A Harvard-educated lawyer tried to talk me into being a Republican today.

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6. the harvard student body is unique, even distinguished from places like princeton and yale.

while there are certainly over-privileged kids at any ivy league school, harvard has an exceptionally large concentration of them.

especially at the undergraduate level, princeton and some other schools are notably superior to harvard because harvard has such an emphasis on its graduate schools. harvard is all about getting the nobel prize winners and having their professors earn nobel prizes and train their graduate students to win nobel prizes, and to connect to washington and serve in the white house and so on.

that's not to say harvard isn't a great undergraduate education, but it's NOT the best.


it is, however, the single most prestigious school name you can possibly put on your resume. for parents who want their kid to be seen as "#1", that's the ticket. EVERYONE has heard of harvard, and EVERYONE knows it's a great school.


point is, a lot of people attend harvard for the wrong reasons, and a lot of people don't get out of harvard anything like what it has to offer. professors there often teach by video, or have their graduate students do the real work. that rarely happens at, say, princeton. at a place like harvard, you have to be more self-directed. if you want to skate by, if you want to spend 4 years with your eyes closed, doing the work but not fully appreciating it, you can certainly do that at a place like harvard. no one's going to bop you over the head and enlighten you.