Post #77 has it exactly right.
Basically, thanks to other people’s automatic negative reactions in a way and intensity that is unique to Harvard, it’s not socially acceptable in the US for Harvard students or alums to have any school spirit. They’ve got to hide it under a bushel.
How can anyone not like the campus? I am genuinely curious.
^^^This (post #80) would be a high-class problem, akin to “boy, does it suck to be named Rockefeller”…I’m playing the world’s smallest violin right now.
And it does suck, in the sense that, at least in some circles, people have odd and unrealistic expectations for you, at least prior to middle age. Eventually, though, this doesn’t matter a lot day-to-day…
You get the benefit of the doubt for interviews and the first few months of your job. That lasts for a few years.
You get to feel like you were part of a super-special group of people, brought together for four years in an environment that you’ll never experience again. That’s true, and it lasts a lifetime, but it’s largely a private pleasure, except at reunions. Mostly, it enables you to take some small consolation when life deals you setbacks. “At least I went to Harvard. These idiots can never understand that”. In later life, if you’re lucky, you form deeper bonds with some of the really interesting people who were at Harvard with you…
You get to feel superior to people on CC and elsewhere, who act like you’ve been privileged to look into the Ark of the Covenant. You know it’s really not that big a deal - Harvard was unique, as every place is, but was it some sort of unearthly experience that permanently set you apart from the rest of humankind? Not really, but you smile knowingly and milk it.
If you’re somewhat pathetic, you never really develop an identity independent from Harvard. Maybe you live in Boston/Cambridge, go to a lot of Harvard sporting events and work Harvard into every conversation, because you didn’t achieve much else in life. Maybe part of your marketing shtick is that you went to Harvard. I’m glad I’m not you.
Harvard’s wonderful and unique, but it’s what you make of it, and what it makes of you.
This is perhaps off-track, but I spent a year on a research appointment at Harvard. What was attractive to me most of all was Widener Library! Believe it or not there are many many books that are not available on line, and that may never be. But I enjoyed the academic climate overall. The faculty is outstanding. A couple of my relatives graduated from Harvard (law school). Driving and parking are horrible. But Cambridge is lively and that nearby big city (Boston) has many things going for it, too.
Not sure asking the average person as to the “best” college means a whole lot. Google videos of people being asked who won the Revolutionary War for a few laughs.
My favorite answer was The British. Most had no idea who was in even in it. It’s embarrassing. Lol.
“How can anyone not like the campus? I am genuinely curious.”
There are people who hate red brick, who only like campuses where 100% of the buildings match architecturally, and (most commonly) who hate streets running through a campus. If you’re in any of those groups, you will not like Harvard’s campus.
I loved the house system though. When w and fil attended they had affiliations like writing or theatre or sports. It wasn’t a lottery either if I recall. @Hanna ? Talking ‘90 and ‘68
@compmom it depends on what you like. I think red brick colonial architecture is pretty boring, loved Richardson’s Sever Hall and was happy to have classes in Corbusier’s only US building. Widener Library is pretty handsome and the Houses are nice. The landscaping is pretty iffy - the grass is frequently patchy, there aren’t a lot of flowers. Getting to many of the Houses requires crossing busy roads. I prefer the gothic architecture of Yale or U of Chicago or the old part of the campus at Caltech. The Caltech campus is absolutely spectacular in the spring, iris, jacaranda and wisteria. I got married in a walled garden with 50 year-old olive trees. (There are so many olive trees on campus they are harvesting them now!)
If any one is interested in slicing and dicing the Harvard class, this just came out. It makes for pretty fascinating reading: https://features.thecrimson.com/2016/freshman-survey/lifestyle/
In '68, there was no lottery element at all. In '90, I believe they’d implemented the system where rooming groups submitted four house choices and were randomly assigned to one of the four. The total randomization was introduced in 1996, when my classmates were freshmen.
When I was choosing a house you put together a rooming group you got a lottery number. You listed every single house in order - I got 13 out of 13, but ended up at my first choice house when space opened up where I wanted to be. Houses had more of a personality then - there was the arty house, the jock house, and our house seemed to be the music house. My recollection is that particular form of the lottery was relatively new - and I did not think much of the way that algorithm worked.
Sounds better than my experience at really great public flagship.
Went random and was placed with a senior as a frosh. My dorm had a personality too. It was listening to Men at Work and smoking clove cigarettes. I think it was clove. Lol.
The discussion is great to read, but the OPs original question seems…clueless to me.
@privatebanker Too funny! I had a junior my first semester (and when I was a junior got a freshmen - go figure). Requested coed and got all male. Did a reset next semester and it worked out fine. I had a blast but would have really loved the residential college experience.
“When I was choosing a house you put together a rooming group you got a lottery number. You listed every single house in order - I got 13 out of 13, but ended up at my first choice house when space opened up where I wanted to be. Houses had more of a personality then - there was the arty house, the jock house, and our house seemed to be the music house.”
