<p>Obviously, Harvard is at the top of U.S. universities. I'm just wondering, what are specific aspects of a Harvard Undergraduate education that set it apart from those of Princeton, Yale, etc..Please avoid generic aspects like location and prestige.</p>
<ol>
<li>Prestige</li>
<li>Boston</li>
</ol>
<p>^Lawl
10 char</p>
<p>Location is really a big asset. Right next to the T station, easy airport access to direct flights, lots of eating places at Harvard Square, tons of other universities close by and of course there is Boston.</p>
<p>There are four different places to buy a burrito in Harvard Square: Felipe’s, Qdoba, Boloco and Chipotle. I ranked them in descending order of quality, for your convenience.</p>
<p>It’s a name. </p>
<p>Anyone with the name “Harvard University” behind them becomes instantly ultra-competitive in the job market and graduate school admissions. It’s not so much prestige as it is the way the school is regarded by businesses and other schools.</p>
<p>Not only is the name just such a huge factor, but the alumni networks and other such connections are just outstanding and, to some degree, not comparable (debatable between P and Y). Not to mention, the education you will receive will be one of quality, of course.</p>
<p>I think it is not so much the school itself but the people that attend. Harvard attracts the best and the brightest, and usually the best and the brightest go on to do great things. Employers know that a Harvard degree is more than a degree because that particular student had to be an extremely fantastic student by the time he or she was a senior in high school in order to outbest the other 94% of students who didn’t get into Harvard.</p>
<p>It’s name, and if ur poor enough they pay for EVERYTHING!!</p>
<p>Frankly, I don’t think there’s one single answer to this question. I truly believe that, amongst top schools, the things that make one stand out from another to a person mostly come down to personal preferences that can even be hard to identify.</p>
<p>All Ivies will have amazing faculty. All Ivies will have a brilliant and engaging student body. All Ivies will have nearly limitless opportunities on campus for students to participate in extracurricular activities and research. All Ivies bear a pretty darn good reputation.</p>
<p>Thus, the things that will make an individual Ivy stand out to one person are normally simple, small personal preferences. If you are honored to be admitted into multiple great schools, visit all of them before committing to one (if you can). Get rid of your preconceived notions of each college before visiting. And take a very deep look at the school that simply “feels” best to you, or that has the vibe that attracts you most, because if a school just feel right to you, even if you can’t put a finger on what exactly attracts you to the place, the chances are that it’s a great match.</p>
<p>Then again, I’m just another high school senior wading his way through the admissions process. That’s just my two cents.</p>
<p>Brand name. That is all. I’m so shallow.</p>
<p>It’s a free ride to college if you are broke like I am. :)</p>
<p>^Same.
It’s perf for poor kids. <33333</p>
<p>I’m guessing none of you actually go to Harvard. </p>
<p>As an actual student, it’s just a college. It’s what you make of it. Yes there’s name recognition and yes we have a huge endowment, but it really is the people who make the institution (not just smarts, but personality). Many qualities that make Harvard great can be said about lots of schools. But of course, considering Harvard’s history for being an institution for rich WASP-types, it’s held to a higher standard and is regarded higher than many institutions.</p>
<p>@CPUscientist3000. I usually half-jokingly say that you can move the entire student bodies of the top colleges around–i.e. take Princeton’s student body and move it to Stanford, or Yale’s to Harvard–and no one would notice the difference. It might be a slight exaggeration, but only very, very slight.</p>
<p>As a student at Harvard, probably the biggest thing that stuck out for me is the resources that are available to you as a student. Even though Harvard will readily brag about how big its library is, how much money they have, how many student groups there are, etc… it didn’t fully register with me as to what that really meant until I got there and spent a year there. Harvard has the financial support for you, not only to attend (as noted above), but also support for whatever you want to pursue. I’ve gone to France completely on Harvard’s dime for a summer (living expenses, and whatever was left I used to travel and enjoy the finer bits of France), and they’ll readily pay for your interests, as long as you seek it out and present a good case. They’ve continued to pay for my research so I don’t have to worry about juggling a term-time job and research. Even though it sounds clich</p>
<p>It has to be the resources. Tomorrow I’m flying to Ghana and Harvard’s paying for it. Last year I went to Nambia and I only had to pay for half my flight. You get so many opportunities that other people don’t get. For instance since I’ve been here I’ve spoken to 4 Supreme Court Justices. I’ve had a class where Paul Pierce showed up and another weekend Ray Lewis spoke. I was eating lunch one day and looked over and noticed David Gergen talking to Ed Rendell about 10 feet away from me. These people come and talk to us because they believe we will be the next leaders of this country. You don’t get that everywhere, I’m not sure you get it anywhere else. Harvard is just amazing.</p>
<p>avshockeyw, how does that work? Are you already getting financial aid? Would students who don’t need financial aid still get that financial support?</p>
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<p>I am a Harvard senior and my burrito commentary still stands.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It depends on what kind of financial support. Some things are tied to need but many are not. For example, the David Rockefeller Grant, which typically funds most if not all of the expenses for a student’s first summer abroad, is not need based. Neither is most research funding.</p>
<p>On the other hand, that doesn’t mean that low income students are left to compete for the same resources as their wealthier peers. The financial aid office has plentiful resources available beyond the standard aid package, and really even if they didn’t, resources (like the Rockefeller) are so plentiful that even though students don’t always get as much as they want, I would hardly characterize it as a struggle for limited resources. </p>
<p>Courtesy of Harvard I’ve received a free two-week trip to Egypt and a nearly free summer in Jordan, as well as subsidized loans for a laptop and, well, four years of education. Many of my friends have swung a lot more funding because my concentration (NELC) is notoriously bad at helping undergrads do anything, but most concentrations are much, much better.</p>
<p>Wow, that’s pretty awesome. So basically you get these grants just for going to Harvard - as in, there’s not really any competition for them? And if you want Harvard to pay for your trip, does there have to be a legitimate reason for your trip? (E.g. for you, going to Egypt could be helpful for your studies in NELC.)</p>
<p>Your burrito talk really makes me wanna go to Harvard. Damn.</p>