The truth about Harvard & Princeton

<p>Is it cut throat and extrememely hard at these schools? How hard are the sciences? Any info would be greatly appreciated.</p>

<p>At Harvard the students are very bright and are expected to work hard, but "cut throat" is not accurate. It's not hyper-competitive with students sabotaging each other. Most kids have friends and help each other out, etc. --> Not cut throat. </p>

<p>I know less about Princeton, but I expect it is much the same as Harvard in this respect.</p>

<p>I agree with Coureur. At highly selective colleges such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIt, and so forth, there are study groups, both informal and formal; students get together to help one another with problem sets, discuss readings, etc... My S has found his study groups extremely helpful and the students in them very supportive. Students work hard; as in high school, some are concerned about grades and admission into graduate school, some work hard because they enjoy learning. But I have not heard of cut-throat competion at Harvard or at Princeton.</p>

<p>Not at all cut throat at Princeton. Absolutely no one seems to flunk out. It was actually much easier than my high school to do well there.</p>

<p>I agree not cutthroat, but I think it is fair to say that the sciences are hard except perhaps for the very gifted. Those who are choosing to do pre-med courses, for example, will certainly have their work cut out for them as they will be competing with many many extremely bright students.</p>

<p>"At Harvard the students are very bright and are expected to work hard, but "cut throat" is not accurate. It's not hyper-competitive with students sabotaging each other. Most kids have friends and help each other out, etc. --> Not cut throat. "</p>

<p>I am an alum, and I agree. Students tend to work hard in class because they genuinely like academics. Students tend to also play hard -- and their idea of play is heavy involvement in ECs that they love. Students idea of a fun evening is working on the school newspaper, preparing for a theater performance, volunteering with Cambridge youngsters, participating in sports. These are not students who in h.s. did ECs to look good on their resumes. These are students who would have done ECs even if no one knew about it.</p>

<p>Harvard tends to have a lot of active, very intense people, but they are not cut throat.</p>

<p>I agree, Patient: it's been a long time, so I can't speak first-hand, but I doubt that the much-discussed "grade inflation" applies to the hard sciences, engineering, where "curves" are the real thing, answers more black and white, and the top students are inconceivably (to mortals) brilliant.</p>

<p>I am pretty sure that a much higher percentage of people applying to med school from HYPS and similar schools are accepted than from lower ranked schools. So one does not need to be as close to the top in class rank, GPA, as at other schools in order to be accepted. This may somewhat counteract the factor Patient mentioned about competing with many highly gifted students in science courses.</p>

<p>We need to define "cut throat."</p>

<p>In college I dated a Harvard student and spent quite a few weekends hanging out there. One visit my boyfriend had just gotten over being sick in bed for a few days. In the library, he recognized a girl from one of his classes and asked if he could borrow her notes from a missed lecture to see what he missed. She said "no." </p>

<p>I was very surprised. Granted this girl was not a dear friend nor study group partner, but my experience in <em>my</em> college was that <em>anyone</em> asked a simple request like this would automatically have said yes. Perfect strangers known only by face would stop what they were doing in the library to help others with questions. </p>

<p>My boyfriend was not particularly surprised to be told no. To me, this felt cut throat-- thought it certainly wasn't an act of sabotage, just unhelpfulness. Maybe a better adjective than cut throat is competitive.</p>

<p>I've already told my son that when I was in professional school I shared my notes with anyone who asked--and I didn't mind if those notes were further passed on to all of my other classmates. I believe in fair play. (I did NOT go to one of the schools mentioned in this thread, but there is some possibility that my son, if continues his present pattern of interests, may apply to one or more of them.) I would expect my son to share notes with, give study tips to, and generally encourage all of his classmates, period. I would definitely want to know if any school he was applying to had students who thought that that was strange behavior--I consider that very normal behavior, the behavior of a gentleman. </p>

<p>For what it's worth, I have seen on the Web sites of various Harvard math courses explicit instructions that students should study in groups--the material is too hard to learn solo--as long as they do their homework individually (which presumably is verifiable by looking at handwriting). That seems to strike about the right balance to me.</p>

<p>"In college I dated a Harvard student and spent quite a few weekends hanging out there. One visit my boyfriend had just gotten over being sick in bed for a few days. In the library, he recognized a girl from one of his classes and asked if he could borrow her notes from a missed lecture to see what he missed. She said "no." ?</p>

<p>I went to Harvard, and it was routine for the people I knew to share notes. Most people at Harvard were not stab-one-in-the back people. They were smart, passionate and intense, but not cutthroat.</p>

<p>I am an alum interviewer for Harvard, and when I am intereviewing students, I look for evidence that they are not people who are simply out for themselves. When I find examples that students mentor other students, etc., I include those in my report, emphasizing how much the student has to offer. I also have heard from my S's GC that when Harvard adcoms call asking about students, the adcoms specifically ask questions about how the student treats other students.</p>

<p>Narcissistic and selfish students are not what Harvard is looking for though, unfortunately, some may slip in.</p>

<p>I never encountered this behavior in medical school. There is nothing like trying to explain your notes to a classmate to help you learn a subject. The "cuthroat" student is not only selfish but less knowledgeable.</p>

<p>I'm in favor of sharing notes and ideas but I think that we all are making an assumption here.</p>

<p>When I was in college and professional school I would share notes and would discuss difficult-to-understand issues with my fellow students - as long as they were making an effort to learn the material. (I also got a lot of help from other students on issues that I didn't comprehend. We had a study group through most of my law school.)</p>

<p>I would not do that with someone who had been too lazy or disinterested to take his/her own notes but was interested only in somehow passing the course with the benefit of my classwork.</p>

<p>Again, what about pre-meds? You hear so many horror stories about sabotaged lab experiments. My experience in med school was that many (?Most) of my classmates were very competitive, and tended, ashamed to say, to be grade grubbers. But that was almost like we were naturally selected for that behavior. It died away during the clinical years.
But, we were not cutthroat. Study groups were there if you wanted/needed them. People were willing to share notes, but almost everyone belonged to a homegrown note taking service anyway (I hear now at my alma mater that the note taking service is an outside business, and almost no one goes to class?!)
What I mean by competitive and grade conscious is that everyone was programmed to DO WELL, there wasn't too much overt grade comparing, but everyone knew who was close to the top. ANd when there was a test with disputable answers, ohmigod, Katy bar the door! Nothing is more ruthless than a 2nd year med student on the trail of an "unfair", poorly written test question. And if the class did not receive satisfaction at the time of the test, the poor PhD instructor was in for it at faculty roast night, end of sophomore year. Looking back on it, we were terrible, terrible. But supportive of each other, definitely all in the same boat mentality.</p>