<p>"@CityEntrepreneur: How would you rate the quality of instruction compared to those at your top 10 LAC?"</p>
<p>In terms of teaching ability (clarity, intelligence, interest), I thought that the professor at Harvard was no better than the professors at my LAC in the field, although I had one or two at my LAC who I could tell weren’t the cream of the crop (for one foreign language class, I had a professor who was another professor’s spouse, and a student from the foreign country said that the spouse’s language ability was terrible). The professor at Harvard had probably done some important publications or something, though; I don’t know.</p>
<p>Also, while I had a full professor for the class at Harvard (like I did for all of my LAC classes), I recall that some of my grad school friends taught undergrad classes at Harvard; all they had was a BA in the field, which definitely reflects badly on Harvard.</p>
<p>Finally, the professors at my LAC were mostly approachable and accessible, which probably helped when it came time to get recommendation letters for grad school. The professor for the undergraduate class that I took at Harvard seemed nice enough, although I have no information about the professor’s accessibility. The professors in grad school at Harvard were generally neither approachable nor accessible, although I was able to get a few basic recommendations and did get 1-on-1 help from my thesis advisor, who was terrific. I don’t know if undergrad at Harvard is the same way.</p>
<p>The main difference was the Harvard students; they were just way more motivated and much smarter. For example, the class that I took at Harvard was a foreign language class. The students at my LAC would (usually) want to put in a decent effort and maybe attend grad school at a regional state school. </p>
<p>The students at Harvard were much more motivated to do their own research for the class (e.g., we had to a write a paper about the culture of the foreign country, and I recall that one student in the class flew to the foreign country and interviewed people there for the paper) and expected to work at the Goldman Sachs office in the foreign country upon graduation. That’s the Harvard difference.</p>
<p>(I did not attend Amherst or Williams. I would expect that experiences there would be much closer to Harvard than my LAC was, although my LAC is also in the US News top 10 for national liberal arts colleges).</p>