<p>D sent me a photo over the internet that shows her in a group - the boys seem to be in zip-up sweatshirts for the most part. Sort of skinny looking jeans. Lots of hair. No crew cuts.</p>
<p>Guitars101 - I would suggest that he buy a hoodie in Cambridge. It won’t be enough for winter, but should be enough to make it through the early part of the Fall. BTW, my son is in Matthews too!</p>
<p>Hat,</p>
<p>Thanks for the info. Wow, Matthews! I wonder if they know each other? Is your son outgoing or quiet? mine is kind of quiet. How many roommates does he have? my son has 2 others. My son was very happy about the large common room. I saw another dorm and the common area was quite small. </p>
<p>best of luck to you and your son!</p>
<p>Are any of you fixing to buy your D a winter coat. I was looking to buy one and have it shipped from Northface but was unable to decide which one would keep my D warm. As you can tell we are from the South and are quite clueless about winter clothing. Any parent like to chime in on which ones were popular with the girls last year?</p>
<p>^^We are from southern California, so I didn’t attempt to buy D a coat from here. I dragged her to a store in Boston and told the clerk she needed a coat that would get her through Boston winters, and then let her pick the style she wanted from among those deemed to be Boston winter worthy.</p>
<p>There is an interesting editorial in today’s [Harvard</a> Crimson](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=524209]Harvard”>http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=524209) regarding the SAT issue.</p>
<p>The article, entitled UnSAT, indicates that:</p>
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<p>But I am pretty sure low income family will have lower average SAT subject test score/ lower average GPA as well.</p>
<p>And a 570 in math is not going to get the kid with over $200k into harvard. In fact, I’d speculate that huge income - say, $5million or $10million - will not be correlated with the type of SAT scores required of the average admitted student at Harvard.</p>
<p>Also, with 27,000 applicants just how holistic can admissions be? How can it really be possilbe to detect nuance and subtlety in essays and teacher recs among so many? To give a truly holistic sensitive careful read of 27,000 applicants I’d say you’d need 500 to 1,000 readers at least.</p>
<p>Well, I hope I didn’t scare off the Harvard parent posters with my rants about the SAT. Back to the real deal parenting issues a Harvard parent faces - is it normal for your kid to be constantly at full throttle busy there? What is it that keeps them so busy?? I’m having a hard time understanding this. My D seems always to be running to a meeting or a talk or a workshop. And then studying a great deal. And then classes, of course. I’m not complaining - I think this is great for kids during their first big separation from home. Just wondering if it’s the norm. She was a busy kid in high school but now she seems barely able to catch her breath. I think this is good . . . is this good?</p>
<p>Mammall- I am having the same thing with my D. She is so busy even to call some days. It seems she got in a bit over her head with all the extra curricular groups and trying out for various choirs/plays, etc. Now that they have been selected and classes have started I am hoping things settle down.</p>
<p>On another questions to other Freshmen and experienced parents…my D had not planned on coming home for Thanksgiving but it seems she is now getting a touch of homesickness and asking to come. I’ve seen on this website that a lot of the professors cancel class on the Wed. before Thanksgiving so how safe would it be to schedule her on a Tuesday evening flight? Are any of your kids coming home for Thanksgiving and is so what day will they be traveling??</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>Yes this is good - it keeps them out of trouble. Most Harvard students spend a lot of time with study groups, ecs etc.</p>
<p>Some profs cancel class but I think a lot of students will skip the classes on Wednesday in order to come home. Of course there are some students like my D who will never miss a class no matter what.</p>
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<p>Yep, that pretty much describes my daughter’s entire four years there.</p>
<p>Beach02 - we had to switch our daughter to flying out the day before Thanksgiving thanks to USair canceling her original flight. I have my fingers crossed this will be okay. My D is also the type that cannot stand to miss a class.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that a lot of the larger classes are taped and can be watched online.</p>
<p>Hello H parents,
I’m the Y parent who lurks over here from time to time.<br>
I just finished reading “Run” by Ann Patchett. It’s fiction, and the setting is Cambridge and the H campus. One of the characters is an H student. I’m sorry to say my D’s rear was kicked on the XC course at Y this weekend by P and H, but I still like you guys.
Y mom</p>
<p>Hmmmm…a few too many letters instead of words. It’s late. Sorry.</p>
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<p>Well, except for some good-natured trash talking around the time of the football game, I’ve always liked Yale and Yale people too.</p>
<p>Re: frenetic extracurricular life - It’s definitely my perception that this is the defining characteristic of undergrad life at H. My take is that because the H admissions process tends to favor applicants who are utterly amazing at something, the campus is full of people doing very high-level things in their extracurricular lives. It then becomes pretty competitive to find your EC niche(s), and once they’re found, there’s a social press to be amazing at them. I get the impression that students work very hard at their ECs, not only for their own enjoyment, but to keep from letting their peers down. As a result, you have student-initiated and student-run programs that are quite unbelievable. In the past two years, my D1 has been in a musical that was easily the quality of a professional touring production, chaired a Model Congress of hundreds of HS students who had flown to Boston for a week, coordinated tutors who go out to work with immigrant children in a low-income area of South Boston, and taught at a HS leadership summit in China involving outstanding students from all over China. When I ask about the department on campus that sponsors these programs, I’m constantly told that there is none - the programs are all the result of student initiative. The university’s involvement is often just the provision of seed money. </p>
<p>Re: Thanksgiving - My junior D estimates that 2/3 of the classes scheduled for the Wednesday before Thanksgiving are either cancelled or run in some loose, informal fashion.</p>
<p>Riverrunner - Lurking from the Y boards - that’s a cool idea! Would you recommend that we check in there from time to time? What do you think we might learn from the Y discussions?</p>
<p>Actually, it was the non-stop activity of Harvard students that made D2 decide she wanted to apply there. Ever since middle school she had always insisted that she didn’t want to go to Harvard, mostly because she was sick of people asking her if she was going to go there like her sister. But after she spent a week on campus with big sis last spring, she fell in love with it. And the exhiliarating, non-stop, one-thing-after-another, aspect of it was one of the key things she found most attractive.</p>
<p>For her visit, D1 met her at the airport and handed her a concert black dress and told her to put it on in the taxi because they going directly to a concert to PLAY for one of the H orchestras that was short handed. (Both Ds are talented musicians). That was just the beginning of a week of activity that never stopped.</p>
<p>I certainly agree, based on my experience with my son, that student life at Harvard tends toward the hyperkinetic. And I think that, in general, the positives of this far outweigh any negatives. However, I do sometimes wonder whether some things of value - time and space for quiet introspection, for development of intimate friendships, etc., - tend to get lost, or at least harder to find, amidst all of that busyness.</p>