There are tons of different experiences, but for most people, being a Harvard student doesn’t feel all that special (and that’s okay)! Students still complain about dining hall food, we are still uncertain about our careers after college, and we all still worry about navigating social life.

While getting into Harvard absolutely felt magical and unreal, that feeling eventually fades. This may be due to a psychological phenomena called hedonic adaptation, which is used to describe a person’s tendency to return to their baseline level of happiness or emotion even after periods of intense highs or lows. This is certainly prevalent at Harvard (and almost everywhere else I’m sure).

[My friend telling his mom he got into Harvard]

However, I have found that breaking out of the “Harvard bubble” has been crucial to maintaining a healthy perspective, cultivating gratitude, and ‘feeling’ more. One societal challenge that I began to engage with after I intentionally looked beyond the bubble is the challenge of homelessness. In an area of incredible wealth and opportunity, seeing very visible examples of homelessness and learning about the less visible examples (hidden homelessness) made me feel angry at our society’s failure, grateful for the warm shelter that I have, and motivated to take action. There are many ways to engage in public service at Harvard and a relatively plentiful amount of resources and support for it. Therefore, Harvard can certainly promote a feeling of agency.

With the opportunity and privilege that Harvard grants us, which can sometimes make us feel like we can do anything, comes the immense responsibility and challenge of understanding and finding out the real ‘why’ behind our actions. It’s easy to compare ourselves with others and there is certainly pressure to start something, lead an organization, or simply to be the ‘best’ at something purely for the sake of doing it. But the hardest challenge is figuring out whether the actions we take are dictated by external forces or are inspired by what we are truly passionate about. I’m sure that this grappling with purpose, meaning, and motivations is universal.

Ultimately, what I’m trying to say is that even though Harvard is a relatively unique environment, it probably does not feel all that different from any other college. The things that I will remember the most from Harvard are meaningful conversations with friends, working on projects that I care about, and dancing the night away.

If you’re interested, I’ve also written another post on what it's like to be a Harvard freshman in particular.

Wouldn’t you want to be here? A true honor to have got to be here!

As a person who loves my alma mater, I feel inclined to answer this question truthfully and honestly. I was a student at Harvard a while back, so things may have changed a bit since my time there.

I entered Harvard in the Fall of 1955. Back then, I was a lower-middle-class boy from a small village. I was a fortunate recipient of a prestigious scholarship, which made Harvard a natural choice for me. This showed the greatness of this institute, that made no distinctions and provided incomparable opportunities and transformed my life even before I entered through its gates.

David Morris Lee (Nobel Prize; Physics)

He was there at Harvard during my time there! Sadly I never knew of him.

Shing Tung Yau (Fields Medal)

A child prodigy in the making while I was at Harvard.

Now onto the academics. I promise this section is going to be short and sweet. Needless to say, Harvard is the gold standard for any academic field, attracting the best minds from all over the globe. During my time Harvard has been home to people such as David Morris Lee and Shing Tung Yau (pictured above). In essence, I assure you that the opportunity to meet the best minds and get inspired by them is truly one of the most exhilarating experiences in my gold-quality life.

But it's not all rosy-posy friends! My time at Harvard was one of the most challenging and difficult experiences of my life. At the time I was a young lad, looking to seek glory and fame but circumstances made it very hard. I had to stay my years at the now well known Apley Court and did not get along too well with apartment-mates. However, Harvard was an easy place to make friends and here I met one of my lifelong friends, Stu. who I still have daily calls today.

My golden memories at Harvard were with Stu, looking at the frozen Charles river looking at our distant nerdy cousins at the MIT. At weekends we caught up with friends from the nerdy school across the river.

Also, come to mind are the countless hours I spent playing pool, and polo as a part of the vibrant community at Harvard.

I sometimes catch myself looking outside the window, remembering the changes of fortune in my life, thinking of the thousands of memories that I made at Harvard. Harvard is and will be the avenue of visionaries of the past, present, and future.

I wrote a bit on this topic last year, when Will Deresiewicz's piece "Don't Send Your Child to the Ivy League" was going around. Forgive me for linking to a personal blog, but my post is far too long to fit in a Quora answer:

Dear Brother: These are the Friends I Met

It's mostly focused on the people and the social atmosphere, but then again, that's one of the most important parts. Excerpt:

We do have our weaknesses. In large part, Deresiewicz's observation that "kids who manage to get into elite colleges have... never experienced anything but success" more or less rings true. And he's not wrong when he notes that "[t]he prospect of not being successful terrifies them, disorients them."

Take it from me: the first few weeks (sometimes months; sometimes years) are jarring. Going from being the best in everything without really trying to -- if you're lucky -- good enough at one thing if you work really hard is pretty rough. "The cost of falling short" is something you become intimately familiar with -- just as the cost of doing business. "[N]ot trying to get an A in every class" is, for most students, a forgone conclusion. The question becomes: which classes are you going to try to get an A in? Just how much work is that going to take? Are you willing to make that tradeoff? (Hint: Sometimes "yes" is the wrong answer.)

I don’t know what it’s like to be in Cambridge, MA as an undergraduate, but as a graduate student? It’s awesome. The professors are really, really amazing. They work hard and they push you - because they don’t care that you were the biggest fish in the small pond out of which you came. You’re just one of 2200 freshman at Harvard who’s amazing and they know that they have to keep pushing you to be your best. You’ll love Cambridge. It’s an amazing city and there are 250+ languages represented in the city (and counting). There’s great food, amazing happenings (Including the A Capella choruses, etc.), and great speakers constantly coming to campus. You’ll meet the sons and daughters of Presidents, Prime ministers, etc. You’ll meet actors, actresses, politicians, inventors, scientists, and other, amazing achievers. It will be a great four years for you - if you work hard and keep your head up.

Good luck!

