Why is Harvard considered the flagship of colleges?

Xeaqs8 · October 25, 2009, 6:26am

I’m not on CC often. Yet when I am, there seems to be this accepted undercurrent that Harvard is THE single best college in the nation, and one would be a fool to not go to it if one could. Here is an example post:

I’m wondering where this comes from. I visited Harvard this summer, hated the Information Session/Tour, and didn’t get a picture of the school at all. Parents were asking inappropriate questions (GPA/Class rank of the tour guide) on the tour; there were some very young (elementary/middle school age) kids there with parents; the information session was completely redundant and passionate.

Obviously, Harvard has lots of prestige and is well established. Yet what makes it the accepted #1 school? At my school, I don’t think there would be anything close to a consensus on Harvard being the best school. People really strive to find the best fit for them, rather than looking at what everyone else finds prestigious.

And just because I know people are going to argue we don’t see it that way because we have no chance of getting in; here are the stats from my school: There are ~120 per class. Last year’s enroll/admitted/applied rates: (Harvard 3/6/26, Yale 12/16/36, Princeton 4/7/18).

I just find this prevalent assumption annoying, seeing as its implication cheapens students. If Harvard is accepted as the best school, then all students not at Harvard are inferior as they were not able to get in. Also, I can’t even think of any justification why there would be an accepted best school; college rankings are pointless as statistics like graduation rate, average SAT scores, faculty:student ratio are easily manipulated (How many of those faculty are dedicated full time to undergrads?　How easy is it to graduate) so where is this coming from other than rankings? Thanks for any responses to this verbose post.

Sirensong · October 25, 2009, 7:58am

<ol>
<li>Harvard has the greatest prestige, it is widely accepted as the top university in the world. Whatever country you go to, everyone will recognize Harvard.</li>
<li>Harvard has the highest yield of all typical US colleges/universities (I say typical so that nobody argues with me about Deep Springs, Julliard, or something similar) – this is probably because of it’s reputation, but it essentially means that almost nobody accepted to Harvard will turn them down.</li>
<li>Harvard has the lowest acceptance rate among typical US colleges/universities @ approximately 7%.</li>
</ol>

That’s why it’s always hailed as #1, and rightfully so. However, I do agree that Harvard is definitely not for everyone, and that people who don’t genuinely like the school should not attend just because of its reputation.

Xeaqs8 · October 25, 2009, 8:21am

I don’t think my original post was clear enough. The first two points merely reiterate that there is an undercurrent of it being the best school. I’m more interested in WHY this is and the reason behind this.

The admit rate is a misleading statistic. Since Harvard is considered the school with the most prestige, it draws the most applicants (including a lot of people who are just throwing one in as a lottery ticket) and thus, has a lower admit rate.

If it simply boils down a self-feeding cycle, (people get the Harvard=best feeling embedded in them, top students go there as a result, Harvard is seen as top) then I still feel like it feels shallow/cheapens students as a whole.

coureur · October 25, 2009, 10:11am

That does not logically follow. Any school deemed the the “best” (whatever that means) does not guarantee that the school will be filled with every single one of the very best students with no talent left for the other schools. Think of an analogy: The Super Bowl champion team may well be called the best team in football. So that probably means they have many very good players, but that does not mean that they have the very best player at every single position or even the very best at any one position.

It might true if every kid in America applied to Harvard, and Harvard had their complete pick of everyone applying, and their yeild was 100%. But none of these things is true.

I agree. So quit worrying about rankings and just look for the school that fits what you are looking for.

Part of the reason why Harvard looms so large in the public’s mind is that it’s the oldest school in the country and it is the most famous. The name Harvard has become synonymous with high quality education, research, and expertise. That’s why you commonly see news organizations interviewing Harvard profs to get their opinions on this or that issue. But none of this ensures that Harvard is the “best.”

