Why Harvard over LACs

Colleges & Universities A-Z Harvard University
1

<p>Hi, I know this is question has been discussed numerous times but after reading many threads about this topic, i still have a few questions.</p>

<p>I know Harvard is definitely less undergrad focus and the community is less closely knitted than some LACs. Some people say TFs are very knowledgable and are fantastic but can they really be better than a professor who has years of experience of teaching? Harvardians are perfectly capable of charting their own routes without any handholding but i suppose even for the best and the brightest, some guidance is helpful right?</p>

<p>Some people choose Harvard over LACs for the abundant resources that Harvard has to offer. This is understandable for people who are interested in arts or journalism or some less popular classes. But does this abundance of resources really benefit someone who intends to take something more mainstream/popular like government,premed or economics? Yes Harvard has a lot a lot of resources but nobody can make use of all the resources in 4 years. Any person can only take advantage of a small small fraction of the available resources, which any LAC is also able to offer. So, is the abundance of resources really a valid reason for choosing Harvard over LACs?</p>

<p>So for people interested in mainstream majors, is it true that the network and prestige associated with a Harvard degree are the primary reason why Harvardians choose Harvard?</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

2

<p>You will receive just as good an education at a top Liberal Arts College (Williams, Pomona, Middlebury, Bowdoin, Swarthmore, etc) as you would at Harvard. If you are lucky enough to be accepted to Harvard and a top LAC, you might choose Harvard because:</p>

<ol>
<li>Cambridge and Boston might be more appealing than the towns of a LAC.<br></li>
<li>Harvard’s endowment allows them to provide better financial aid than most LAC’s.</li>
<li>The H-bomb effect is real; it does open doors. After all, what employer has not heard of the difficulty of getting into Harvard? So, when faced with a stack of 500-700 resumes for a job opening, an employer might go “Well, she graduated from Harvard. Let’s call her in and see if we can see what they saw in her.” But, then it’s up to the student to prove their competence in the interview. And the H-bomb effect is really only good for your first job, as your 2nd employer will be looking at your track record from your first job and not focusing on the college you attended.</li>
</ol>

<p>And, FWIW: [Harvard</a> University Professor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University_Professor]Harvard”>List of University Professors at Harvard University - Wikipedia)</p>

<p>While Harvard’s professors are top notch, the vast majority of them did not attend Harvard College – some even attended top LAC’s.</p>

3

<p>There’s also the financial aspect. The financial aid package from Harvard is likely to be significantly better than it will from a LAC</p>

4

<p>Also, at any college, you will spend about half your time going to class, writing papers, and studying for exams. The other half of the time, you will be on your own hanging out with friends. The friendships you develop in college could mean that the guy/girl down the hall might become your spouse, your co-worker, or your future employer. [Your</a> Ultimate Cheat Sheet to the Most Famous Harvard Students of All Time | Wall St. Cheat Sheet](<a href=“http://wallstcheatsheet.com/breaking-news/wall-st-cheat-sheets-most-famous-harvard-students-of-all-time.html/]Your”>http://wallstcheatsheet.com/breaking-news/wall-st-cheat-sheets-most-famous-harvard-students-of-all-time.html/)</p>

5

<p>I chose Harvard over Amherst with Schupf Scholar. I think top LACs are incredible, and like gibby said, you’d get the same education at Harvard and a top LAC. </p>

<p>However, Harvard’s research activity is much, much higher than Amherst’s. (obviously, Harvard is a research university) Which means I’d have much more opportunities in the biological sciences in terms of lab/research positions. And I actually like the community feel of Harvard more than Amherst. Maybe it’s because my high school class is very small (my class had 112 students) and I feel like I want to get to know and interact with more people, and I would still have smaller community within Harvard (the House.) Amherst students are just as smart as Harvard students, but by numbers, Harvard has more of them. </p>

<p>Plus, Harvard’s financial aid package was far superior than Amherst’s (or any other package FWIW.)</p>

6

<p>Thanks! If I’m not terribly interested in sciences/lab work, does Harvard still offer more research opportunities or other types of opportunities in areas like economics and government? Are those research opportunities open to all or only for a small handful of students?</p>

7

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<p>Just my 2 cents, but I’d say you’d get not “just as good” but even a better undergraduate education at these LACs over Harvard College, where the undergrad experience is not a big priority to the university.</p>

8

<p>Thanks! I know the educational experience in the class in LACs is probably better than that in a research university. But I’m more concerned with opportunities outside the class, like internships, research, fellowship,on campus recruiting etc. Can top LACs provide those opportunities that are comparable to those provided by universities in terms of quantity and quality?</p>

