<p>So tired of seeing the "What is not Great About Harvard "Thread ; every school has Pros/cons; please tell us about what makes you glad you chose Harvard!</p>
<p>(1) The financial aid. </p>
<p>As a middle class family, my daughter is attending Harvard for about 10% our AGI, which is thousands of dollars less than the cost of our state school. Harvard is making a college education more affordable for my family. So, what’s not to like?</p>
<p>(2) The name. </p>
<p>My daughter has experienced first hand what happens when you drop the “H Bomb.” Prospective employers who tell you to drop off your resume, all of sudden do a “wait a minute, come back here” when they see Harvard on a resume.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The financial aid!</p>
<ol>
<li> The opportunities!!</li>
</ol></li>
</ol>
<p>One of the things I have been especially impressed with is the helpfulness of professors. One example, D went to office hours but the TA wasn’t around. In leaving, saw the Professor of the very large course, stopped him to ask if he knew when TA would return. Prof asked if he could help with the questions, ending up spending almost an hour – on the spot, right then – reviewing the proofs/questions. There have been other similar instances. We would not have predicted the openess of professors given the reputation the school has for “ignoring undergrads”; which in our opinion is unfounded.</p>
<p>1) People
2) Academics
3) Extracurriculars</p>
<p>1) They’re all so interesting! I just spent the summer at a really ace state school. Everybody there was definitely smart and pretty hardworking, but boy, the things we found interesting were just not the same. The conversations I have here are just more fun for me than conversations I have anywhere else. On Thursday night, my friends and I talked had a conversation that naturally flowed through bad TV, poetry, family, the ethics and security implications of the drone wars, and more. Or on Wednesday, a totally different set and I spent all dinner figuring out which presidents were our favorites and why. (That would be the set that’s concentrating in government, if it wasn’t clear.)
Even when I’m judging somebody for seeming like they don’t belong here, I have never been proven correct. Not everybody is academic, but everybody’s interesting for some reason–this totally non-verbal athlete in my freshman entryway was an amazing sculptor. Or this girl I met one night who was really smashed by 10 p.m. somehow transitioned from telling me her exploits at some final club to how much she just really loved physics and math and wished her classes in them were more difficult.
The people are kind of nuts but I am so never bored.
2) I’ve really liked the professors of: History of Art and Architecture, Classics, History, East Asian Studies, English, and, actually, Economics. (I do not like the ec TFs, but the couple professors I’ve had were pretty nice. And they knew me.) Again with the top state school, my friends there had rather broader knowledge of their key subjects than I do of some of mine. But that was because there seemed to be no way for them to do advanced non-thesis work. They didn’t seem to have seminars. I love seminars! I like the opportunity to do more advanced work on a slightly narrower topic. And they aren’t just limited to upperclass concentrators, like at a lot of places. (I think I remember Swarthmore’s English department offering no seminars open to non-majors.) You can take advanced courses if you’re a freshman with enough background to handle it, which plenty of people take advantage of. Concentrators do get some preference if a course is oversubscribed, of course, but they don’t often oversubscribe.
I’ve been particularly lucky. Immediate-upon-arrival nerd heaven is definitely not true of all Harvard students’ experiences, especially the social science/humanities students in psychology, government, and economics. (I cannot speak about the science concentrations positively or negatively.) I do know some people it’s happened to in psych and ec, but they’re exceptions. It helps, a lot, that my interests range from “that’s interesting now that you mention it” to “hella obscure,” so the professors I like don’t have a horde of people to pay attention to. But if you find a niche, whether freshman year or junior year, the opportunities to pursue that interest are fantastic.
3) Subset of the “people” category: the crazy awesome people run crazy awesome things. Makes campus life more fun.</p>
<p>It is an old saying that if you took everyone in a Harvard class and put them together and did nothing else for four years and 90% of what they would get out of Harvard would have occurred. EX is right-- what makes Harvard, Harvard isn’t as much the fancy buildings (many are pretty run down actually) or the great profs (as good as most of them are) or even the ECs per se-- it is the kids you meet everywhere who are so incredible, bizarre, wacky, wonderful, and on occasions–assh^&*ic, – they are everything but boring. They are Harvard. And if you attend you will be too.</p>
<p>^^ At any university; it’s not the buildings, but the students that make the experience. That’s not really unique to Harvard. You will also find truly incredible, bizarre, wacky, wonderful, and on occasions–assh^&*ic at Yale, Princeton, Stanford, CalTech, MIT, etc.</p>
<p>I didn’t think the prompt also required that those things be entirely unique to Harvard. I’d have trouble doing that for Harvard and Yale: I don’t think there are any objective things that substantially differentiate Harvard from Yale at a whole-school level. (Yale is stronger on the medieval philosophy front. Harvard has dedicated folklorists. Neither of these affect very many students.) I–and 70-80% of those who are admitted to both–got better subjective “vibes” from Harvard than from Yale, but that’s not very helpful for future applicants.</p>
<p>There are more substantive differences between us and SPM etc., but one doesn’t usually cast Harvard (or almost any school) in terms of “why not X other college”. Yale might be the one school I can think of that has to deal with that question ;)</p>
<p>If you think stereotype wise Harvard is better. I’m not saying its true academically but when a person is asked what is the best college, the answer is Harvard. Yale is always its second best cousin (if not passed by Princeton and Stanford). Yale is a GREAT school but if your going to college for the name. Well nothing is better than the big Ole Crimson H.</p>
<p>The only distinction–not better or worse–but different is that Yale (and princeton) have more “school spirit” than Harvard. For example I once offered $20 to any student in Harvard Yard who knew the name of the alma mater and could sing a verse-- after an hour of trying–I still had my $20. As a Yale alum I KNOW that if I did the same thing in the Old Campus I would pay out the money within minutes.</p>
<p>I love Harvard-- I have two advanced degrees from it and have taught and advised here for over 25 years–but it is different–</p>
<p>I was once told by a Yale admissions person that the first question they ask themselves after determining that someone was qualified was “is this person a Yalie?” I cannot for a moment imagine Harvard admissions doing the same. They want those wonderful oddly shaped people who make you go–wow.</p>