I earned my undergraduate degree at a state school. There were students invested in classes but also many who just did what they had to do. In my Master’s program at Harvard, every student was all in. Before class, after class, in the cafeterias etc ppl would be heatedly debating or discussing the assigned readings for the week. Instead of minimum number of pages assigned for papers, professors had to give maximums (no more than 25 pages for this research paper). It was an all consuming environment with people who were passionate about learning and about our program. Since this was an M.Ed in Risk and Prevention (strategies for program development working with at risk kids), they were the best kind of people. There was nothing like it. It was amazing.

Dear Sir

IF you are selected in Harward University congrats.

Important part is which faculty you join the team. As a student you have ample work and ample practical works like various jobs shall be given in a group tasks to comply with the given task. You have a lot of discussions in your group. You as a leader how you lead your group. How you conduct as a leader lead you team ahead of your competitive other groups. That need a lot of good library studies then draw plans how you do as a group to succeed in that. Do a lot of sand model exercises. Get new problems of various corporate bodies pose their problems. Seeking various solutions to their corporate organisations. This how you study your group to understand problem and get various solutions to the Corporatesame in the management.

This is how you will be occupied in Harward University.

All the best of luck

Thank you .

Anil Deo

I wanted to go to Harvard literally as soon as I knew what it was. I was the kind of kid who cried when I didn’t score perfectly on a test in third grade, convinced I’d never get in. What I expected and wanted from Harvard:

• Being surrounded by brilliant, fascinating people who would become my lifelong friends
• Having a huge variety of classes taught by amazing professors
• Discovering a career path that was rewarding and would form my identity
• Going to a university I could be proud of attending.

What I got:

• Being surrounded by brilliant, fascinating people, some of whom remain my closest friends. Also meeting plenty of assholes.
• Having a huge variety of classes taught by accomplished professors with varying degrees of teaching ability.
• Discovering a career path based mainly on coincidence, which has ultimately informed my current path, but certainly did not lead to it in a straight line. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.
• Going to a university I’m sometimes proud of, sometimes ashamed of, and certainly have a somewhat jaded view of. After all, some of the graduates end sentences in prepositions. More than that, Harvard is a place which exists in part to further itself, and there are flaws that naturally causes. That said, the university does spend money providing stunningly immense opportunities for their students. Everyone I know who wanted to do an undergraduate thesis that required research funding was able to. I got field experience that most people spend years after their undergraduate time scraping to find. I learned how to be a scientist by *being a scientist* and didn’t have to wait to be a grad student or research assistant. That endowment is spent on some very important things, like funding undergraduate education.

Note that in some ways I was very lucky. Many students at Harvard never feel like they find their place, which can be especially miserable given the competitive attitudes of their peers. Many feel like they spend too much time trying to be the big fish in a very big pond.

Those who were happiest, in my experience, were those content to soak up the brilliance of their peers and perform according to their own (generally substantial) abilities without needing to be the best. It’s almost impossible to be the best at anything at Harvard, which is challenging to a lot of folks, particularly given that being the best in relatively smaller environments is what got everyone there in the first place.

It’s a place made by its people. Like anywhere, people are a mixed bag. It gives tremendous opportunities in ways I didn’t understand when I decided to go there, but which have made my life incredibly rewarding.

ETA: One thing I did not expect but REALLY APPRECIATED was the degree to which the college tried to equalize the undergrad experience. Certainly, some kids had jobs and some did not, and some kids had laundry service and some did not, and some kids received financial aid stipends and some did not. BUT: nearly everyone lives in the dorms. Nearly everyone is on the meal plan. When I say nearly everyone, I mean 95% or more of students. This creates a much more level playing field than might be otherwise apparent. There were plenty of rich kids all around me all the time….and for the most part I had very little idea what anyone’s level of wealth was. It’s surreal to realize, oh, this person’s family knows the Clintons. This person had a nanny growing up. This person literally has never known what it was to worry about what they were spending their money on. In many cases, you don’t realize this sort of thing until it happens to come up after you’re already friends, because the college tries to reduce the external signals of wealth as much as they reasonably can.

It really depends on what you like and what opportunities you make use of.

One is the student body. You can have interesting classmates and dormmates, especially if you go out and meet people. Jared Kushner was in my grade, my house. Mark Zuckerberg was a year below in my house. If you’re into meeting interesting people, Harvard is great. I’m a boring science nerd, who gets called anti-social by other scientists, so that wasn’t a big thing for me.

Even outside of the rich and famous, there are some really smart people in each grade that you get to meet, so that’s pretty cool. Many people were top students in their schools and don’t know what it’s like to meet someone that’s way smarter. A humbling and also useful experience…

Then there are professors that are not only extremely smart, but at the top of their field, and sometimes you get to know them in person very well.

Classes are another thing. The hardest classes at Harvard (esp in something like math or phys) can be really hard, much harder than ones at say Columbia or Caltech. It’s because of a large student population, with enough of the best of the best in each field.

Finally, once you get out, everyone with a college education knows what Harvard is, and gives it some respect. MIT or Caltech only gets respect from scientists, Yale from humanities people, etc.

In the end though, I feel like except for the name recognition and the few rich/famous/genius-level people, the experience would probably not be that different from going to a place like Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Yale, or Princeton. It’s also more important to really make use of the opportunities (I will admit I wasted about 6 years of my Harvard education, both undergrad and early grad school….)

We thought we had to transfer.

In the first semester on campus, my roommate and I were ready to put in our transfer applications to the lovely University of Southern California.

Quite simply, we were struggling at Harvard. And it really wasn’t even the campus’ fault – it was just so cold, all the time.

To be honest, a lot of the first semester at the campus was hard for me. In fact, in the span of 6 months, I had experienced more failures than I had in my entire life up to that point combined.

I was struggling to keep up with classes, I had botched all of my auditions for plays, and I was working as a custodian on campus.

Let me tell you, there is nothing more humbling than having to clean the bathrooms of your fellow classmates.

But Harvard is a really, really magical place. What is it really like? It’s like you can do anything you could ever dream of – you just have to get someone from the campus to sign the right form.

And that’s it. A couple years later and I’ve done amazing internships in California, I write screenplays, and I made great friends with the custodial staff.

