<p>I’ve now done three classes at HES-- well, five if you count two just after college. Professors were very good, and helpful as far as the format permitted.<br>
One was a course with a new star of the history department. Her lectures were videotaped and so we watched online. Her regular TAs ran sections. Those were on the Web, so had a wide range of geography represented. There was someone from the US Army somewhere in the mideast, a lot of people from all over the US, and I even phoned in once from Singapore at breakfast time. I live in Boston, so when I had a few questions about a paper coming due, I went to the prof’s office. So far, more or less what a Harvard undergrad would have had. The main difference was in the sections-- which weren’t full of Harvard undergrads. Pretty much everybody can take these classes, and while the section-attenders tend to be self-selecting, it’s not a uniformly high-voltage crowd. Still, I got what I came for, and enjoyed what I experienced. The papers were more or less what the College students would have done, although the midterm and final were formatted a little differently so you could take them online.
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Another course was with a prof who chairs his department at another university in Boston. IIRC, his bachelor’s was from HES, and then he went on to a PhD at the Arts & Sciences division. It was based on lectures, which you could do live or over the web. He had good TAs correcting the papers. I don’t think there were sections held. The syllabus was made to suit a lot of students, from casual lookers-on, to undergrads piling up credits and getting their skills in order, to others looking to go to grad school. You could script a lot of what your workload would be like. He was very responsive to e-mails, and would also have been happy to talk to you after the lecture or in his office if you were in Boston. I ended up doing some very interesting independent research, and am now trying to figure out how to turn part of that into a master’s thesis. The prof is helping me with that.
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The third course was in the January term. Taught by a full-time Harvard ES prof (there actually are such things), it met for 4 evenings for each of 3 weeks. There was some required reading to do beforehand. If you did all the suggested reading for each topic, you’d be working at it for a year, so the discussions weren’t as in-depth as you might like. Still, it was interesting material, and the writing was just intense enough to make it a real time commitment.<br>
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Students in that class tended to be HES ALB candidates trying to get their residence partially burned up in a short time. So there were people from all over the US, and one girl living in Paris with her husband. I’m guessing that their SATs weren’t all at Harvard College levels, but they were generally bright and really motivated. They seemed to have fallen into the Extension School because of some kind of life circumstance. Military careers, financial problems earlier in life, etc. It was interesting to get to know them and hear them talk about their progress through the ALB. That also drove home the fact that there really is no campus community. You do share classes with people, but even if they come in person for that class, you may never see them again.</p>
<p>My first choice for the master’s program wouldn’t necessarily be at HES-- not because it is awful, but because you’d have to become a special student at Harvard to get the best selection of courses, and because you wouldn’t really have a coherent program or group of classmates beyond what you could dig out for yourself. On the other hand, if I did do the ALM, I’d certainly get a lot out of it, and for some, it’s the best option available.</p>
<p>And no, it’s not the same as grad school at Harvard. Around Boston, people will be impressed that you’ve done the work and if you learn good material, it’s going to be useful. Your thesis proposal (never mind the actual thesis) has to be about 25 pages and good enough to grab the attention of the Harvard faculty member that you want to supervise you. But it’s still known locally as The Extension School. Of course, they also refer to Harvard Law as The Law School. :-)</p>