inviting a celebrity to campus each year to give them an award, it plays no part in the life of the vast majority of Harvard students. </p>
<p>Except for being less secretive, Hasty Pudding might be comparable in that respect to the Skull and Bones Club at “chiil and down to earth” (post #3) Yale - for people from prominent backgrounds or with powerful connections and definitely snobby/exclusive. Or for that matter, Hasty Pudding not much snobbier or more exclusive than any number of snotty Greek houses at colleges all across the country, who seek to enroll only the “right people,” but at the same time do not have much or any impact on the life of most students or on the overall vibe of the campus.</p>
<p>I don’t know that much about Hasty Pudding or the final clubs at Harvard, but if “membership is determined before a student even sets foot on campus”, then it is not that comparable to Skull & Bones (or any similar Yale senior societies), whose members in my day at least were primarily selected on a merit basis, notwithstanding the presence of a few legacies like G.W. Bush. But mostly they were people like sports stars and captains, the Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Daily News, campus political leaders, the best singers or actors in a class, or someone who had pulled really inventive pranks. </p>
<p>I had two reasonably close friends in Bones and Scroll & Key. One was a middle-class suburban Catholic school kid from Chicagoland, with no connections whatsoever, and the other was a football recruit from a rural community in the Southwest who was really, really raw when he first came to college. (He’s a federal judge now, and not raw at all.)</p>
<p>That’s BS about membership in anything being determined before freshman year. Yes, HP members invite people they already know to membership events. They’re usually private-school alumni. But if they’re obnoxious to the senior members, they’re not going to get in. It’s a social club, nothing more or less; they’re picking people they want to party with. Anyway, we’re talking about, like, 50 people.</p>
<p>By the way, anyone who gets into the Pitches or Krokodiloes singing groups automatically gets membership in the HP Club. They take the best singers they can recruit, period. That’s hardly something that can be determined before you “set foot on campus.”</p>
<p>I went to Wake Forest in the Seventies and my two daughters are students at Harvard right now. I’ve been struck by how much more snobbery played a part in campus life at Wake than it does (from what I observe and what my Ds tell me) at Harvard. At Wake, being connected or rich or having a famous last name opened doors to the top Greek organizations which were the driving forces behind campus social life. At Harvard, HP and the final clubs are significant to those who are in them and are generally ignored by those who aren’t. Being a member of the royal family of a foreign nation is likely to get you “Oh, that’s nice.” Everyone at Harvard is so accomplished at something that they seem to do a much better job of checking their egos at the campus gates. Our family’s experience has been really refreshing in that regard, and the extent to which nearly all of our preconceived stereotypes of Harvard have been dispelled is eye-opening.</p>
<p>When D1 was entering, there was student chatter all over the CC Harvard boards about whether the current students knew or had met Rivers Cuomo. I was initially disappointed that everyone was so excited about one particular student who, I assumed, was related to the former Governor of New York. After all, kids of governors and senators shouldn’t be all that special at Harvard. Then, I came to be informed that Rivers Cuomo - no relation to Mario - is not a member of the NY political family, but is in fact a rock star. “All right!” I thought, “that’s more like it!”</p>
<p>Hanna- I understand not all “private school alumni” invited to the events get accepted. However, if a student is unknown by the previous HP members he will never be invited to begin with, therefore his membership (or lack of) has indeed been predetermined before he sets foot on campus.</p>
<p>True, the majority of students ignore the whole FC system, but a lack of student social space has been debated extensively in The Crimson. The FCs own some of the most prime real estate on campus, and it remains off-limits to the majority of H students. One wonders why the college did away with the Student Union years ago (now the Faculty Club?)</p>
<p>If one doubts the need for more egalitarian space, ask any student how crowded the big all-college parties are, like the 80s Dance, the Heaven and Hell Dance, etc.</p>
<p>I did not know that members of Krokodiloes were automatically members of Hasty Pudding!
I knew a young man who had a prominent position in the Kroks’ and he was the son of two postal workers (and his pony-tailed dad was the union rep).</p>
<p>I’m a current student. There are snobs here but there are snobs everywhere else, so it really doesn’t matter. From my own observation, take it as you will, what separates Harvard from Yale and Brown is that people here are very very Type A…which has pros and cons depending on what you are like.</p>
<p>DwightEisenhower, what exactly does “Type A” mean. It sounds like you mean very preppy and WASP-y and like all the same. Which I would not like. My high school is like that now and I literally can’t WAIT to get more diversity.</p>
<p>Okay, nvm, I just googled it. So I still don’t think I’d like that. I’d call myself “Type AB” because I am definitely goal oriented and a hard worker, but when all is said and done, I just want to sit back and relax. So if everyone is all crazy anal around me, I don’t think I would like that.</p>
<p>
Isn’t Cuomo like almost 40 now? Surely he couldn’t have still been going to Harvard when CC first came into existence?</p>
<p>Yes, he was. He took a long hiatus from college but decided to finish his degree. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 2005, I believe.</p>
<p>From the students and people I have had contact with at Harvard , I would not define students are Harvard as snobs. Do I hear of that expectation? Yes. That concept gets perpetuated by Keasleys’s friends who put this idea in his/her mind.</p>
<p>As for type A personalities? I think my daughter was a type A personality before heading to Harvard - very hardworking and was willing to let social life slide to keep her grades. At Harvard, she has met so many wonderful students. I would describe these student as interesting, smart, hardworking, but collaborative and willing to help each other. Socially, she is out constantly whether it be just meeting up for brain break, ballroom or tap rehearsals, heading into Cambridge or Boston or just hanging out. She is still working hard, though the fact that she has so mush social time means she there has been some shift in her focus. Her grades are still good (not the 97+s of high school) but there is more to ones education than just academics. She is getting it all at Harvard and so far is very happy.</p>
<p>There are definitely a lot of type A personalities at harvard including my daughter but that doesn’t mean they’re “anal” in regards to it. I concur with what smoda61 has said as it applies to my kid also. In high school she probably was “anal” in regards to goals, grades etc. but Harvard has definitely changed her for the better. And that snob stuff is just more BS perpetrated by some.</p>
<p>keasley1,</p>
<p>You appear to be <em>determined</em> to convince yourself that you won’t like Harvard. If that’s the case, just decide to not apply to Harvard and be done with it. It will be all right. I’m sure you’ll find a great school, and no one at Harvard will mind. Harvard is definitely not a school that fits everyone.</p>
<p>One small note, Man/Woman of the Year is given out by HPT - Hasty Pudding Theatricals, not HPC - Hasty Pudding Club.</p>