It’s not the only campus in the world that’s really great. But man, if you get an acceptance letter, you should really think twice – or three times – before turning it down.

Photo Credit: Literary Hub, Times Higher Education

Hey, so have you read thr tips regarding this topic written by Sophia Chua Rubenfeld, the daughter of the tiger mom who’s now in Harvard? I found it pretty useful honestly, and its in point!

I don’t have the link to the og source but I have the file saved in my laptop so here you go,

HOW TO STUDY LIKE A HARVARD STUDENT

Taken from Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld, daughter of the Tiger Mother

Preliminary Steps

1. Choose classes that interest you. That way studying doesn’t feel like slave labor. If you don’t want to learn, then I can’t help you.
2. Make some friends. See steps 12, 13, 23, 24.

General Principles

3. Study less, but study better.
4. Avoid Autopilot Brain at all costs.
5. Vague is bad. Vague is a waste of your time.
6. Write it down.
7. Suck it up, buckle down, get it done.

Plan of Attack Phase I: Class

8. Show up. Everything will make a lot more sense that way, and you will save yourself a lot of time in the long run.
9. Take notes by hand. I don’t know the science behind it, but doing anything by hand is a way of carving it into your memory. Also, if you get bored you will doodle, which is still a thousand times better than ending up on stumbleupon or something.

Phase II: Study Time

10. Get out of the library. The sheer fact of being in a library doesn’t fill you with knowledge. Eight hours of Facebooking in the library is still eight hours of Facebooking. Also, people who bring food and blankets to the library and just stay there during finals week start to smell weird. Go home and bathe. You can quiz yourself while you wash your hair.
11. Do a little every day, but don’t let it be your whole day. “This afternoon, I will read a chapter of something and do half a problem set. Then, I will watch an episode of South Park and go to the gym” ALWAYS BEATS “Starting right now, I am going to read as much as I possibly can…oh wow, now it’s midnight, I’m on page five, and my room reeks of ramen and dysfunction.”
12. Give yourself incentive. There’s nothing worse than a gaping abyss of study time. If you know you’re going out in six hours, you’re more likely to get something done.
13. Allow friends to confiscate your phone when they catch you playing Angry Birds. Oh and if you think you need a break, you probably don’t.

Phase III: Assignments

14. Stop highlighting. Underlining is supposed to keep you focused, but it’s actually a one-way ticket to Autopilot Brain. You zone out, look down, and suddenly you have five pages of neon green that you don’t remember reading. Write notes in the margins instead.
15. Do all your own work. You get nothing out of copying a problem set. It’s also shady.
16. Read as much as you can. No way around it. Stop trying to cheat with Sparknotes.
17. Be a smart reader, not a robot (lol). Ask yourself: What is the author trying to prove? What is the logical progression of the argument? You can usually answer these questions by reading the introduction and conclusion of every chapter. Then, pick any two examples/anecdotes and commit them to memory (write them down). They will help you reconstruct the author’s argument later on.
18. Don’t read everything, but understand everything that you read. Better to have a deep understanding of a limited amount of material, than to have a vague understanding of an entire course. Once again: Vague is bad. Vague is a waste of your time.
19. Bullet points. For essays, summarizing, everything.

Phase IV: Reading Period (Review Week)

20. Once again: do not move into the library. Eat, sleep, and bathe.
21. If you don’t understand it, it will definitely be on the exam. Solution: textbooks; the internet.
22. Do all the practice problems. This one is totally tiger mom.
23. People are often contemptuous of rote learning. Newsflash: even at great intellectual bastions like Harvard, you will be required to memorize formulas, names and dates. To memorize effectively: stop reading your list over and over again. It doesn’t work. Say it out loud, write it down. Remember how you made friends? Have them quiz you, then return the favor.
24. Again with the friends: ask them to listen while you explain a difficult concept to them. This forces you to articulate your understanding. Remember, vague is bad.
25. Go for the big picture. Try to figure out where a specific concept fits into the course as a whole. This will help you tap into Big Themes – every class has Big Themes – which will streamline what you need to know. You can learn a million facts, but until you understand how they fit together, you’re missing the point.

Phase V: Exam Day
26. Crush exam. Get A.

A2A. But really sorry Leonard, I'm not going to write yet another version of this: Quora User's answer to What do Ivy Leaguers think of non-Ivy Leaguers? [1]. There are already 3 or 4 subsequent versions floating out there...

I will only say, since I disagree with the currently top ranked, 900+ upvoted answer, that going to Harvard can be like going to any other U.S. school on the east coast--such as Columbia, Brown, Penn, BC, BU, Northeastern, Tufts, etc. etc.

I have met plumbers and construction crew workers who never finished high school who are more intelligent and more intellectually curious than the classmates I had in college and law school.

Many (not most, but many) of the friends I had at Harvard were pot-smoking, laid back, fun loving, class-ditching, easygoing types who were the opposite of the ambition-crazed, cutthroat douchebags described in some of these other answers so far.

Apparently, I hung out in very different circles than some of the other answerers. It's a big school with 4,000+ undergrads and a law and B school nearby. Not all of those students are paying $10,000 USD for their annual finals club memberships or camping out in Widener being consumed by their egos or by their insecurities. Some of us were just going to college and passing time.

--
[1]

I went to Harvard undergrad and Columbia law, and my wife got an M.A. and a PhD from Yale.

Here's how we regard people who went to a state school: they probably have less student debt than we do.

That's it. It really is. The first summer after my freshman year, I worked construction with people who never finished high school who were wiser and more intelligent (and a fuckload more humble) than the average person I knew in undergrad at the same age [18-20's].

I've met plumbers, bartenders, bouncers, teachers and cops who never went to college but are better read and many times more intellectually curious than the average lawyers I know who went to elite colleges and law schools [again same age, 30's - 40's; so we're comparing apples to apples].

