| I was going to create a new thread to ask exactly the same question when yours popped up.
What makes Harvard special? Why did you choose it?
Let's leave aside all talk about prestige, since I'm sure most would agree that it shouldn't be the main reason for choosing a college. Please, no academic or major-related issues either, since one could probably get an education of similar (or better quality) at Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Penn, Columbia, Chicago or Brown. And if you're studying something like Folklore and Mythology which only Harvard offers, that dosen't really help the rest of us who aren't.
So why Harvard? As the writer of the above article suggests, I'm sure the people are top notch. But don't adcoms like to claim that they could have filled their classes three times over with no loss in quality? Most of these Harvard-rejects end up at schools like Yale/Princeton/Stanford, where the concentration of brilliance is probably on par with that of Harvard. In fact, there are quite a few Y/P/S-rejects who end up at Harvard.
I'm not convinced that the people are what gives Harvard the edge over the rest of the top 5 schools. Besides, if an applicant were to write that he/she wanted to attend Harvard because the people there are the elite, the creme de la creme etc., that might not go over too well with the adcoms, since some of them come from far less pedigreed backgrounds than the students they're letting in/rejecting will have.
Please enlighten me. Why Harvard???? |