<p>I think a lot of people are in it just for the prestige. Anyone willing to go just because of its history, location, atmosphere, quality of education?</p>
<p>Harvard literally wouldn’t be Harvard without the prestige. They wouldn’t be able to attract the best faculty, the endowment wouldn’t come close to matching what it is now, etc, etc.</p>
<p>but enough of that, i’ll play your game!</p>
<p>I wouldn’t attend Harvard in the case of UMiami level prestige, but I would attend Yale! <3</p>
<p>quality of education would make me apply</p>
<p>Your question is cliche and vague, considering the different implications of prestige. Would Harvard’s lack of prestige preclude my ability to seek a job at a top ibank? Would it affect my internship opportunities significantly? I don’t care if Average Joe Schmoe knows and is impressed; I DO care that the person hiring me is though.</p>
<p>For instance, if Harvard became a school with more of a Swarthmore-like prestige, where the general public really hasn’t heard of it but employers have, then by all means I would consider going to Harvard.</p>
<p>Funny you should ask. For about the last century, we’ve been running some interesting experiments with that. We have the University of Chicago, which is remarkably similar to Harvard in structure and faculty quality, but has a smaller endowment and less pop-media prestige. We have Stanford, also quite similar to Harvard except for being in a suburb, and in one generation it has gone from, roughly, Dartmouth-equivalence to Harvard-equivalence. We have Berkeley and Michigan, which have the faculty but not the elitism. All of them are reasonably popular, but only Stanford takes more than a handful of students away from Harvard, and California has a lot to do with that.</p>
<p>This is a terribly stupid question.</p>
<p>In my opinion, your question is a brilliant example of a post hoc fallacy.</p>
<p>@JHS</p>
<p>Great post - but I would take issue with it slightly. There’s a big network effect when it comes to college choice - both in terms of the alumni network and the peer group. Even if School X has faculty/location/etc that are Harvard-level, I won’t find School X as attractive as Harvard until top students are choosing School X over Harvard.</p>
<p>There is a very tangible wealth of student resources placed at the disposal of Harvard students that is unique to Harvard. For example, a year ago my D went to China for three weeks to teach in a summer symposium program for high-achieving Chinese HS students from across that country. The instructors and students were all accommodated together at a boarding school in Shanghai, and the student instructors’ expenses, other than airfare, were all covered. No one from the faculty or staff of Harvard conceived of this, initiated it, or supervises it - it’s an entirely student-managed extracurricular enterprise funded primarily by the university. And it’s not at all unusual - there are international model congress programs, touring performing arts programs, a local homeless shelter - all student-initiated and student-run efforts made possible with university financial support and advisement. From the outside looking in, I’m floored that students do all these things and carry out these huge visions on their own. But talk to the students involved, and they’ve long ago stopped engaging in self-doubt about what is possible. Coming up with a way to positively impact some corner of the world, getting a group of peers to buy in, and getting Harvard to fund their grand schemes is just standard operating procedure to them.</p>
<p>To me, that’s the defining quality of the Harvard experience and I’m unaware that it exists to that extent anywhere else in higher education.</p>
<p>If you are interested in computer science, you’re far better off at Stanford than in Cambridge (though Google now has a large presence in Cambridge in order to recruit from MIT).
There are different reasons why Chicago is not as attractive as Harvard (besides “prestige”). The location is one of them; the curriculum is another. While I think it is a definite plus, not everyone thinks so (and that includes my own S). Its reputation for being no fun does not attract those for whom Harvard’s huge array of ECs is a major draw. But I would be very surprised if Chicago’s top students were not sought after by top graduate programs or by recruiters. The Chicago alumni network is pretty impressive, too.</p>
<p>Would you date Paris Hilton if she looked like Ralph Nader?</p>
<p>If Harvard had the prestige of U Miami, it would have a similar student body, resources and produce similar type of students. The fact that Harvard or Stanford etc have prestige is based on the quality of people they have produced over many years.</p>
<p>Nice, Hunt. :)</p>
<p>Harvard for undergrad is definitely a prestige play, minus a couple specific fields of study (like math, econ). nothing wrong with that though.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t date Paris Hilton, period. She creeps me out.</p>
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<p>True. The rules for Harvard student organizations warns them not to invite foreign heads of state and heads of government to campus without the prior approval of the administration. I bet Harvard is the ONLY school in the country that has this warning or that needs to. Student clubs at other colleges wouldn’t never think of such a thing. At Harvard, not only would some organizations think of it, but many prominent politicians would accept the invitation.</p>