Where you went to school helps you get a job and for Ivies, might create a certain mystique in certain (but not all) situations that leads to questions like this one being asked. All else being equal, of course it's worth attending a much better ranked school over a lower one (or none at all), and yes generally the people who succeed at the admissions game (which isn't based just on intelligence but also on legacy, race, extra-curriculars, etc.) tend to be more shrewd and/or harder working, but going to a school without a big name doesn't necessarily mean you're any less qualified than an Ivy Leaguer at anything.

Attending an Ivy League school also doesn't mean you're not a moron [1].

It also depends on what you're going to school for. Certain high school friends of mine like to tell me that it's statistically harder to get into CMU for CS than into Harvard. Hard to argue with when they're multimillionaires working for startups and I'm 100k+ in student debt.

--

[1] My first two weeks at Harvard, I thought everyone around me was a genius or otherwise exceptional. Like many who came before me, I figured letting me in must have been some horrible mistake. The kid across the hall was ranked top 10 nationally in chess for his age; another neighbor told me he was on the Olympic swim team; a pair of girls downstairs were obscenely wealthy and seemed worldlier than I'd ever be; and so on.

The chess prodigy is now nearing his 30's and still plays/teaches chess for a living (around Harvard Square). Two days after meeting him, I discovered that the neighbor was lying about being on the Olympic team (During a conversation where I was summarizing the feelings in the paragraph above, he and others thought it'd be funny to fuck with me by making up stuff about themselves. He turned out not to be an exceptional athlete or scholar but a great friend). In the third week, a fire alarm at 3 am on a cold and rainy night forced everyone to spend 45 minutes in our undies and PJs shivering our asses off. The reason: those two girls didn't know how to use a fucking toaster

When I was choosing between schools to which to apply early, I spoke with one of my high school teachers who had attended Harvard for undergrad, and he told me that what he loved most about the school was that “there are many different Harvards.” I had gotten the same sense during my overnight visit, that there were many different niches and microcosms, and with some time, everyone found their own. That has one of the most positive aspects of my undergrad experience. I’ve found my own communities here and tuned out of the ones that I’m not so fond of. And I can get by interacting with as few or as many people as I wish.

Something that I did not expect was the level of bureaucratic frustration that I faced. I started college in 2013, towards the beginning of the “campus sexual assault epidemic” (and I use quotes because the problem was always there; it was simply our awareness that was not), and I will be graduating in 2019, at the height of the #MeToo movement. I did not expect to be raped in my own dorm room freshman year. I did not expect the school not to side with me. I did not expect facing so many difficulties getting the legal and academic help that I needed in the aftermath. Perhaps this issue is not unique to Harvard but rather of the times.

I also expected a much higher caliber of teaching that I got. I went to Trinity School, often ranked as the nation’s #1 high school, so my teachers were brilliant and passionate, and they prepared me beyond well for Harvard. I was expecting the classes at Harvard to be even better than what I had gotten at Trinity. Alas, I was very disappointed. If you have access to the Q Guide, you will notice that many classes have lackluster ratings and reviews. Most of the professors I’ve had here, including (and especially) the ones most renowned in their fields, simply do not know how to teach. Most of the time, lectures are a waste of time, and I learn by reading the textbook or going to the CAs/TFs for help.

Entering Harvard, I was about as poor as one gets. The first pair of shoes I ever got was for college. Until then, I wore flip-flops all the way from elementary school to 12th grade.

I don’t know who gave you the idea that getting a scholarship at Harvard is a stigma. In fact, the most prestigious awards given to entering freshmen at Harvard College are the National Scholarships. Harvard doesn’t advertise these scholarships. In general, you are told about them only when they give you one. I was told that I was a Charles Chauncey Stillman National Scholar. I didn’t feel ostracized, only humbled by the generosity that Harvard bestowed on me.

You can see some sample videos of Harvard life on the Harvard website.

First of all, there is “weather.” Students trudge through the snow and slush in the winter, bundled in parkas, boots, hats and gloves. Once you get to class, the lecture hall is usually quite warm so you have to figure out where to put all those layers you need to take off. Spring is really great when the first flowers start to emerge. On the first sunny day, huge numbers of students flock to the shore of the Charles River to get sunburned.

Freshmen live in The Yard in dormitories and all eat together in one dining hall that looks like it is from Hogwarts. Upperclassmen go through a lottery to get their housing. The residences are called Houses and have associated graduate students and faculty who are affiliated and help out. They each have their own dining hall but students can sometimes eat at other houses.

There are the River Houses (Lowell, Elliot, Kirkland, Quincy, Dunster, Adams, Leverett) and the Quad (which formerly housed Radcliffe).

Generally student life is similar to that of most colleges. Sleep, eat, study, socialize. Some of the differences:

Famous people visit the campus and you might get to meet them or dine with them.

Famous people attend the college (but mostly they just wanted to be treated like a normal student).

Tour groups visit the campus so expect to have people approach you in the Yard to take your picture or have you take pictures of them in front of the “John Harvard” statue.

There are lots of fun traditions such as afternoon tea at Lowell House on Thursdays.

Each House has social events like parties, Winter Waltz, the house opera or musical, ice cream socials, etc. Each House has athletic teams that compete against each other. My favorites were crew and co-ed volleyball.

I went to the Law School as a postgrad. I didn't expect too much, because I applied in 1989, i.e. pre-Internet, and I didn't know much about Harvard or have an actual career plan - I had studied law very fast in Austria, graduating at age 22 (quite feasible in Austria since we don't have college, but still was rare enough to provide me with an excellent ranking) - and I thought studying a year in the States would provide me with an great chance to play Ultimate Frisbee at a very high level - the 1983 world champions were from Boston.

What I got: Yes, a year of very good Ultimate in Boston, also of disc golf in the area. But also, and I didn't even know to expect this: excellent academic service - I certainly wasn't used to the kind of accessibility of professors from Vienna! All of my HLS professors were super amenable to a good intellectual discussion with a student, even soliciting it - quite unknown, with a few exceptions, at the University of Vienna, which is a free public university with mass attendance.

