For those who enrolled at Harvard

saxfreq1128
Mon, 02 May 2005 00:51:21 +0000

I basically had to choose between Harvard, Yale and Princeton.

I chose Harvard because it was the only place that felt like “home.” It was the only one of the three that made me feel extremely comfortable, Princeton being my second choice.

Complaints about social life, etc. are really meaningless to me, as the social life at ANY school is what you make of it. I was extremely impressed by the cultural/minority groups at Harvard. No, correction: extra-curriculars at Harvard, in general, felt more vibrant to me than they did at the other schools. I don’t think I encountered more than 2-3 people who weren’t heavily involved in something non-academic; I didn’t get this impression from the other two schools.

Name-dropping and the name in general don’t matter that much to me; since I think I may want to go into journalism (keyword: think), I would’ve chosen Columbia if the “name” were really an issue. And, let’s face it: Harvard’s is a very heavy name that lends itself well to being dropped.

But, probably most importantly, I love Harvard because of the student body. I find it almost impossible to classify students there, box them into groups. I couldn’t find “The Typical Harvard Student.” And yet, despite this difficulty categorizing people, I found a niche almost instantly. At Yale and Princeton, I spent much of my visit trying to find a group of people I could relate to. I eventually found one at Princeton; I never did at Yale. Harvard students take risks that I don’t see students at many other schools doing. Example: Does Princeton have an equivalent to H-Bomb (which is very well-done, btw)? Does Yale?

These are just things that I considered when deciding. My advice is to go to pre-frosh weekends; they were, for me at least, extremely instrumental in informing my decision.

Best of luck to applicants for the class of 2010!

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE HARVARD CLASS OF 2009! See you next fall.