9

<p>Also it is mentioned that research opportunities are more abundant in universities. But for people who are not going to stay in academia, does it matter if there is little research opportunities? Thanks!</p>

10

<p>Will people’s opinions and generalities really matter, WWDDPP? Next April, visit the various schools that have accepted you – interface with students – and make your choice then. If schools like H and Y and top LACs are still on your list, then you’ll be one rarefied individual. At this point, this will be a churning of broad generalities – of which you seem to be pre-disposed to one side of the discussion.</p>

11

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<p>Sit in on some classes too, and not just ones hand-picked by the admissions office or tour guide.</p>

12

<p>My high school limits the number of universities/colleges I can apply to 7. Out of the 7 choices I need to include schools of varying selectivity so even before I send out my application, I need to make a trade off between universities and LACs. And I’m international student so visiting the school is probably not a viable option :(</p>

13

<p>@post#7 "Harvard College, where the undergrad experience is not a big priority to the university. </p>

<p>This statement seems to be made more often by those who have never attended Harvard as an undergrad.</p>

14

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</p>

<p>Joshua Billings, a Harvard senior, says many undergraduates there “have little direct contact with professors, and are frustrated by poorly trained teaching fellows.” “You’d be stupid if you came to Harvard for the teaching,” said Mr. Billings, who will graduate this spring and then go to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. “You go to a liberal arts college for the teaching. You come to Harvard to be around some of the greatest minds on earth.”</p>

<p><a href=“Harvard Task Force Calls for New Focus on Teaching and Not Just Research - The New York Times”>Harvard Task Force Calls for New Focus on Teaching and Not Just Research - The New York Times;

<p>The sometimes wanting quality of undergrad instruction at H is no secret and the Crimson itself discusses it from time to time.</p>

15

<ol>
<li> The Harvard undergraduate education model and the LAC undergraduate education model are two different models that are probably equally effective, on average, in the long run, or even the medium run. For an individual student, one might be better than the other, but I suspect that for most good students it would not matter much, long-term, which you pick.</li>
</ol>

<p>At Harvard (and other colleges like it), you have a ton of choices, and are basically responsible for determining your own educational plan within a set of pretty loose General Education requirements and departmental requirements. You have to go to the professors; they won’t reach out to you, generally. You will probably wind up with a few favorites, in the areas that interest you most, and you will bend your interests a bit to match what they teach. You will have a fair amount of contact with grad students in your field of interest (and other fields as well), and they will be really sharp, impressive people only a few years farther along the path you are on. They will help mediate for you between where you are and what you know and what is cutting edge in your field of interest, and they will also model for you how to get from here to there. You will probably wind up with some glimpses of absolutely cutting-edge work, and some holes in your basic background knowledge that no one ever made you fill. Outside your main field of interest, you will search out interesting courses with great teachers that will expand your world a bit, and you will go to a bunch of interesting lectures, etc., sponsored by various organizations. If you are like lots of Harvard students, you will have the equivalent of a full-time job (or more than one) in extra-curricular activities, which may even be a full-time job. These will probably have more to do with your career than your actual concentration.</p>

<p>At a good LAC, you will have far less choice in the courses you take and the faculty you take them from. You will probably wind up taking a course with everyone, or almost everyone, in your major department. You will gravitate to the ones you like best, and take more than one course from them, which will affect your interests. You will probably get a more solid all-around background in your major than you would at Harvard, because you won’t have a choice, and because there will be far fewer hyper-specialized upper-level courses to distract you. The faculty who teach you will also be your advisors, and they will take more of a personal interest in making certain you have a solid base of knowledge in the field. You will get involved in whatever they are working on, and they will go to bat for your with recommendations, etc., to graduate and professional schools. You will learn about cutting-edge trends, but not necessarily participate in them; you will get a more balanced view of them because of the additional distance. You won’t know any graduate students, something that will double or triple the likelihood that you consider seriously going to graduate school in an academic discipline. Outside your main field of interest, you will search out interesting courses with great teachers that will expand your world a bit, and you will go to almost all of the lectures, etc., sponsored by the college, which will be pretty interesting. You will participate in a variety of ECs and sports, but they won’t be the center of your life, most likely. </p>

<p>You will have about the same number of actual friends both places, although at Harvard there is somewhat more of a likelihood that they will have a lot of overlapping interests with you. At an LAC, you will basically know everyone, at least a little. At Harvard, you will basically know everyone in your house, your department, and your main ECs, at least a little.</p>