Also, I got to graduate with Barack Obama (class of '91), which is still one of my best conversation pieces even though I did not exactly hang out with him (heck, he was a lowly grad student ;). Just kidding.) But I did hang out with lots of other people and, to this day, I have a network of excellent lawyers in ca 70 countries - mostly LL.M. colleagues from my year at HLS - which is both very lovely and very useful.

Last but not least, I believe the sheer name of Harvard on my CV has helped me quite a bit - certainly with international contracts (I sometimes work for the OSCE, UN or EU as an expert). Again, I didn't expect this, because, believe it or not, the name didn't mean that much to most Austrians at the time. Rang a bell, probably, but that was it. For my job in public service in Austria, I would have literally been better of (financially) if I had spent the HLS year working as a mailperson for the postal service, because it would have counted towards my years in Austrian public service :). These days of course, there is a lot of recognition and awe if you drop the "Harvard" name. Internationally, I believe that there are very few schools who can compete with that kind of name recognition, and , well, that helps.

I am not a student of Harvard, but the college I go to is like the Ivy League of my country. It has no reservations at all, so you know you are going to be surrounded by really smart people.

I had been struggling since high school, but assumed it would go away once i got my freedom in college. I assumed that I was always sad from the stress of getting into a good college or exams,etc. I never expected depression to still haunt me in college. Why would it, after all? I was in the best colleges in my country where people would die to get into. I was surrounded by really good people. I was 18 now and finally free.

Depression has a weird way of working. It doesn't look at whose rich and whose poor. It doesn't look at the age or social status of the person. It doesn't matter that you have everything you wanted in life. It still burdens you.

Grades started to fall. the once topper of her class was now part of the lowest 10% of her college. the happy go lucky bubbly girl became the quiet distracted person at the corner of the class or cafeteria. The girl who was always surrounded by people and friends became the sad cat lady who eats alone. In a group of friends she started feeling alien. crying alone at random moments. My classmates were doing great stuff(building racing cars to getting internship in google), some were even earning. I was happy if i could get out of bed.

Being depressed student in a college like Harvard is just as painful as anyone else anywhere else. The only difference is that your friends and colleagues are doing so much better, that you are harder on yourself.

And then there’s always those people who say, “You're in a freaking amazing college. You have nothing to be depressed about. Stop wasting your time and your parents money and do something!”

No they don’t help.

I suffer from seasonal depression and one thing that I didn't expect when I decided to attend was the lack of sunlight. I don't just mean that there were a lot of gray days in Boston (although there were). I also mean that, given the high latitude of Boston compared to my hometown of Baltimore, the days from September 21 until March 21 were legitimately shorter than I was used to. It just got worse when daylight savings time stopped, because college students tend to get up late and stay up late, and I was not really a morning person to begin with.

I ended up taking a leave of absence near the end of my first semester, partially due to depression. When I came back a year later, depression was still an issue, partially due to the lack of light and partially due to the stress of classes. By November, the depression started feeding off itself.

My Tuesdays and Thursdays that semester were particularly bad. I had mostly stopped going to my 10am class (a large lecture class) because of my depression, because it made it even harder to get up in the morning than usual. That meant I usually got up between 11am and 12:30pm. Before I got up, I had no access to sunlight, as it was bright enough outside my window at night that I had trouble getting to sleep if my shades were not closed. I got up, showered, and went to lunch. The walk to lunch and back was usually the only daylight I saw on Tuesdays and Thursdays that term, as I had a 1pm photography class in a room with no windows for three hours. When I got out at 4pm, the sun was in the process of setting.

There was not a single school year that I was at Harvard that I did not have a severe depressive episode. The earliest one was mid-October my junior year; the latest was mid-February my sophomore year. I even determined that you could tell that much of Harvard was suffering along with me. The evidence was in the CUE/Q Guide scores. The average score of all fall-term classes was 0.3 points out of 5 lower than the average of all spring term scores. I doubted the reason was that fall-term classes were legitimately worse; the more likely explanation was (and still is) that students felt a lot more "blah" when they filled out the evaluations in December/January than when they filled them out in May/June.

Not all that bad, frankly, especially since I knew I wasn't going to graduate school in physics. Having done some biology research in high school and mostly been interested in biological questions (albeit those with a quantitative bent), I entered Harvard with the intention of concentrating in the biological sciences (either MCB or CPB). Although I did do Math 25, I focused on MCB 52 and 54 my freshman year, and the physics course I took in my freshman spring (15a) was somewhat of an afterthought.

Arvin Chang is correct in that some of the edge in entering as a "precocious" student disappears quickly (although the standard for being "precocious" at Harvard is high), as most of your peers are intensely motivated and quick to learn, especially when you get to the sophomore- and junior-level classes. (If anything, the one piece of advice I would have left for my freshman self would have been that hares do lose to tortoises or, as is often the case, hardworking hares.)

Actually, one of the things that many people forget is that physics is hard. By that I mean that even some of the "run-of-the-mill" intermediate courses, such as your sophomore-level classical mechanics (151) or electrodynamics (153) course, take some work to really understand, especially when your professor starts to supplement the class with many of his own readings (to supplement "holes" [!] in Goldstein). I would say many students, even those who get comfortable A's, don't end up mastering the material. When I self-study Griffiths, Jackson, or even something as relatively simple as Purcell, I still feel that there are rough spots in my E&M knowledge. In that sense, being an "average" student doesn't have as much sting (if you're a person with a big ego from high school, that is) because the material is hard for everyone.

In any case, I didn't remember much intense competition for grades in the department—it was actually somewhat of a surprise to find out who the A and B students were, when I did find out on occasion. It was clear who the really outstanding students were, but most students were intelligent enough that there was no real "physics elitism" among undergrads. No one wanted to refrain from working with you on problem sets or simply hang out just because you weren't a top physics student. And as a whole, the physics undergrad community (and, by extention, the entire population of math/physics/CS/statistics undergrads) felt tight-knit, with no stigma against the "average" students. Of course, many of the students who were heavily involved in SPS and the like turned out to be outstanding students as well, but it was merely correlation.

