Harvard Extension School - Admissions

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<p>Harvard’s Extension School is mainly comprised of working professionals who have day jobs, some have families to raise – that’s why many of the classes occur at night and on the weekends. I imagine most students start out with the intention of completing their degree, but sometimes life gets in the way. <a href=“Harvard Extended: The Harvard Extension School's 88% dilemma”>http://harvardextended.blogspot.com/2008/03/1-question.html&lt;/a&gt;

an important fact about the Extension School student body: The overwhelming majority take classes on a casual basis. One DCE administrator recently told me in an email that “88 percent enroll in a course or two for personal enrichment, career advancement, or to test the waters for future graduate work.”</p>

<p>This has been the nature of the student body since President Lowell established the program near 100 years ago, and Harvard has benefitted greatly because of it. Hundreds of thousands of people, most of them from nearby communities, have been able to take classes and sample the Harvard experience while bringing in revenue and furthering the University’s community outreach goals. </p>

<p>However, this has also led to an unfortunate situation for those students who are not taking classes casually. Amongst some members of the Harvard community and the public at large, the Extension School’s reputation is associated with the temporary experiences of the majority, as opposed to the serious, long-term academic commitments of the minority.

That said, I know several people who live in Boston and have received their masters from the extension school. If you don’t already live in the area, Cambridge can be pricey, especially if you don’t yet have a job in the Boston area. I would think there would be comparable options closer to home. See: <a href=“Did I Really Go to Harvard If I Got My Degree Taking Online Classes? - The Atlantic”>Did I Really Go to Harvard If I Got My Degree Taking Online Classes? - The Atlantic;

almost all of the Ivy League schools offer courses to “nontraditional students,” which the National Center for Education Statistics considers to be those who are older than typical college graduates, work full-time, or are financially independent and may have family dependents.</p>

<p>Today, three Ivy schools–Columbia, Harvard, and University of Pennsylvania–offer undergraduate and graduate degrees that are obtained largely through evening, weekend, or online classes, making them more accessible to nontraditional students. </p>

<p>At HES, of the 13,000 students, only about 2,000 are admitted degree candidates, and the school confers about 600 bachelor’s and master’s degree every year.

However, a degree from Harvard Extension School doesn’t mean the same thing to all employers: <a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/18/national/18harvard.html?pagewanted=all”>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/18/national/18harvard.html?pagewanted=all&lt;/a&gt;

Gail Kaplan, a legal recruiter in Boston, said: “If I were sending someone with a Harvard Extension School degree to a law firm in Boston, I know it would not get the same reaction as Yale or Harvard or Stanford or Princeton. But if I sent them to St. Louis or California, people wouldn’t notice as much.”

Also, with regards to Admissions: <a href=“Harvard Extension School - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Extension_School&lt;/a&gt;

Graduate admissions
Generally, admission into a graduate degree program at Harvard Extension School requires a minimum of an accredited bachelor’s degree (or foreign equivalent), as well as completion of three pre-admission courses with grades of B+ or higher and a minimum of 3.0 overall GPA. One of the three pre-admission courses must be the “Proseminar” course for the intended area of study, which is akin to a traditional research methods course. Certain disciplines have other specified pre-admission coursework, while some have specific coursework that is required before submitting a master’s thesis proposal (e.g. biology and psychology fields must take a specific graduate statistics course). Prior to registering for a proseminar, students must successfully pass a placement test, which measures critical reading and writing skills. Students who meet these criteria are then eligible to submit an application for admission into the graduate degree programs.</p>

<p>Once a student has met the three course requirement, he or she is then eligible to formally apply to the ALM program. Typically applicants must submit a completed application, proof of an accredited bachelor’s degree (or foreign equivalent) plus transcripts, resume, two essays, and a nonrefundable application fee. Some programs require additional specific classes to be part of the initial three before formal admission. Students will be denied admission indefinitely if they fail to earn a grade of B after twice enrolling in the Proseminar course.</p>

<p>Some programs have additional requirements, including specific pre-admission courses and supplemental application materials. For instance, the Literature and Creative writing candidates must submit original manuscripts.[29] For example, the ALM in Management, offering a concentration in either General Management or Finance, requires a higher coursework GPA for admission than other ALM degree programs. A minimum GPA of 3.33 (B+) must be maintained while achieving no lower than a B in three specific classes (organizational behavior, economics, and accounting for the Management Track; organization behavior, financial accounting, and finance for the Finance Track) taken before being considered for admission.

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<p>To answer your question

Therefore, the question is…What is the general probability of getting accepted into the program (B+ average in the first three admission courses)?

With a Bachelor’s degree in hand, I would think you would be good-to-go. Whether you would be better served by an alternate path to a masters is a question only you can answer. </p>