Tell me why Harvard is the best!

[Anonymous]

It is quite rare to have 2 identical candidates with just the name of a college differentiating them
So the whole discussion is presumptious

[Anonymous]

Actually Princeton is Number one on US News...check it out.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's not.

Yes it is. U.S. News says so and I believe them more than I do you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate how people always bring up the whole "UMD STEM major/Harvard English major" dichotomy. There are kids at Harvard who major in STEM, and contrary to many people's belief some of those departments are top notch. Harvard has a great chemistry department, for example.


However, I can see how someone would have a better undergraduate experience (less TAs, for example) at Yale or Princeton without any sacrifice to "name recognition"....

How do you define "stellar"?

The coursework is easy. Everyone gets As or Bs at Harvard.

Just because most people get As or Bs at Harvard doesn't mean the coursework is easy. It means that the school is insanely selective, and bases that selection on (drumroll....) HOW WELL PEOPLE DO AT SCHOOL AND ON TESTS! See how tha works? You want to impose a bell curve grading system on that, and it just doesn't make sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate how people always bring up the whole "UMD STEM major/Harvard English major" dichotomy. There are kids at Harvard who major in STEM, and contrary to many people's belief some of those departments are top notch. Harvard has a great chemistry department, for example.


However, I can see how someone would have a better undergraduate experience (less TAs, for example) at Yale or Princeton without any sacrifice to "name recognition"....

How do you define "stellar"?

The coursework is easy. Everyone gets As or Bs at Harvard.

Just because most people get As or Bs at Harvard doesn't mean the coursework is easy. It means that the school is insanely selective, and bases that selection on (drumroll....) HOW WELL PEOPLE DO AT SCHOOL AND ON TESTS! See how tha works? You want to impose a bell curve grading system on that, and it just doesn't make sense.

+1. I don't get why we keep having to explain this on DCUM (and I couldn't care less about Harvard per se).

Harvard admits the strivers, and the striving is built into these kids. That means Harvard's bell curve is centered at the top end of some hypothetical distribution. You simply can't take some kid from Podunk U and assume they will get even B's at Harvard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:However, I can see how someone would have a better undergraduate experience (less TAs, for example) at Yale or Princeton without any sacrifice to "name recognition"....

I don't think anyone can credibly claim that TAs (teaching fellows at Harvard) are used more extensively at Harvard than Yale or Princeton or any of the other top schools. They are grad students or post-docs. TAs are most prominent in labs and discussion sections for the big introductory survey courses. But, they are also used in smaller classes to provide additional help and guidance beyond the instructor's office hours. The courses themselves are always taught by faculty. You might be thinking about adjuncts - PhD instructors who are not on the tenure track. All these institutions use lots of adjuncts but the credentials of the Ivy adjuncts tend to be pretty spectacular compared to the adjuncts other places.

[Anonymous]

It is not