The only downside of being an "average" student is that you might not be able to get into a top-five physics PhD program, but on the whole, most have excellent postgraduate careers as software engineers, consultants, and financial analysts at top companies (just like the rest of the "average" students at Harvard). Many also end up attending top law or medical schools, as well as top PhD programs in various disciplines.

As far as Physics 16 goes, one of my friends was a U.S. team member at IPhO and took 15a with Dr. Morin. Yes, Physics 16 is an amazing experience, one that I wish I would have taken advantage of during my freshman fall (or even sophomore fall), but the fringe benefits of Physics 16 are largely gone by the time you get to more advanced classes. I'm sure there were many "average" physics concentrators who took Physics 16 and many outstanding concentrators who did 15a. As far as I know, Physics 16 is mostly about the bonding over the "trial by fire" and the excitement generated by the amazing peers, problems, and Prof. Georgi.

If I see someone with a Harvard sweatshirt at Stanford, my first thought is that this individual is probably a Harvard graduate pursuing an advanced degree at Stanford. It’s nice to see them appreciating and partaking of the education at two of the finest universities in the nation. It’s not uncommon for Harvard grads to pursue graduate studies at other universities, and that would be my first guess.

Sometimes however people are just playing dress-up and wear the Harvard insignia just like any other brand logo. They’re entitled to do so, and quite frankly even Harvard grads play that game when they buy insignia gift items for friends and family. It’s not uncommon to buy a Harvard shirt for one’s child, nieces or nephews any more than it would be to buy them an NFL jersey. If you see this kid on the campus of another university, you’re not likely to mistake him for a Harvard grad.

One of the great events at Harvard or any other top university is graduation. While the doctoral graduates are all dressed in Harvard’s robe color (which is called crimson but is really more between magenta and bubble-gum pink)…

A far more interesting sight however is the faculty, each of whom dress in the doctoral robe of the institution where they earned their degree. One of the pastimes during graduation is to try to identify the schools the faculty members graduated from from the color of their regalia. This is akin to students each wearing a sweatshirt from their previous school:

When I was a teen my brother’s girlfriend gave me a Harvard sweatshirt. I loved it, and wore it all the time. It was years before I realised that Americans thought this meant I was asserting I had been to Harvard. To me it was no different than wearing an NYPD hat, or a Green Bay Packers jersey. So, belatedly, if any Harvard alums were upset about it - sorry, I had no idea.

Sadly, my son is making much the same error. He got admitted to Yale, and so Yale sent him a T-shirt with his admission letter. He chose to go to university somewhere else, but he still wears his Yale T-shirt regularly - mostly at the gym.

It's pretty damn good. At least it was in my opinion.

As soon as you start as a freshman there is the Freshman International Program Freshman International Program (FIP) where immediately you meet the 10% (around 200) of admits who were admitted internationally. So as soon as you arrive you have good time to meet the all the international students in your graduating class.

There is a huge diversity of admits from all across the world. My FIP group had people from Georgia, Ireland, China, Germany, Cameroon etc... Their backgrounds and stories were humbling and incredible.

The US students are well-informed, respectful and knowledgeable about the affairs of other countries - so in no way do you feel alienated from the majority of students who are from the states.

There are special receptions, dinners with professors and faculty, drinks and a great network of students who support you throughout your time at Harvard.

It's an awesome experience - they know that they are considered the pinnacle of higher education globally and so treat their international students with great consideration and affordances.

Remember, the secret to learning quickly is to make mistakes and correct them! Close the book and test yourself.
Take very brief notes on a topic. Take a short break and then move on to another topic. After an hour or so, return to the original topic and see if you can recall the points you had written down. Any points you forgot or got wrong, circle your original notes with a coloured pen. Each time you review, (which only takes two minutes), circle any omissions or errors with another colour. Having made the same mistake a number of times, your brain has a colourful reminder when you enter the exam. May not be too helpful if your exam is tomorrow, but does work well over the long term! Ideally you should quickly review the topic after an hour, the next day, the next week, the next month and in four months time.

Since I was asked to answer this, I’ll indulge. This answer is focused on undergraduate education. Graduate education is very different, and while there are many graduate fields where Harvard would be considered a leader, there are many others where it is not.

Let’s start by noting two facts.

There is not a huge difference between Harvard, and certain other very prestigious and highly ranked universities. I’d say there’s a list of five or so schools that any reasonable person should agree are equivalent to Harvard in almost every non-superficial way, and another ten that are slightly less prestigious but still peers.

On the other hand, there is a significant difference between Harvard and most other world universities.

Now, why is this the case; why is Harvard such a prestigious place to get a bachelor’s degree? The question is focused on teaching quality, and compared to the vast majority of universities, Harvard is superior. This is due to several factors.

First, Harvard has a lot of money, and can afford to attract the best talent. To be fair, faculty at all elite schools are generally recruited for their research skills, with teaching a very distant afterthought. Yet, Harvard is such a desirable place to be that they can still insist that the faculty do a competent job, and the same can be expected of the graduate students who do the rest of the teaching, and anybody they hire for positions focused on teaching (ie, non-tenure track stuff) is going to be extremely good at their job. I don’t know the details of how Harvard divides teaching duties between non-tenure track faculty and graduate students; I only know that the tenure-track faculty aren’t doing a ton of it.

Second, Harvard admits students who are very good students, and can set very high expectations. The students at many, if not most, American universities are putting in significant amounts of time working off campus and/or raising families or helping their relatives raise families. Harvard students generally aren’t doing anything besides Harvard, and thus they can be asked to do more, and harder work. Yes, we all know there are some students who aren’t especially good students or interested in school, and were only admitted because their families are highly likely to donate staggering amounts of money. These kids are rare.

Finally, Harvard has a lot of resources for all the equipment and facilities. Their chemistry students won’t be held back because the latest lab equipment is too expensive.

