Harvard University Top Questions

Everybody works so hard that the social/dating scene here tends to center around extracurriculars, which definitely limits your ability to meet new people. A lot of the individuals with whom one interacts tend to be little more than lunch-time acquaintances or lecture buddies, and you tend to feel very, very isolated if you don't have a strong best friend or significant other in whom you can confide. Until I got a boyfriend, living at Harvard was extremely lonely and rather depressing, and that's not a very healthy situation.

administrators can be unencouraging when academic problems arise; many professors expound a clear personal agenda in their classes

The two most frustrating things were that the social environment was not on the same level of other, non-Ivy schools and that I sometimes felt I had so many advisors that I didn't know which one to turn to or who could help with what. Instead of catering the advising, Harvard throws a lot of advisors at you.

Harvard University is, at times, pretentious and the people can be over-achievers. This makes it hard to make friends and feel like I really fit in. I don't mind working hard to get good grades and keep my GPA up, but my family also always stressed the importance of being well-rounded and mainting a wide variety of interests. It is also hard to make friends because I not only have to focus on my school work but also keeping an almost full time job. This is all very time-consuming.

the weather (its freezing and the winter is very long)

I am sometimes frustrated by the lack of pre-professional degrees; I am very interesetd in architecture, but there is no architecture program for undergrads here. Also, people can be very competative and it seems like everyone knows where they're going in life, which makes it even harder to be following an indirect path to my goals.