Harvard, Princeton

gadad
Thu, 23 Dec 2010 18:54:25 +0000

Our experience has been that most of the daunting stereotypes about Harvard - especially the one about supposed inattention to undergrads - aren’t at all accurate, and that undergraduate life there offers as much support as a student could hope for.

The stereotypes about Harvard abound - elitist, sink-or-swim, inaccessible faculty, and of course, lack of attention to undergrads (I’ve asked on CC what exactly this is supposed to mean . . . no one who’s been concerned about it has ever been able to describe for me what it might look like if they were to encounter it!). But having gone this route with two daughters - a May graduate and a current junior - I can tell you that the stereotypes just haven’t panned out. We’ve been floored at the support, the generosity, the willingness to return e-mails and address special situations, and the incredibly supportive nature of the students towards one another.

My sense at comparing Harvard and Yale is that they’re probably the two most similar undergraduate experiences in the country. I would think that Princeton would be pretty much the same, though the small town vs. quasi-urban settings provide a distinct contrast.



Really, what’s similar?



Student bodies composed of the top 7-8% of some of the world’s top applicants, residential colleges with live-in faculty mentors and tutors, extensive university facilitation of outrageously ambitious student-run projects, unbelievable performing arts programs (most conducted with non-Music majors), remarkable alumni networks, traditions that go back to Colonial times, etc.