Because of all these things, Harvard can teach more, and in greater depth, than less prestigious schools. Yes, physics is physics, but at a typical public university the freshman calculus sequence won’t use calculus. At Harvard, it will, although there is probably a different one that’s aimed at non-science people satisfying a general education requirement. The humanities classes might expect you to read twice as much a week as at less prestigious schools. There will be opportunities to do research at pretty much any college or university. At most places, few people will know the professor you work for. At Harvard, they are likely famous in their field. Which professor probably knows more about their field?

To wrap this all up, though, let’s note that while Harvard is a great place to get educated, a significant part of the attraction has little to nothing to do with that. The simple fact that someone was admitted to Harvard is impressive, and says very good things about them. A huge part of the value is simply that most people weren’t able to get in. I didn’t even try, because I knew it wasn’t happening. It turned out fine for me. I got an even better education at the University of Chicago, and I’ll never have to take shit from an Ivy League grad as far as that’s concerned. But I recognize that being admitted to Harvard is a pretty impressive thing, and worthy of respect. I’ll even throw the Veritas crowd a bone and admit that their alma mater is more prestigious than mine.

We should also note that Harvard has been associated with the elites of the US for decades, frankly centuries, and thus part of the allure is the networking opportunities.

It's not just difficult to fail out of Harvard -- it's difficult to fail out of most Ivy League schools and those that are rated highly by the U.S. News and World Report rankings.

Having students fail out reflects poorly on an educational institution. Universities keep and publish detailed records on graduation rates. On the other hand, they don't keep detailed records many other metrics of conventional success like whether their graduates are employed, their salaries (if employed), etc. Thus, for a prestigious university, failing out a student is like taking a writedown in accounting. It's much easier to "hide the loss" by graduating the student instead.

I realize this sounds silly, but it's the truth. The U.S. News and World Report college rankings, which despite being roundly condemned every year are still hugely important in higher education, place 16% of their weight on 6-year graduation rates [1]. If a university is chasing a higher spot in those rankings or trying desperately to secure their position, why voluntarily take a hit on that statistic by failing out a student?

[1] How U.S. News Calculates Its Best Colleges Rankings

Ok, my own experience was at U of Chicago, which is a very different culture than Harvard. I was the son of pipefit with AUD history that spoke with a drawl. U of chicago did not have as many rich kids as harvard but had a lot of students whose parents were sucessful academics/researchers. There was a lot less ethnic diversity at Chicago then. There sure weren’t many students from blue collar backgrounds or the Greater Appalachian cultural area (or for that matter the South/Plains areas) and many that were weremore typical of the Chicago student body than those communities. What I saw had harvard stuck me as a strange monoculture. Racially, it was more diverse than Chicago. In terms of parental background it was pretty homogenous. You had a lot of students from high achievement parental background. Often that means their parents were successful business people.

Anyhow, at chicago i got some open humilation from other students at times(Now i will freely admit, i am not especially socially skilled). I was also asked by a classmate about public mistreatment i got from a prominent professor. That probably would have resulted in disciplinary action at Harvard. I had a few professors with whom i had a real relastionship. Two of them are below

Arcadius Kahan - Wikipedia

Maynard C. Krueger - Wikipedia

I got one of 4 A’s kahan gave that year in a class of 100 students. He also warned me not to talk to any other faculty member in the department about the work I did for him. In his words “I want to see you graduate”.

I also had stuff like professors giveing me a much lower grade than independent observersfelt i deserved for political, cultureal or class reasons. I think the reverse also happened sometimes.

I think there is a lot less variation in GPA from harvard than chicago(when I graduated, in 1981, median graduating GPA was 2.78 and SAT’s were 1300 or so—old scale I think that would be 1360 today).

The competition at harvard is more around access to honors classes and some of the more interesting activities like the Lampoon. There is also the matter of other standards. Joe KEnnedy bought his degree for $5 Million in 1953 dollars. Poor kids just can’t do that.

I think in general atypical students would be treated more politely at Harvard than i saw. I expect their graduation rate is pretty decent. i don’t think they get the same opportunities as the rich/connected students as ageneral rule.

I wish that data were collected on stuff like long term mental health, wealth attaintment and satisfaction outcomes from both groups for harvard and various other instituations. I’m not sure what the data would say—the fact these wealthy institutins are not being transparent and proactive suggests to me they have somethign to hide. Institutions like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT,Stanford, Caltech have a strong position of oligopoly and need to be regulated as such.

One small datapoint have: the Meyerhoff Scholars program at University of Maryland at one point was claimed by some analysts to be a better place for young black men that wanted a scientific career than harvard. That suggests to me that Harvard at time emphasizes appearance and form over substance.

One of the former Harvard faculty members told me that he thought only about 20% of Harvard undergraduate students really got anything special in the way of educational experience(I think he was looking maintly at instructional quality). With Harvard’s (sometimes ill gotten) money, there is no excuse for lack of real excellence in every dimension—including providing an optimal educational experience for poor scholarship students.

Once ina movie, i heard a line “we are the phone company, we don’t care, we don’t have to”. Marlon Brando said something similar on why he relied on cue cards and didn’t memorize his lines after he was a big star. I don’t think the people running harvard are malicious, but i don’t think they will change anything until someone holds their feet to the fire. My great Grandmother’s uncle was actually one of the more interesting Harvard alumni(a major abolitionist leader). My kids were raised in the Unitarian Church that gave birth to Havard. I didn’t even apply even as a national merit student because as an idealitic young man I was turned off by what i could see from afar of Harvard. i say what i say in hopes that harvard can be all it really can be.

There have always been personal, academic and other benefits that I have received during and after my MBA. Here are some mentioned below-

Personal Benefits:

1. Gain Independence, Self-Reliance, and Self-Confidence

Alone in a foreign land, one experiences the rough and tumbles of life. My personal growth took place because of living independently. Needless to say, I became more assured in my thought and expressions. I also became a self-reliant and confident person.

2. Broaden My Horizon

Why think small, when you can think big? As an international student, I got to understand a wide range of perspectives on even the smallest of issues. The breadth of thought, with a depth of insight, are some of the few personal benefits I gained in my international program.

