<p>While Harvard is great and fantastic and everything, three things on your list stand out to me as not being true here. (The rest, I think, are more or less true.)</p>
<p>– I’m pretty sure you’re unlikely to be able to do a joint concentration in economics and chem. We don’t have double majors, we have “joint concentrations,” where your thesis has to relate to both. I don’t think economics allows those.
– Economics is not very good, I think, at providing support for senior thesises. (Although maybe if you’re one of the few students who wants to do one, they will fall all over themselves for you–I don’t know.) ([“In</a> fact, there were only 34 applicants for 68 junior seminar spots this past shopping period.” They have 250 concentrators/year.](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/2/1/economics-students-nbsp-concentration/]"In”>Concentrating on Econ | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson))
–Great study abroad program? Nope. Good, maybe. Costa Rica summer will be easy to arrange–tons of funding etc. etc. A semester abroad can be difficult socially/rooming-wise here, since it’s not that common a choice. I am not myself premed and I am not myself interested in spending a semester abroad, so my knowledge of semesters abroad for Harvard premeds is pretty limited. You’ll want to check that carefully with all the schools you’re considering, not just Harvard, because it can sometimes be difficult to arrange a semester away from your home institution while filling all the premed requirements. Whether that’s better or worse at Harvard than elsewhere, I can’t say.</p>