<p>The school is known for academics but what about the social scene??</p>
<p>i am not a student, but i assume it's great. i dont know about harvard parties, but any school in boston should have an awesome social scene. if you dont click with your peers at harvard, there are always many many more students to meet in boston and its surrounding areas</p>
<p>My son is a freshmen at Harvard. He's my first child to go to college so I don't have much to compare but from what I can tell the social life at Harvard is very much secondary to academics. Once the students move into the upperclassmen "houses" as sophomores I suspect that the social scene improves but for the frreshmen all living together in Harvard Yard I think the social scene is much less than at other schools.</p>
<p>The Harvard Yard dorms are of the old design - long narrow halls with lots of rooms with usually closed doors. There is typically no social gathering space on each floor so the students have to go to basement "common rooms" to meet in large groups which few do because it is inconvenient and everyone is preoccupied with studying.</p>
<p>While Harvard has 41 sports groups, with the exception of the Harvard/Yale football game, very few students pay attention to sports.</p>
<p>Don't get me wrong, my son is glad that he goes there but he can tell that his experience is quite different from his friends at other colleges.</p>