Haha i'll reaffirm the stereotype
. I, personally, was impressed by many features of harvard. The course selection and offering of majors in the life sciences were promising, it seemed as if you could get any money you wanted to do anything, and the location is a nice benefit, even if it's a bit too overpriced for a college budget. With that said, i turned harvard down because of a lot of its deficiencies. Visiting each university to which i was accepted, i asked people why they chose that school above other schools. I was surprised at how many of the students at harvard i met said "i chose it because my parents pressured me to" or "i probably would have liked (insert school here) better." I think that's an unfortunate consequence of harvard's brand name. I also didn't feel the same sense of community and spirit at harvard. As my former classmate who's now a freshman put it, "people aren't very rah-rah at harvard." This may seem silly to some of you, but the food was just plain bad when i visited, and i met a decent number of people that were legitimately unhappy, although that number was less than the number of people who were enjoying their experience. So, in that the general public seems to think harvard is the world's best university in every way, i'd say yes it is overrated. While i was very impressed by its academic programs (although not so thrilled with the core, which students seemed to endure more than enjoy), i thought the quality of life was lesser at harvard than at other schools i visited. So i chose yale!
Boola boola!
~kwijiborjt