I have no Idea what it means to be the “best” university or how such a thing could be measured. So it’s impossible to say whether Harvard has earned that title. What I will say is that Havard is not perfect by any means, but it does many, many things very well. It has does so decade after decade, century after century, and will likely continue doing so for the forseeable future.

loaduponguns · October 25, 2009, 10:21am

I like how no one has mentioned how Harvard has the highest suicide rates of any other University. Oh yeah, they’re the “best” alright.

coureur · October 25, 2009, 10:27am

^^No one has mentioned that because it’s not true:

[Hopkins</a> suicide rate in line with national college trend - News](<a href=“http://media.www.jhunewsletter.com/media/storage/paper932/news/2006/04/20/News/Hopkins.Suicide.Rate.In.Line.With.National.College.Trend-2242150.shtml]Hopkins”>http://media.www.jhunewsletter.com/media/storage/paper932/news/2006/04/20/News/Hopkins.Suicide.Rate.In.Line.With.National.College.Trend-2242150.shtml)

Excerpt:

"Studies indicate that suicide statistics do not follow trends in intensity of college programs or college type. Some Ivy League schools have lower than rumored rates of suicides. Cornell University, for example, reports an average of 5.7 student deaths per 100,000 students every year. Harvard and Duke Universities see 7.4 and 6.1 deaths, respectively, per 100,000 students annually. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology reports an annual average of 10.2 student deaths, the highest suicide rate in the nation. "

loaduponguns · October 25, 2009, 10:29am

Oh Harvard only comes in third or fourth. Much more comforting that the rate of people that want to kill themselves is slightly less than three other institutions. Good to know.

coureur · October 25, 2009, 10:41am

^^Try reading article. Harvard is not 3rd or 4th highest. At 7.4 suicides per 100,000 students it’s actually a little LOWER than the national average of all universities of 7.5.

loaduponguns · October 25, 2009, 10:43am

I have read quite a few articles on this subject. They seem to disagree with what yours has said. Statistics can be construed in any way that someone with something to gain wants to manipulate. This is especially true for these elite schools that manipulate data before even turning it over to be processed.

So I am going to go ahead and not believe what the article you linked to said.

coureur · October 25, 2009, 10:53am

^^So what are your sources? Please provide links to reputable studies showing that Harvard is so high. Please enlighten us.

h-bomber · October 25, 2009, 2:30pm

Seriously? Keep in mind that it’s 7.4 students per 100,000. The true statistic is that there are maybe 1 or 2 suicide attempts per year at Harvard (the Crimson pounces on them like nobody’s business) which, although tragic, hardly seems ridiculous.

noimagination · October 25, 2009, 2:40pm

Just so it’s clear, coureur’s data is from 2004-2005. Anyway, suicide numbers are unreliable because the numbers are so small and are easily skewed by single freak incidents.

gadad · October 25, 2009, 6:38pm

Actually, the term “flagship” is generally applied to the pre-eminent public institution in a State university system - e.g. UC-Berkeley, U.Va. U. of Wisconsin, etc. So it wouldn’t apply to Harvard.

poorplayer · October 26, 2009, 2:07am

“1. Harvard has the greatest prestige, it is widely accepted as the top university in the world. Whatever country you go to, everyone will recognize Harvard.” - Sirensong

This is probably the best reason. For whatever reason Harvard has accumulated a reputation around the world as being the best. Although there are some who may not agree they are in fact the minority.
Wherever you go people will know the name ‘Harvard’ it instills a kind of awe in people. People just know it the same way they know e=mc^2. Although they may not understand why.
Living overseas I can say that everyone (I really mean that) knows Harvard whereas not everyone knows Yale or Princeton.
We can argue about whether it is actually the best and I’m sure people would make valid points for and against, but I think that this universal recognition is what makes Harvard #1.

By the way Brown is #1 :p!

JHS · October 26, 2009, 10:31am

Peeling back the “prestige” label a bit and peeking underneath:

It has already been mentioned that Harvard was the first college established in what is now the US, and it has been continuously operating since then. The Massachusetts political elite was extremely important in the founding and development of the United States, and they were all educated at Harvard. Eight U.S. Presidents, including the current one and his predecessor, have had Harvard degrees, far more than any other university.

It is the wealthiest private nonprofit institution in the history of the world, besides the Catholic Church.