When D1 was choosing the girls applied as a blocking group of up to 8. Assignment was random and I don’t recall that they got to specify any preferences at all. You (and your group) got what they gave you. But the funny thing is many of the houses, by reputation at least, still somehow retained their old character (art house, jock house, dope house, etc.) from the days before random assignment. D1 and group were thrilled to get a river house assignment.
I’m not familiar with the NYT article, but there are usually two sources for this type of chess tournament type ranking. The first is 2 Avery/Hoxby papers. The most recent used a graduating in 2004 sample of primarily wealthy, White (~7% URM), high achieving kids who attended HSs with a history of sending many kids to highly selective colleges. The study implies that Harvard was the college with the most matriculating students among this group, followed by Yale and Penn.
The overall cross admit ranking and ranking among those planning to major in STEM fields was:
Among those planning to major in humanities, the cross admit ranking was:
The 2nd source is Parchment, which does something similar to the study above each year, among largely self reported admission decisions. They have a lot of year to year variation. Taking the median ranking over the past 5 years, the top 5 were as below. Harvard made the top 3 in two years, but did not do as well in the other 3 years… perhaps because Parchment members may be more likely to lie about being admitted to Harvard than other Ivies.
Regarding the “many, many” kids at the OP’s HS who were admitted to Harvard during RD and chose to matriculate, that’s obviously a small and biased sample group. Among the full cross admit pool, I’d expect Stanford to win more cross admits than it loses against Harvard, perhaps MIT as well. One also needs to consider that cross admits are a special type of applicant. Students who apply and are admitted to their first choice school in the early round often do not appear in the cross admits unless searching for better FA, but students who are rejected by their first choice in the earlier round do appear. Similarly students who for various reasons prefer not as selective colleges colleges over Harvard also often do not appear in the cross admits.
For example, when I was applying to colleges, I preferred Cornell over Harvard because I thought it was a better fit for the engineering fields that interested me, so I applied to Cornell instead of Harvard. This led to needing to choose between Cornell, Stanford, and MIT;. Cornell became a losing cross admit for me, rather than Harvard, even though Harvard was lower on my preference list.
A similar principle occurs for students who prefer to attend their flagship, students who prefer to live within driving distance from home, students who choose the merit scholarship, etc. However, among students focused on prestige, I agree that Harvard tops the list of Ivies by a good margin, perhaps non-Ivies as well. Harvard also tops the list for various other subgroups.
Data10 makes good points. The comments in the paragraphs at the end are especially important. I agree that the studies of cross-admit preferences have an element that tends to make the results misleading: If a student’s top choice is Harvard, the student will almost certainly apply to Harvard. If a student’s top choice is not Harvard, the student may well not apply to Harvard, and so never show up in the cross-admit tables.
Caltech is not for everyone, obviously, and even a highly dedicated future scientist might prefer the more relaxed atmosphere in Harvard’s undergraduate program in (say) physics to the atmosphere in undergraduate physics at Caltech. But a student with a clear-cut preference for Caltech will probably not apply to Harvard to begin with.
My daughter applied to Yale, Princeton, and Stanford, but not to Harvard. It was a question of the “vibe” of the various universities. A comment by someone at Harvard (the Dean of Admissions? It’s been a while) to the effect that the alumni returning for their 25th reunion struck him as “the dazed survivors of the life-long boot camp” probably had an effect, as did a Harvard graduate friend who apparently subscribed to the “vacation as punishment” theory of vacations. I do know some Harvard graduates who really loved the university and sent their children there. Proportionately to the size of the undergraduate student body (i.e., even taking that into account) I probably know far fewer Caltech graduates who really loved the undergraduate experience at Caltech. Yet it has its draw.
There are trivial things that can come into play during the decision time, such as being able to fly from LA to Boston for $280/rt, fifteen minutes from Logan, and sleeping in the dorms that people like Roosevelts, Emerson used to live in.
I think some of it has to do with the posh-sounding name. If the name was suddenly changed to Globochskik University, even if all other things were the same, you could look for yield to drop.
“I think some of it has to do with the posh-sounding name. If the name was suddenly changed to Globochskik University, even if all other things were the same, you could look for yield to drop.”
I think the name has become posh-sounding over the centuries due to the reputation of the school, not the other way around. “Princeton,” due to the “prince” root, sounds kind high-flown to begin with, but he word “harvard” is not intrinsically high-sounding, IMO. Neither are “yale” or “stanford.” Yet the names of HYS have each taken on a golden aura due to their respective schools’ high-end academic and social connotations.
The term “posh” itself is based on the perception of wealth and social desirability. Port out, starboard home or “posh” were the cabins the rich folks preferred on the grand cruise liners of the gilded age.
Once everyone knew that daddy warbucks preferred these staterooms - their status as the “best” became unquestioned.
I’m sure some smart traveler said, “I can pay half as much and be on the same exact ship, same quality of room and get to the same port.” And others responded about the obvious benefits of the improved view or access to the right parties onboard. Nonsense then. Nonsense now.
When comparing rooms of the same quality and on the same floor that is of course.
However, many people confuse the half price and near identical quality school as If comparing the posh suites to a room in steerage.