Harvard College
Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and among the most prestigious in the world.
Part of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard College is Harvard University's traditional undergraduate program, offering AB and SB degrees. It is highly selective, with fewer than five percent of applicants being offered admission in recent years. Harvard College students participate in more than 450 extracurricular organizations and nearly all live on campus—first-year students in or near Harvard Yard, and upperclass students in community-oriented "houses."
The college has produced many distinguished alumni, including high-ranking politicians, renowned scholars, and business leaders.
History
The school came into existence in 1636 by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony—though without a single building, instructor, or student. In 1638, the college became home for North America's first known printing press, carried by the ship. Three years later, the college was renamed in honor of deceased Charlestown minister John Harvard who had bequeathed to the school his entire library and half of his monetary estate.Harvard's first instructor was schoolmaster Nathaniel Eaton ; in 1639, he also became its first instructor to be dismissed, for overstrict discipline. The school's first students were graduated in 1642. In 1665, Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck "from the Wampanoag … did graduate from Harvard, the first Indian to do so in the colonial period."
The colleges of England's Oxford and Cambridge Universities are communities within the larger university, each an association of scholars sharing room and board. Harvard's founders may have envisioned it as the first in a series of sibling colleges on the English model which would eventually constitute a university—though no further colleges materialized in colonial times. The Indian College was active from 1640 to no later than 1693, but it was a minor addition not operated in federation with Harvard according to the English model. Harvard began granting higher degrees in the late eighteenth century, and it was increasingly styled Harvard University, even as Harvard College was increasingly thought of as the university's undergraduate division in particular.
Currently, Harvard College is responsible for undergraduate admissions, advising, housing, student life, and athletics—generally all undergraduate matters except instruction, which is the purview of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The body known as the President and Fellows of Harvard College retains its traditional name despite having governance of the entire University. Radcliffe College, established in 1879, originally paid Harvard faculty to repeat their lectures for women. Since the 1970s, Harvard has been responsible for undergraduate matters for women, though women's Harvard diplomas were countersigned by the President of Radcliffe until a final merger in 1999.
Academics
About 2,000 students are admitted each year, representing less than five percent of those applying; of those admitted, more than four-fifths choose to attend. Very few transfers are accepted.Midway through the second year, most undergraduates join one of fifty fields of concentration ; many also declare a secondary field. Joint concentrations and special concentrations are also possible.
Most concentrations lead to the Artium Baccalaureus. A smaller number receive the Scientiae Baccalaureus. There are also dual degree programs permitting students to earn both a Harvard AB and a Master of Music from either the New England Conservatory of Music or the Berklee College of Music over five years.
Undergraduates must also fulfill the general education requirement of coursework in a few designated fields. Each student's exposure to a range of intellectual areas, while pursuing a chosen concentration in depth, fulfills the injunction of Harvard past-president Abbott Lawrence Lowell that liberal education should produce "men who know a little of everything and something well." While some introductory courses have large enrollments, most courses are small: the median class size is just 12 students.
With Harvard University being a preeminent research institution, students have access to abundant research opportunities as early as their freshman year. Undergraduate research can be conducted in science and engineering, the social sciences, as well as the arts and humanities, among other academic disciplines. Numerous mechanisms for funding and faculty mentorship are available for both the term and the summer.
For the 2019–2020 academic year, tuition was about $48,000, contributing to about $70,000 in billed costs. Harvard offers one of the most generous financial aid programs in the country, with need-blind admission and 100% of demonstrated financial need met for both domestic and international students. Families with incomes below $65,000 pay nothing for their children to attend, and families earning between $65,000 and $150,000 pay no more than 10% of their annual incomes. Financial aid is solely based on need; no merit or athletic scholarships are offered.
As of 2020, more than half of Harvard College students receive loan-free scholarship aid from the university.
House system
Nearly all undergraduates live on campus, for the first year in dormitories in or near Harvard Yard and later in the upperclass houses—administrative subdivisions of the college as well as living quarters, providing a sense of community in what might otherwise be a socially incohesive and administratively daunting university environment. Each house is presided over by two faculty deans, while its Allston Burr Resident Dean—usually a junior faculty member—supervises undergraduates' day-to-day academic and disciplinary well-being.The faculty deans and resident dean are assisted by other members of the Senior Common Room—select graduate students, faculty, and university officials brought into voluntary association with each house. The faculty deans and resident dean reside in the house, as do resident tutors. Terms like tutor, Senior Common Room, and Junior Common Room reflect a debt to the residential college systems at Oxford and Cambridge from which Harvard's system took inspiration.
The houses were created by President Lowell in the 1930s to combat what he saw as pernicious social stratification engendered by the private, off-campus living arrangements of many undergraduates at that time. Lowell's solution was to provide every man—Harvard was male-only at the time—with on-campus accommodations throughout his time at the college; Lowell also saw great benefits in other features of the house system, such as the relaxed discussions—academic or otherwise—which he hoped would take place among undergraduates and members of the Senior Common Room over meals in each house's dining hall.
How students come to live in particular houses has changed greatly over time. Under the original "draft" system, masters negotiated privately over the assignment of students. From the 1960s to the mid-1990s, each student ranked the houses according to personal preference, with a lottery resolving the oversubscription of more popular houses. Today, groups of one to eight freshmen form a block which is then assigned, essentially at random, to an upperclass house.
A total of nine "River Houses" are located south of Harvard Yard, near the Charles River: Adams, Dunster, Eliot, Kirkland, Leverett, Lowell, Mather, Quincy, and Winthrop. Their construction was financed largely by a 1928 gift from Yale alumnus Edward Harkness, who, frustrated in his attempts to initiate a similar project at his alma mater, eventually offered $11 million to Harvard.
Two of the houses, Dunster and Lowell, were completed in 1930.
Construction of the first houses began in 1929, but the land on which they were built had been assembled decades before. After graduating from Harvard in 1895, Edward W. Forbes found himself inspired by the Oxford and Cambridge systems during two years of study in England; on returning to the United States he set out to acquire the land between Harvard Yard and the Charles River that was not already owned by Harvard or an associated entity. By 1918, that ambition had been largely fulfilled and the assembled land transferred to Harvard.
The three "Quad Houses" enjoy a residential setting half a mile northwest of Harvard Yard. These were built by Radcliffe College and housed Radcliffe College students until the Harvard and Radcliffe residential systems merged in 1977. They are Cabot, Currier, and Pforzheimer House. A thirteenth house, Dudley House, is nonresidential but fulfills, for some graduate students and the undergraduates living off campus, the administrative and social functions provided to on-campus residents by the other twelve houses. Harvard's residential houses are paired with Yale's residential colleges in sister relationships.
Athletics
By the late 19th century, critics of intercollegiate athletics, including Harvard president Charles William Eliot, believed that sports had become over-commercialized and took students away from their studies. They called for limitations on all sports.This opposition prompted Harvard's athletic committee to target "minor" sports—basketball and hockey—for reform in order to deflect attention from the major sports: football, baseball, track, and crew. The committee made it difficult for the basketball team to operate by denying financial assistance and limiting the number of overnight away games in which the team could participate.
Originating in 1852, the Harvard–Yale Regatta is the oldest intercollegiate athletic rivalry in the United States. Also well known is the Harvard–Yale football rivalry.
Student organizations
Harvard has more than 450 undergraduate student organizations.The Phillips Brooks House Association acts as an umbrella service organization.
Notable alumni
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