<p>I was there around the same time as baystatenutmeg (What class were you, BSN? I was '78). My experiences with faculty weren't as favorable as hers, though that was partly my own fault. But there were many countervailing positives, the two biggest by far being my fellow students and Cambridge itself. Still, if I had it to do over again, I'd have gone somewhere else. Harvard09, I don't know how it is today, but I will tell you that my friends at both Yale and MIT had much more professor interaction than I ever had. I know you're at Harvard, the most famous college in the world, and you worked like a maniac to get there. You can be very proud of what you've achieved and where you are. I hope you're having a great experience and proving that mine was atypical or outdated. But the notion that Harvard has no warts (especially for the undergraduate) or that its warts are the same as those of Yale or MIT is just wrong. I knew a lot of people who loved their time there but I also knew a lot of very smart ones (though what other kind is there at H?) who didn't.</p>
<p>Johnshade: I was also class of '78!</p>
<p>"that its warts are the same as those of Yale or MIT is just wrong."</p>
<p>h-bomber thinks that even my experiences (class of '99) don't reflect the improvements that have taken place in the last few years, and I'm not convinced that someone from the class of '78 can effectively speak to whether this is "just wrong" today (unless you're a current Harvard parent or instructor, of course).</p>
<p>Having transferred from a small LAC to Harvard, yes, there was definitely a real difference in terms of DEFAULT intimacy with professors -- that is, whether and how much they reached out to you if you did nothing. At Harvard, I knew when professor contact was important to me, and when I cared about it, I made it happen. It was up to me to determine what that relationship would be like. In other words, Harvard treated me like an adult instead of a high schooler, and that was fantastic for me.</p>
<p>So is that fantastic for everybody? Of course not, but neither is the LAC-type involvement objectively better. An example of the type of thing I mean: in an introductory class, my college boyfriend, at Oberlin, did not turn in a paper on the due date. That night the professor called him in his dorm room to ask why his paper wasn't in the pile, and did he need some kind of help. That was typical of his experience in many classes at Oberlin, and it was great for my boyfriend. But that's the last thing I wanted at college! Whose job is it to get my work done, mine or the professor's? At what point do I learn to have some kind of responsibility for my own commitments? If someone here is prepared to argue that this kind of smothering care is typical at Yale or MIT, the way it was at Bryn Mawr/Haverford/Oberlin in my experience, I'd like to hear about it. But I think they're a lot like Harvard.</p>
<p>I think it depends as much on the student as on the prof (s). My shy S has cultivated very good relations with a few profs, most of whom he had in small classes. He did not bother trying to talk to others, especially those in large classes. However, he told me that one of his profs, in a class of 100+, required every student to come and see him.
His roommate, on the other hand, is a born schmoozer and has managed to talk to profs in large lecture classes at least once a week and befriended them, including world famous profs. He's lined up some interesting internships through them.</p>
<p>True, my experience is outdated. But if MIT and Yale do have the same warts as Harvard, I'd be stunned (though they might have THIS same wart). If they do, you might as well flip a coin to decide between them, and I doubt that's what you're suggesting.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Sometimes I laugh at how ignorant people are.</p>
<p>When undergraduates at Harvard complain about a lack of "undergraduate attention", they have a basis for their claims. Since graduate programs and research are so prevalent at Harvard, a lot of the big-name profs aren't available to help students, since frankly, they have much better things to do. It's not that people become lazy after they start attending Harvard, it is just impossible to interact with profs; TAs and even upperclassmen play a big part in an undergraduate's life.
[/quote]
How am I the ignorant one when you're blowing everything out of proportion....</p>
<p>
[quote]
In other words, Harvard treated me like an adult instead of a high schooler, and that was fantastic for me.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>TYVM</p>
<p>Third member of the class of '78. I was a VES major and had two full professors advising me on my senior thesis. (It was actually an architectural history thesis as opposed to a body of art unlike most VES theses.) I think it's still true that it is easier to have more meaningful interactions with faculty in the smaller departments. I was not a schmoozer and certainly never said a word to the famous professors whose classes I took, but that didn't stop me from enjoying their lectures. I had at least one prof. (actually one of the ones I did my thesis with) who insisted that every student come and discuss paper topics with him in one of his lecture courses.</p>
<p>Was College Confidential the big topic of discussion at the Class of 1978 reunion this year?</p>
<p>I'm guessing it will be.</p>
<p>Reunions are over. They happen during graduation.</p>
<p>Then I missed it as usual.</p>
<p>Actually they sometimes do some of the less big year reunions in the fall. Class of 78 has its reunion Oct. 10-12 this year. 25 and 50 always coincide with graduation.</p>
<p>Alrighty then, my apologies for the misinformation. I know we had 5, 20, 25, and 50 so I figured we had the other ones too (I just thought I must have missed them with my own eyes).</p>
<p>Well, I see my post #33 has been truncated so as to remove all the content from Sean Carroll's comments. And I can't link to them because they appear on his blog. Oh, well, I guess folks will just have to live without them.</p>
<p>The biology (particularly cell and molecular) curriculum over-caters to pre-meds.</p>
<p>Lousy academic advising: </p>
<p>The</a> Harvard Crimson :: Opinion :: Re-Focus Advising</p>
<p>In the interest of balancing some of my negative comments, see:</p>