<p>At Harvard, you will do stuff in Boston and Cambridge on a regular basis. At your LAC, unless it is Barnard, leaving campus will likely be a once-in-a-while event, involving a road trip (not counting tutoring or something at the townie elementary school).</p>

<p>At your LAC, you are likely to do study abroad, because you will want to get out of the LAC bubble for a bit, and you won’t think you are at the center of the universe already. At Harvard, you will think you are at the center of the universe already, and you will wonder why anyone would ever leave voluntarily. It will take you a few years after you graduate to realize what a bubble you were in when you were there. In any event, people will come to Harvard from all over the world, so you won’t feel as much of a need to go to where they came from.</p>

<p>Get the picture? They’re different in some important respects, but it isn’t necessarily a question of better or worse.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Recognize, too, that the above actually overstates the differences. Harvard isn’t that far removed from an LAC, especially once you take into account the fact that the Yard/house structure gives you a fairly LAC-like social environment. Compared to, say, Texas or Ohio State or Penn State, Harvard College might just as well be an LAC.</p></li>
<li><p>Looking at my kids’ cohort, I am amazed to see that the ones who are most following their own particular dream successfully are LAC graduates. I wouldn’t have expected that, but I am seeing it a lot. The kids who went to Harvard or Yale tend to be following some well-worn (albeit well-compensated) path to b-school / law school / med school.</p></li>
</ol>

16

<p>It’s a 6 year old article, but I think it correctly identifies the Tao of H. I didn’t go there, but my kid does and in talking to her and a lot of her friends, the thing they love about Harvard is the overall experience, not specifically the classroom experience. You go there because you can, because of the great FA, because of the opportunities, because you’ll be surrounded by a greater density of amazing people for four years than you will be at any other time in your life. You don’t go there to really learn the nitty gritty of Econ or Biochem or French Lit.</p>

17

<p>That is an interesting article. D is a senior at Harvard. I recall being concerned before she enrolled since we had all heard that Harvard was, first and foremost, a research institution and the undergrads were largely an inconvenience to the superstar, inaccessible professors.</p>

<p>It seems that in the 6 years since the article was written, President Faust has done a pretty good job of bringing the focus back to the undergraduate experience. With one notable exception freshman year, D has never had a problem meeting with any professor. In fact, one of her professors, a world-renowned geneticist, holds court in a local pub on a regular basis to discuss anything that his students want. </p>

<p>It may vary by department, but the stereotype of inaccessible faculty has not proven to be true in her case.</p>

18

<p>One of the things that strikes me as typical about that article is the attitude of the sole student quoted in it: I came here in spite of the teaching, not because of it. The classroom isn’t important; doing things with your amazing classmates is. I have actually been very satisfied with the teaching because I have sought out great professors. But everyone else must be suffering.</p>

<p>That is pretty much what I have heard from almost everyone, going back 40 years. </p>

<p>The teaching at Harvard isn’t anywhere near as bad as it is made out to be. The exceptions, however, are probably giant intro survey social science classes or pre-med requirements that everyone takes because they think they have to. Those are basically going to be mediocre experiences everywhere, unless you really work at it. And I am sure that in some of the concentrations – Government, Economics, various Biologies – there are plenty of people whose academic attitude is “Let’s get this over with so I can get to my prestigious professional school/job.” But Harvard is also a place where you get scores of people volunteering to spend 50-60 hours a week on Math 55 (at least for a few weeks, until 2/3 of them quit). Those aren’t students who are disengaged from their classes.</p>

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<p>Can we really judge Harvard by that old article? Is it still the same atmosphere at Harvard now?</p>

20

<p>I went to a top-10 LAC and then to Harvard for law school, and I cross-registered for an undergrad class at Harvard that was in the same field as my major at the LAC, so I can directly compare the two at least somewhat, having taken classes in the same area and at the same level at both institutions.</p>

<p>At Harvard, the professor had a better pedigree and the students were sharper.</p>

<p>The main difference was as set forth in a prior post:</p>

<p>“the overall experience, not specifically the classroom experience. You go there because you can, because of the great FA, because of the opportunities, because you’ll be surrounded by a greater density of amazing people for four years than you will be at any other time in your life.”</p>

<p>Was the Harvard class harder? Not necessarily (but I had already completed a major in the same field). Did I learn more? Not necessarily. But in my Harvard class, I was surrounded by sharper people who had higher expectations of themselves, and higher goals in life, than at my LAC. That counts for a lot.</p>