3. Gain Valuable Life Skills

Life, we know, is the best teacher. But in unfamiliar terrain, life can be a hard taskmaster. I picked up valuable life skills as I grapple with day-to-day issues. Whether it is traveling to remote places without an internet connection, or merely getting a flat tire fixed, I faced many hurdles. Overcoming these challenges with creative solutions was my greatest asset. I never went back to saying, “It’s impossible!”

4. Enhanced My Communication Skills

One of the greatest benefits of studying abroad was improving my communication skills. I worked hard to understand and be understood. Once I stayed abroad for some time, I got used to different speeches, accents, and gestures. I learned to appreciate diverse cultural and linguistic patterns. These skills helped me turn into a culturally suave and sensitive person.

Academic Benefits:

1. Seek Mentorship with Distinguished Professors

Many top-level institutes have Nobel laureates, influential industry leaders on their faculty. With the world’s best minds within reach, I gained access to cutting edge knowledge. On rare occasions, I got to work on confidential, high-value research projects that accelerated my career graph.

2. Intern with Career-Defining Companies

I may have started out as a financial analyst, but over the period of my internship, I discovered that my talents lay in fundraising, operations, and strategy. By building my portfolio of experiences beyond my area of specialization, I stood to gain tremendously in future career choices.

3. Choose from a Wide Range of Subjects

I selected from a broad spectrum of electives that I found interesting. I enjoyed studying those subjects hence I could perform well in academics and was aspired to be a world leader in my field.

Career Benefits

1. Met People from Across the Globe

A foreign study program was my golden ticket to experience the world. Right from tasting exotic cuisines, to learning new languages, to participating in foreign cultural programs, I had it all. Such experiences added to my profile. Not just did I learn to adapt to new geographies, I also become culturally sensitive which helped me deal with challenges of overseas work.

2. Strengthen My Leadership Skills

Be a change leader. Forge your own path. Become a guru of your own domain. My experience at an international school helped me develop leadership skills. I had an opportunity to lead, and create teams. As a student, I was exposed to dynamic challenges.

Apart from the personal, academic, and career benefits listed here, there are many other benefits I received. I was able to build my social and professional network with my international classmates. This study abroad experience made me a well-rounded, dynamic individual. It helped me step out of my comfort zone, and set sail on unchartered waters.

The short answer is that Harvard is in no way better than hundreds and hundreds of other colleges and universities. It is an excellent school, but on many metrics it is not as good as others.

1. Range of subjects—Harvard does not teach subjects that are found at many other schools. Undergraduate business, the performing arts, many therapeutic fields such as music therapy, speech pathology, and many others are lacking there. There are, however, some esoteric courses at Harvard, like Armenian that are not offered elsewhere.
2. Harvard is weaker in technology than many other schools. MIT is down the road and is much better. Harvard students are allowed to take courses at MIT, which makes one wonder why they didn’t go to MIT to begin with.
3. Many Harvard classes use graduate teaching assistants to a great extent. Smaller liberal arts colleges frequently have much better instruction because classes are smaller, and connections between students and professors are much better at schools like Amherst, Williams, Wesleyan, Reed, Pomona, Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, Macalester, Carlton, or Grinnell
4. The Harvard “brand” is deceptive. Your question assumes that Harvard is “better” because it is better known. This is a fallacy. Harvard is highly selective largely because so many more students apply there than can be accepted. Harvard cultivates this. It sends out more than 100,000 solicitations every year to promising students, but then only accepts less than 2,000. This makes the school seem more exclusive.
5. Harvard’s reputation, like all schools in the silly ranking systems, relies primarily in its graduate and professional schools. Harvard College is the undergraduate branch of Harvard University. The students at Harvard College have very little exposure to the graduate departments, and often no exposure to the graduate-level faculty. There are actually two libraries—a graduate school library (Widner) and an undergraduate library (Lamont) with fewer books. Harvard undergraduates are not allowed to use Widner Library except with special permission.
6. New England winters can be depressing for many students. making learning difficult.
7. Despite attempts at diversity, the Harvard student body is overwhelmingly white and wealthy. This can be intimidating for students coming from lower income and cultural minority groups.

Harvard should be approached like any other excellent school. Students who want to go there need to do personal research to see if Harvard is the “best fit” for them. For some students the offerings will be excellent and suitable. For others they will be much better served at some other school. Sadly, many students, particularly international students, are unsophisticated and they see Harvard admission as some kind of “trophy” for being smart. It is not, and students who view it in this way are not serving themselves or their education well.

By your definition, that would make most physics students at Harvard "average." You kind of make it sound like people come in with a "QFT or bust!" attitude but if everyone came here having known everything already, that would defeat the purpose of learning. There are a few people who opt to take upper level classes in lieu of the introductory sequence (the department is generally lenient about prerequisites but requires that if you skip a class in the intro sequence, you take some equivalent upper level class) but they are a small percentage of what is already a small-ish department (compared to the other concentrations).

Almost everyone takes the 15a/16/b/c sequence and even people who have the background and ability to take upper-level courses will take them anyways since these courses are not by any means supposed to be "easy." As a result, you have a wide range of backgrounds. Some people will breeze through the problem sets and finish them the day they get released while others will toil over them at office hours and at Physics Night the night before they're due. Does that sound unfair and unequal? Yes, but that's life - there's always going to be someone who's smarter or better prepared or more privileged than you. What matters is that everyone who gets accepted to Harvard is smart and ambitious to begin with. Furthermore, physics concentrators are a more self-selected bunch; unlike majors like government or economics (no offense to gov and econ concentrators! :P), physics classes definitely doesn't have a reputation for being pushovers. The fact someone took Physics 15a (standard introductory mechanics) instead of 151 (advanced classical mechanics) does not say anything about their intelligence; in fact, it probably speaks more about their background and comfort level and intentions.

It’s hard to know what you consider to be a Harvard admissions mistake. Harvard states that every admitted student has the ability to successfully graduate, and from what I’ve seen, that is true. Virtually every student who enrolls does go on to graduate however a couple end up transferring or dropping out to start a company or attend to a family crisis, etc.