Well, remember that there is a difference between academically good and academically challenging. Harvard isn’t that challenging of a school. Pretty much everyone that goes there will graduate with honors. However, those at the top of the class at Harvard (and even the middle) have recieved a truly top-notch education from some of the most famous, experienced, and accomplished faculty in the world. Granted, other schools also offer a top notch education, but the quantity of names at Harvard, Princeton, and the like is just enormous.
Does Harvard produce anything but lawyers and business majors? Does anyone go there to major in literature or geography?
What about in other fields - I’m an engineer and I went to Purdue. Does that suggest that I’m a better engineer than my coworker who went to West Virginia Tech? (OK, I was, but he was an idiot - he’d have been an idiot with a degree from MIT)
Does a doctor who studies at Duke or Johns Hopkins garner more respect than one who goes to a state university medical school? Apart from networking possibilities, are “name” schools that much better?
Well, right now I’m at Vanderbilt, “the Harvard of the South”. And it’s better than my state school, though that feat wouldn’t be too incredibly hard. It’s all about the funding.
When I was looking at schools, I asked a random student at Harvard “where is the admission center at?”
He answered “Here at Harvard, we do not end a sentence with a preposition.”:rolleyes:
I replied “where is the admission center at, asshole?”
*
- This never actually happened
You can always tell the English
You can always tell the Dutch (hi, Coldfire!)
You can always tell a Harvard man
But you cannot tell him much!
I don’t know about geography (is that a college major?) but I knew many literature majors there and they seemed to consider Harvard a top notch school in that field. Also medicine and physical sciences: I was an avid amateur astronomer in high school and when I went to Harvard I recognized many names on the astronomy department faculty list. One time I reached out for a reference book I’d had since high school and realized I’d just met the editor that same day. (The Handbook of Space Astronomy and Astrophysics, to be exact.)
Of course my views are highly biased.
Harvard is very highly regarded in the sciences as well. Just to throw out two big names, remember that Stephen Jay Gould was a researcher at Harvard. And James Watson was a professor there when he received the Nobel Prize (along with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins) in 1962 for their DNA research.
Harvard isn’t so hot for tech fields. MIT, Caltech, CMU, Stanford and Berkeley are all better.
I did not go to Harvard, but I did have some friends that did. I would say being at Harvard is like having the right horse on your shirt… it’s about that, in short. Making connections at Harvard, is probably not as important as having the connections to make it in to Harvard, and then, of course “making it” once there. Most people who make it in to Harvard already have the education and social background that you would expect of any of those who just graduated there. So, if you’re life revolves around the he said / she said and having a certain social status, then Ivy schools are for you. If you don’t care and just want a college education, I would not go there. From what my friends have told me of their experiences there, it was a lot different than my good old ECU education, if you know what I mean…