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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Stay away from Harvard if you don't feel that you are up to the challenge.  If you need to be coddled, the it isn't the place for you.[/quote]

Maybe this is what it comes down to.  As an almost-first-generation-college student (parent earned a BA the same week I graduated from HS), I LOVED Harvard.  DH (middle class kid) did too.  But both of us did very well academically from the beginning.  So that's the only type of Harvard undergrad experience I know close-up.  And it was unbeatable.  By contrast, the grad student experience looked kind of miserable.  (And I say this as someone who got a PhD at a comparable university, so it's not just a comment on PhD programs). Professional schools vary widely.

If college is just where you get your ticket punched for grad school, then maybe Harvard's not the best choice for undergrad -- especially for a kid who doesn't really love academics but who believes s/he needs to maximize GPA to do whatever comes next.  From that perspective, I could see how the Harvard undergrad experience could be really stressful and demoralizing.  OTOH, there were also pretty obviously happy undergrads whose lives revolved around something other than coursework -- e.g. theater, the Crimson, the Lampoon -- and who came out of college well-positioned for careers in related fields.  So you don't have to be a nerd to flourish at Harvard as an undergrad, but you may have to be passionate about something and to be a confident self-starter.
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