Article by Harvard student on the institution's academics

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The question is whether this is wrong? Clearly in the short term (landing the job at GS or McKonsey) it works , otherwise they would not do it. Would it hurt them in the long term vs someone who took the alternative experience out of college? Hard to make that case empirically.

If they get a much more laid back college experience AND better career outcomes than the kids at the pressure cookers like MIT, UChicago, Princeton et al that’s awesome.

Criticize the lack of rigor all you want but that sounds like the best deal in higher ed to me.

Are they considered "elite" then if not for the academic rigor?

Yes, they are elite. Elite has to do with prestige, mostly due to the fact that historically these schools were filled with the children of the extremely wealthy and powerful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How do you square this with the kids so stressed about schoolwork that they are having mental health breakdowns?

humanities vs real majors. Notice how it's readings that are being ignored with no consequences, not Psets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The question is whether this is wrong? Clearly in the short term (landing the job at GS or McKonsey) it works , otherwise they would not do it. Would it hurt them in the long term vs someone who took the alternative experience out of college? Hard to make that case empirically.

If they get a much more laid back college experience AND better career outcomes than the kids at the pressure cookers like MIT, UChicago, Princeton et al that’s awesome.

Criticize the lack of rigor all you want but that sounds like the best deal in higher ed to me.

Are they considered "elite" then if not for the academic rigor?

Yes, they are elite. Elite has to do with prestige, mostly due to the fact that historically these schools were filled with the children of the extremely wealthy and powerful.

So, it's not about how smart they are, but about who their parents are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did you think it was going to be any different? That is every college everywhere.

No, it actually isn't.

There are slackers everywhere. College is what you make of it.

That wasn't the point. At most schools, true slackers don't pass.

Harvard's "slackers" (the people prioritizing preprofessional activities over class, not the ones prioritizing getting wasted over class) would be at least B students elsewhere, so it's not surprising they do fine at Harvard, too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This is the case with most Ivies. Getting in is the hard part.

Princeton and Cornell STEM do not f around. Other than those, this may be true

Cornell Engineering accepted a female student from my kid’s school TO. How can this be possible? Engineering from an Ivy TO???

Women are a hot commodity in STEM. Also, she might have had other ways of showing her math chops - e.g. NMSQ, 5 in BC, good C score.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not SLACs

I wouldn’t send my kids to Harvard if you paid me….

Says the 95% of parents whose kids wouldn’t be accepted to Harvard.

Ha. I said that. My kid is going to another Ivy....
I stand by it.

Let me guess. Your kid picked Cornell over Harvard.

No shame if they're in engineering.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is the case with most Ivies. Getting in is the hard part.

This is not my kid's experience. She works hard throughout her classes -- math and literature. At a different Ivy. But, I do agree that getting in was the hardest part.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

I know a couple of knuckleheads who tried to start a start-up while at Harvard. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. They made their classmates billionaires.

Enjoy being a loser.

Well, two very famous big tech founders went to a big state flagship (since we are talking about undergrad). So what?

GWB went to Yale, but he's definitely a knucklehead and used family connections and money to get where he got to, since you are playing the anecdata game.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This is the case with most Ivies. Getting in is the hard part.

Princeton and Cornell STEM do not f around. Other than those, this may be true

Put slightly differently, Engineering School almost anywhere is just plain hard for virtually all students. (Feynman was the exception who proved the rule.). No one accidentally gets a degree in Engineering.

What are you talking about? Feynman never studied engineering.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This is the case with most Ivies. Getting in is the hard part.

Princeton and Cornell STEM do not f around. Other than those, this may be true

Cornell Engineering accepted a female student from my kid’s school TO. How can this be possible? Engineering from an Ivy TO???

Women are a hot commodity in STEM. Also, she might have had other ways of showing her math chops - e.g. NMSQ, 5 in BC, good C score.

Yeah, there are other ways to demonstrate proficiency. I know a kid like this with 5s in APs who couldn't break 1500 on SAT. May have gone TO due to current high score threshold. She still had a good score.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This is the case with most Ivies. Getting in is the hard part.

Princeton and Cornell STEM do not f around. Other than those, this may be true

Cornell Engineering accepted a female student from my kid’s school TO. How can this be possible? Engineering from an Ivy TO???

I know a girl who got into Cornell engineering with not so great SAT and very low level physics and math courses. A couple of years ago acceptance rate to Cornell Eng ED was in the mid 20s. I was shocked because my friends kid with much higher stats was waitlisted. The mom was really bragging about it. Fast forward a year later the girl took a semester off and was kicked out of engineering. Cornell engineering is no joke, getting in might be easy but getting out will be tough.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Did you think it was going to be any different? That is every college everywhere.

Not true - Harvard has a special flavor of - the hardest thing is to get in the door. It's also "hard" for them to break from the life long habit of mentioning they went to Harvard or name-dropping of what their classmates achieved.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not SLACs

I wouldn’t send my kids to Harvard if you paid me….

Says the 95% of parents whose kids wouldn’t be accepted to Harvard.

Ha. I said that. My kid is going to another Ivy....
I stand by it.

Let me guess. Your kid picked Cornell over Harvard.

Not sure why some people don't realize not everyone is enamored by Ivy schools, even kids with the stats and EC's to get in. Quotes like the two PPs above are juvenile and pathetic and lead to OP's initial comment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did you think it was going to be any different? That is every college everywhere.

Not true - Harvard has a special flavor of - the hardest thing is to get in the door. It's also "hard" for them to break from the life long habit of mentioning they went to Harvard or name-dropping of what their classmates achieved.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A good article on the Havahd experience, by a current student :

Thanks for sharing this incredibly well written article that describes the behavior of students at Harvard focused on opportunities later vs the learning now; and the need to distinguish themselves from others outside the classroom.

The question is whether this is wrong? Clearly in the short term (landing the job at GS or McKonsey) it works , otherwise they would not do it. Would it hurt them in the long term vs someone who took the alternative experience out of college? Hard to make that case empirically.

After all Pavlov's dogs do get their reward too.

1) it's not incredibly well-written
2) it's just an opinion piece
3) in an alumni magazine,
4) which is always searching for material
5) and is so low-brow that it has singles ads in the back.

Ignore and move on. Not worth your time