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<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>
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<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>
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<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>
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