A certain amount of its prestige derives from its professional schools. It had one of the first law schools in the country, at which the modern method of legal training developed. It also had one of the first graduate business schools and professional medical schools. Its law and business schools are meaningfully bigger than their nearest competitors (except Penn’s Wharton School), meaning that they have produced a lot more alumni. Five of the nine current Supreme Court Justices are Harvard law alumni (it used to be six). Yale has a very prestigious law school, but it is 1/3 the size of Harvard’s, and its business school is of recent vintage. Princeton does not have law, business, or medical schools. The places that could conceivably match up with Harvard in this regard – Penn, Columbia, Chicago, UVa, Stanford, Michigan – are nowhere near as rich, or in the case of Stanford a relatively new arrival on the scene, and in any event still have smaller schools than Harvard across the board…

Harvard was not the first elite private university to open its doors to immigrants and non-WASPs – that would probably be Cornell – but it was one of the first, with the result that in the middle of the 20th Century its graduates’ accomplishments outshone that of its nearest competitors. Harvard was also relatively early to put non-WASPs on its faculty in significant numbers. And, unlike Yale and Princeton, it had a women’s college since the 19th Century.

Over the past generation, it seems like urban universities have become steadily more attractive both to students and to faculty. Harvard almost certainly has the best urban campus in the country. Most of its close urban competitors – Yale, Columbia, Penn, Berkeley – had much more serious neighborhood deterioration issues in the 70s, and to a large extent still do. The student protest era of the late 60s and early 70s also scarred Harvard less than places like Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Berkeley, Stanford.

And, finally, Harvard does not have the best faculty in every discipline, but it has assembled faculties that are among the best in more disciplines than any other university.

Pizzagirl · October 26, 2009, 1:32pm

Why is Harvard considered the best? Because something has to be. Like why the Mona Lisa is considered the best painting. Something’s got to fill that role.

smoda61 · October 26, 2009, 1:51pm

I’m not going to even enter the debate of who is best.

The only thing I will add goes back to the original post and how the OP hated their visit. My daughter hated her first visit. She hated her second visit. She said there was no way she was going to consider Harvard. After 9 other applications, she decided to add Harvard on because it was an easy application. It wasn’t until January, when she got called for her interview and decided to refresh her memory about Harvard, that she actually began to research what the school could offer her. Previously, because the info session and tours turned her off, she did not look any further. Going into the interview, she now realized what she had not learned about this school months before. Coming out of the interview, she now loved Harvard and was glad that she had applied. It got even better when she was accepted. Now, she is very happy to be there and is happy with the opportunities she has. The info sessions and tours for any school can be deceiving.

Hanna · October 27, 2009, 5:08pm

Pizzagirl has it right. How come Shakespeare became the shorthand for great literature in English-speaking countries? He’s fantastic, but there are other fantastic authors. It’s tradition. Once an entity is associated with being #1, it takes decades of contrary evidence to change that perception.

RSBuletz · October 27, 2009, 5:13pm

Harvard is considered the best because they have had the longest period of US institutions to promote the brand.

JHS · October 27, 2009, 6:17pm

Longevity alone doesn’t explain anything. William & Mary has been around for almost as long, and has had the denotation “University” longer. While respected, it isn’t close to second place. Clark University was one of the founding members of the Association of American Universities, which pretty much establishes its top-15 status as of a century ago, and it isn’t close now (and every other institution on that list is). Meanwhile, a bunch of relative newcomers – Cornell, Stanford, Chicago, MIT, Cal Tech – have clearly outpointed older institutions.

Moreover, I would submit that Harvard’s relative prestige has increased significantly in the past 20 years. When I was growing up, Harvard took 3-4 kids from my school every year. If the top boy wanted to go there, he could, and many did, but at least as many chose Yale, Dartmouth, MIT. All those schools are much more selective now, but Harvard’s increased selectivity is due in part to the fact that so few accepted students turn it down anymore.

There doesn’t HAVE to be a #1. I don’t have any sense that either Oxford or Cambridge has a clear advantage over the other as a general matter. Harvard’s popular-culture status is surprising, given how marginal its fundamental claim to superiority is. As an objective matter, there are at least 5 or 6 American universities that can claim equivalence (at least) with Harvard on all counts other than sheer wealth and popularity.

Re: Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s prestige is not limited to English-speaking cultures. Along with Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, and Dante, and maybe a few other candidates from the 19th Century, Shakespeare is shorthand for great literature throughout Western culture (and there’s a pretty big impact in Japan and India, too). Part of it is circular – he is the great author in English, so everyone reads him, so everyone uses him as a reference point, so he is great. But a big, big part of it is, he’s really great. Even apart from popularity, it would be awfully hard to frame an argument that any author in the past 400 years, anywhere, has a more impressive body of literary work.

Why is Harvard considered the flagship of colleges?

CONNECT WITH US