<p>Don't forget, Harvard is really the Stanford of the East</p>
<p>I would also like to dispel the notion that all the students at Harvard and Yale are scintillating geniuses who act superior to mere mortals. Many of them are average in many respects, and some are well below average in certain respects (such as social skills). I think the key element of JHS' story above is that a student who gets in with subpar academics may have problems of that sort, but if a kid has the grades and scores to get in without that kind of special push, they'll probably get along just fine.</p>
<p>Re the above: The student whose story I told above did not "get in with subpar academics". He was within (albeit relatively low in) the Harvard middle-50% range on test scores, and in the top 20% of a fancy, high-powered private school known especially for rigorous math/science. Really, what happened is that he got in with subpar self-esteem. "Par" on self-esteem at Harvard is really high.</p>
<p>That's too bad, and you're right. Still, don't you think that that problem probably came more from within than from other students really looking down on him?</p>
<p>I should add--although it's a terrible admission--that there are enough students at Yale who were rejected by Harvard to take the self-esteem quotient there down a hair. (I prefer not to explain why I feel qualified to make this assertion.)</p>
<p>My D is extremely competitive, extremely ambitious, extremely confident, and extremely happy at Harvard.</p>
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Still, don't you think that that problem probably came more from within than from other students really looking down on him?
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<p>I am too elliptical. You are right. What I was trying to say from the outset with this story was that the problem came much more from within than from other students looking down on him. If you happen to be susceptible to that problem, going to Harvard isn't risk-free.</p>
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1. Harvard English Department: In terms of sheer professorial firepower, it's really unequalled today. Yale still often comes out on top in surveys, but if you do the position-by-position matchup Harvard wins, I fear. The Yale English department may be a nicer, more student-friendly place, I don't really have current information. I would worry that so many of the Harvard professors spend so much time running around being public intellectuals that something has to give, and that something may well be undergraduate education. But, as always, Harvard (or Yale) is only an opportunity, not a guarantee, and it's up to the students to take advantage of it. With the English Department at Harvard, the sky's the limit on that opportunity.
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<p>The horror stories I've heard about Jamaica Kincaid as a thesis adviser add weight to your concern about faculty being too busy being public figures to really be useful to students. (Other notable English professors have much better reputations - James Wood, for one).</p>
<p>Also, is Homi Bhaba a respected academic? I've heard him talk multiple times (and tried to wade through some of his writing) and it seems to be randomly generated strings of jargon and buzzwords.</p>
<p>-Boston > New Haven. Theres just SO much more that Boston has to offer than New Haven. People say that New Haven isn't safe... and I guess thats ture but the students there tell me that the campus is actually very safe. But Boston is bigger with nice theatres, more history, and museums and such.
-I didn't like the fact that you have to take a shuttle across town to get to the athletic facilities at Yale. Even if you wanted to go watch a football game youd have to take a shuttle. It isn't long... just kinda inconvenient.
-When you take the Yale campus tour... they show you the SUPER nice residential hall.... the one with the nice court yard and cool looking doors (Branford). But in reality, only that residential hall looks like that. Most of the other ones are pretty decently nice... but some are REALLY ugly.... like i wouldn't want to be stuck in that residential hall for 4 years. and its totally random! Harvard on the other hand has REALLY nice dorms.... :)
-At Harvard you don't have to share a bathroom with your floor... which is kinda the case for Yale. (They have it weird where their nieghbor is technically above them...)
-People at both places are REALLY nice and down to earth :)</p>
<p>its ultimately where you see yourself living for 4 years.... or 5.</p>
<p>I know of one student who was Jamaica Kincaid's advisee and raved about her. But that's the only student I know who has studied with her.</p>
<p>Homi Bhabha is very hard to follow either in person or in his writings. But he is enormously influential in literary criticism (which tends to be jargon-laden).</p>
<p>Seconding marite: One of the nice things about Harvard's English Department is that it has lots of people who talk in terms that are comprehensible without special training. That's part of the "public intellectual" gig -- the public has to be able to understand you. In general, though, the deeper you go into academic literary studies, the more you are going to have to learn how to decipher abstruse code.</p>
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<blockquote> <p>...that there are enough students at Yale who were rejected by Harvard to take the self-esteem quotient there down a hair.<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>It's also true the other way around. There are students at Harvard who were rejected by Yale. I have trouble feeling very sorry for either group. </p>
<p>I read in a magazine article that former NY governor Eliot Spitzer, even as a highly successful adult, never got over the fact that he got rejected by Harvard College back in the day. Poor guy. Had to settle for Princeton instead.</p>
<p>Harvard looked more favorably upon Spitzer's daughter. She's a freshman this year.</p>
<p>"At Harvard you don't have to share a bathroom with your floor... which is kinda the case for Yale."</p>
<p>There are some freshman dorms at Harvard where you have a shared hall bathroom.</p>
<p>Most places at Yale, including the Old Campus, it's one bathroom per floor per entryway. So the bathroom (multiple sinks/toilets/showers) is shared by 2-3 suites (generally 6-8 people, sometimes less). It's never a big issue.</p>
<p>saw a great spitzer interview the other day. he got cleared of something and a reporter asked him as he left his apartment if he had anything to say. spitzer tried to blow him off, said i dont talk to strangers. the reporter replied yeah but you dont seem to mind having sex with them. </p>
<p>how the mighty have fallen!</p>
<p>"There are some freshman dorms at Harvard where you have a shared hall bathroom. " Canaday</p>
<p>I'm a current Harvard freshman and I love it here.
Honestly I'm a pretty normal.. I don't buy all this "there are more normal people at Yale, Harvard is all about the overachievers that needed to go to #1".<br>
I applied to Harvard, last minute, out of curiousity. I didn't apply to Yale, Princeton, Stanford... in fact my only other Ivies were Cornell and Brown and I applied to schools like USC, Wisconsin, Vermont, Wash U, Emory... kind of all over the place.
And I've found that there are a whole lot of really NORMAL people here... who just happen to have random crazy talents or are ridiculously smart, but you'd never know it. They are fun, relaxed, generally great to be around. You will find your share of intense people, but no more, if not less, than you will find at Yale (for reasons listed in the following article)</p>
<p>I thought this Crimson article summed up Harvard and Yale differences pretty well...</p>
<p>The</a> Harvard Crimson :: Opinion :: The Real Difference</p>
<p>Harvard, though, is honestly awesome. You will meet people that you can't even fathom, be exposed to incredible opportunities, Cambridge is a great town and obviously Boston is really fun too.</p>
<p>rlip - Thanks for the fun article. I have printed it out for April. Won't bother D until we find out that she gets in to both/either. :)</p>