Harvard University Student Reviews

Academic Life

I'm a science major whose taken a fair share of humanities electives, and there is a very different culture in those two broad fields. Humanities classes (specifically English, History, Government) are very easy in general, but you can get bad TF's that are arbitrary and you can't figure out how to please. As hard as that is for a perfectionist like the typical Harvard student to stomach, that's just something you have to take in stride; everybody gets some hits like that. The good part is that in general you never have to do much work in those classes- the typical Harvard student can procrastinate on papers and still do well. In economics, there is a wide variety between the joke classes and the very hard classes that are like science classes. Science classes are an entirely different world once you get past the intro level. Harvard science students are cut-throat competitive- unless you are a genius or already learned the material before coming, don't expect to get above average, and hence higher than a B, unless you do every practice problem in every book and do every old exam you can get your hands on- and do that before every quiz and every test. Once you learn how to study like that, you can succeed well. But expect to have a miserable life in the process. (There are easy science classes, but those are about as rare as hard humanities ones, and often very gratifying for one's GPA but not for one's learning experience).