<p>I don’t know about the advising at H, P, and M, but the advising at Yale in my day was superb (and all faculty). I’m pretty sure they still have the same system.</p>
<p>If you are smart, organized, forward-thinking, and a little aggressive, you don’t really need advising at all. You read the catalogue carefully, you pay attention to the graduation and major requirements, you look for programs of interest, you find upperclassmen and talk to them, etc. If, however, you are among the 98% of teenagers who do not have ALL those qualities reliably, then having an adviser can be helpful. Maybe only a few students actually fall through the cracks, but if you are one of them (or paying a big piece of their tuition), it can be very painful. And making it to graduation, but without really taking advantage of the place, isn’t much better.</p>
<p>I’m sure at Stanford far more than 2% of the students don’t really need much advising. But some do. And even the best students . . . sometimes a good adviser can really do things for them. One poster here has a daughter who won a Rhodes, and he credits the daughter’s adviser (at a different college) with setting her on the track and putting her in a position to apply for it, suggesting stuff she wouldn’t have known to do on her own until it was too late to make a difference.</p>