Well, even though I have a couple of years left of high school before graduating, I’m starting to peruse through some colleges. Well, the ones that stand out the most at the moment are Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Princeton.
So I have two questions for alumni and others: 1) What’s the best way to get in. I.E. People to talk to, best extracurricular activities and sports; 2) What is the pretentious level of these schools, and how is the social life in general?
Thanks.
Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board, CES. Survey-style questions such as this are better suited for MPSIMS. I’ll move the thread there for you now.
oh ok, whoops!
Well, colleges always say that they want someone well-rounded, so you want to make sure that you have a variety of qualifications: sports, academics, artistic activities like band, etc. By the way, I wouldn’t reccomend MIT for undergraduate work; from all that I’ve heard, undergrads there have very little contact with professors, and if you want to see a professor outside of class, you need an appointment, etc. I don’t know much about the others. Also, while it’s great to aim high, make sure that you also have at least one safety school where you’re guaranteed to get in (and if you’re guaranteed to get into an Ivy League school, then you need to be asking what you want from a college, not what a college wants from you).
Chronos’ point about availability of senior faculty to undergrads is a good one to consider. When I was at Harvard ('79 - '83) most of the senior faculty did teach quite a bit in undergraduate courses. I was able to get a very eminent psychologist as my thesis advisor, too.
I had a very good experience at Harvard. The housing structure there is somewhat different than most other schools. All freshman live in the same set of dorms (Harvard Yard) for their first year. You then get to express preferences for upperclass dorms (Houses), which are assigned by lottery. The different Houses have various traditional characters (artsy, athletic, future politicos) but this is not strictly adhered to. There are no sororities or fraternities, but the House structure assures that you get to know a group of people pretty well.
Cambridge and Boston are also very interesting places to live for a while. There are many different points of historical and cultural interest, as well as lots of big city advantages, including a great public transportation system.
All in all, they take very good care of undergraduates. You can get a lot of personal contact with instructors, which is hard to do most large Universities. (I did graduate work at Berkeley and, although it is a very fine school, I wouldn’t want to be an undergrad there unless I really knew my way around.
If you’re planning on liberal arts as a field…(and if you’re considering the Ivy Leagues then you probably are) I would suggest one of the small liberal arts colleges around. They don’t always have the name-brand recognition that Harvard does, but generally people who should know- HR resources people, Grad School admissions people- will. In fact, a lot of these small schools are better on certain subjects than the big universities.
The best place to get an undergraduate degree in Geology(my possible major, though tentative) is a small college out in the mid-west(Carlton I think), for instance. Also traditionally these have better student:teacher ratios, very few TAs, and better campus communities.
I’m not saying that the big universities aren’t great, but you should definitly consider some of the smaller liberal arts colleges.