Article by Harvard student on the institution's academics
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Anonymous
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A good article on the Havahd experience, by a current student :
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2024/03/university-people-the-undergraduate-balance Choice quotes: "This fall, one of my friends did not attend a single lecture or class section until more than a month into the semester. Another spent 40 to 80 hours a week on her preprofessional club, leaving barely any time for school. A third launched a startup while enrolled, leaving studying by the wayside." "[T]hree of my friends and I took a high-level seminar one semester, and, although we knew hundreds of pages of readings would be assigned each week, we were excited about the prospect of engaging with the material. As time went on, the percentage of readings each of us did went from nearly 100 to nearly 0. In the final class, each student was asked to cite their favorite readings, and the professor was surprised that so many chose readings from the first few units. That wasn’t because the students happened to be most interested in those classes’ material; rather, that was the brief period of the course when everyone actually did some of the readings." "[Professor] Martin told me that he used to get more essays “where the student was trying to ‘jerk your chain,’ i.e., write something that completely contradicts what you’ve been teaching,” but this is no longer as common. That certainly resonates with my own experiences. When approaching essays, I often automatically start by thinking about what my professor or teaching assistant wants to hear, rather than what I want to argue or what I have authentically learned." -- A friend says, "20 years ago I had friends at Harvard saying that the only thing harder than getting into Harvard was failing out." As one of this forum's more diligent Harvard-haters, having all my biases confirmed is going to give me a dopamine hit that will have me flying high as a kite the whole rest of the evening. |
Anonymous
| Did you think it was going to be any different? That is every college everywhere. |
Anonymous
nah.. big public univ don't hand hold, and if you fail, you fail. I know someone who experienced something similar at another Ivy+ -- they don't like to fail out students no matter what. |
Anonymous
| This is the case with most Ivies. Getting in is the hard part. |
Anonymous
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Not SLACs
I wouldn’t send my kids to Harvard if you paid me…. |
Anonymous
| Remember Claudine Gay? |
Anonymous
Says the 95% of parents whose kids wouldn’t be accepted to Harvard. |
Anonymous
No, it actually isn't. |
Anonymous
| It’s probably true that it happens less with LACs. Small classes and frequent assessments (since the prof is focused on undergrads and not research or grad students) makes it a little harder to bs through a term. |
Anonymous
There are slackers everywhere. College is what you make of it. |
Anonymous
Princeton and Cornell STEM do not f around. Other than those, this may be true |
Anonymous
Not at Penn and Columbia. |
Anonymous
| How do you square this with the kids so stressed about schoolwork that they are having mental health breakdowns? |
Anonymous
The downside of extreme grade inflation is that when 90% of your classmates make an A, the product of even a B+ is enough to induce a panic attack. |
Anonymous
*prospect Autocorrect can EAD. |