<p>So, there is no debating that harvard is an amazing educational institution. but, how good is it really when it comes to undergrads?</p>
<p>i a lot of people say that all the focus is on the grad schools and all the amazing profs they boast about only bother to look at grad students.</p>
<p>I really liked harvard so I am hoping this is overstated, but I need to know if it's true because I don't want to go if I will be a sort of after thought.</p>
<p>also, if you think that this is pretty much true at all big ones (HYPSM, Columbia, Brown, Cornell, etc) thus making this post sort of unnecessary.</p>
<p>Our daughter loves her classes and has lots of contact with her professors. Being in a smallish department may help. In areas other than academics, such as social life, community, and supports like advising, Harvard has made a lot of effort to improve the undergraduate experience in recent years. I believe the press about it being better for grad school than undergrad is a little dated.</p>
<p>My two daughters there frequently study under and work with the superstar profs, who know them by name. D1’s last House Master (live-in faculty in her House / dorm) had a Nobel Prize. He retired and was replaced by a current member of Time’s 100 Most Influential people in the world. Both Ds have been invited to faculty homes, and have had faculty join them for dinner at their House dining halls. D2 tried out a course in a concentration (major) that she was considering during “shopping period” at the start of this fall. Once she got there, she realized that it was primarily a graduate course and that she was the only undergrad in the class. She spoke to the faculty member afterwards, who invited her to take the class anyway, encouraged her interest in the field, spent a half-hour chatting with her and invited D2 to come back and see her anytime. D2 subsequently found that faculty member cited in several of her texts, inquired, and only then learned that she’d been chatting with one of the two or three most influential people in that field. I went to a small university that’s on US News’ list of top schools with a strong undergrad focus and I never experienced this kind of attention or genuine concern from my faculty.</p>