Harvard College

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Harvard Yard
Harvard Yard

Harvard College is the undergraduate section and oldest school of Harvard University, founded in 1636. The College is instructed by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which also instructs the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. In accordance with the American norm, the College remains the heart of the University, and people often confuse the two; therefore, see Harvard University for more information relevant to life, academics, etc. at Harvard College. In 2006 The New York Times wrote that "The most prestigious college in the world, of course, is Harvard, and the gap between it and every other university is often underestimated." [1]

Contents

[edit] History

The name Harvard College dates to 1638. In that year the two-year-old New College, which had yet to graduate its first students, was named in honor of the deceased John Harvard, a minister from nearby Charlestown, who in his will had bequeathed to it his library and a sum of money. In the understanding of its members at the time, the name "Harvard College" probably referred to the first (as they foresaw it) of a number of colleges which would someday make up a university along the lines of Oxford or Cambridge. The American usage of the word college had not yet developed: to the founders of Harvard, a college was an association of teachers and scholars for education, room, and board. Only a university could examine for and grant degrees; nonetheless, unhampered by this technicality, Harvard graduated its first students in 1642.

Lt Gov William Stoughton circa 1700 overlooking one of the buildings of Harvard College, constituting the earliest known view of a Harvard building
Lt Gov William Stoughton circa 1700 overlooking one of the buildings of Harvard College, constituting the earliest known view of a Harvard building

But no further colleges were founded beside it; and as Harvard began to grant higher degrees in the late eighteenth century, people started to call it "Harvard University." "Harvard College" survived, nonetheless; in accordance with the newly-emerging American usage of the words, it was the undergraduate division of the university—which was not a collection of similar colleges, but a collection of unique schools, each teaching a different subject.

Harvard's principal governing board (which happens to be the oldest continuous corporation in The Americas) still goes by its original name of "The President and Fellows of Harvard College" even though it has charge of the entire university and the "fellows" today are simply external trustees such as those who govern most American educational bodies—not residential educators like the fellows of an Oxbridge college. In current Harvard parlance, this governing board is frequently referred to simply as The Harvard Corporation.

Harvard College is considered to be one of the top undergraduate colleges in the United States, and admission to it is highly desired. For the class of 2010, the College admitted 2,109 students out of 22,753 applicants for an overall admit rate of 9.3%. For the class of 2011, a record-setting 22,955 students applied and 2,058 were accepted, for a record low admit rate of 9%. Many traditions around the College exist, including the superstitious belief that a person who touches the foot of the John Harvard statue during his campus visit is likely to be granted admission. Tour guides estimate that more than a thousand high school students touch the statue each year, the most popular location being the right foot. A few enterprising students kiss the statue, but this is generally not recommended since a popular undergraduate game is to urinate on that foot while drunk.

[edit] House system

Nearly all students at Harvard College live on campus. First-year students live in dormitories in or near Harvard Yard (see List of Harvard dormitories). Upperclass students live mainly in a system of twelve residential "Houses", which serve as administrative units of the College as well as dormitories. Each house is presided over by a "Master"—a senior faculty member who is responsible for guiding the social life and community of the House—and a "Resident Dean", who acts as dean of the students in the House in its administrative role.

The House system was instituted by Harvard president Abbott Lawrence Lowell in the 1930s, although the number of Houses, their demographics, and the methods by which students are assigned to particular Houses have all changed drastically since the founding of the system. Funds for the Houses were donated by Edward Harkness, a Yale graduate and member of Wolf's Head Society, who had previously failed to persuade Yale of its merits (but which later adopted a very similar "college" system). Lowell modeled it on the system of constituent colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, and the Houses borrow terminology from Oxford and Cambridge such as Junior Common Room (the set of undergraduates affiliated with a House) and Senior Common Room (the Master, Resident Dean, and other faculty members, advisors, and graduate students associated with the House). Non-faculty members of the Senior Common Room of a House are given the title "Tutor" and aid the students with day-to-day questions and concerns.

Nine of the Houses are situated south of Harvard Yard, near the busy commercial district of Harvard Square, along or close to the northern banks of the Charles River, and so are known colloquially as the River Houses. These are:

The remainder of the residential Houses are located around Harvard's Quadrangle (or "the Quad", formerly the "Radcliffe Quadrangle"), in a more suburban residential neighborhood half a mile (800 m) northwest of Harvard Yard. These housed Radcliffe College students until Radcliffe merged its residential system with Harvard. They are:

  • Cabot House, previously called South House, renamed in 1983 for Harvard donors Thomas Dudley Cabot and Virginia Cabot;
  • Currier House, named for Radcliffe alumna Audrey Bruce Currier;
  • Pforzheimer House, often called PfoHo for short, previously called North House, renamed in 1995 for Harvard donors Carl and Carol Pforzheimer

There is a thirteenth House, Dudley House [1], which is nonresidential but fulfills, for some graduate students and off-campus undergraduates (including members of the Dudley Co-op) the same administrative and social functions as the residential Houses do for undergraduates who live on campus. It is named after Thomas Dudley, who signed the charter of Harvard College when he was Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Tentative plans have been proposed for expanding the House system using land owned by Harvard in Allston, Massachusetts, across the Charles River from the River Houses. Suggestions include moving the Quadrangle Houses to Allston and building up to eight new Houses there. It has not yet been decided whether any of these proposals will be adopted.

Harvard's residential houses are paired with Yale's residential colleges in sister relationships; see the Harvard-Yale sister colleges article for more information.

[edit] Famous alumni

Architecture

Business

Literature

Performance Arts - Music, Theater & Film

Philosophy

Politics

For more information, see List of Harvard University people.

[edit] Core curriculum

Harvard requires all undergraduates to fulfill "the core," which requires students to take courses in 7 of 11 academic areas (such as Moral Reasoning and Social Analysis); each concentration exempts students from four. In 2006, Harvard announced it would change this policy, making the academic areas broader, although as of this writing it is unclear how and when the system will change.

[edit] Concentrations

Majors at Harvard College are known as concentrations. As of 2005, Harvard College offered 41 different concentrations:

Joint concentrations with a primary and secondary departmental focus are allowed by many departments provided the student can demonstrate how he/she intends to combine the subjects meaningfully. In April 2006, as part of a curricular review plan for College students, a Harvard faculty meeting approved for the first time the institution of secondary concentrations, known as minors at most other schools.

Other special concentrations include the Mind/Brain/Behavior Interfaculty Initiative, a certification program in Neurosciences run jointly by the departments of Anthropology, Biochemical Sciences, Biology, Computer Science, History of Science, Linguistics, Philosophy, and Psychology. In 2005, Harvard College and the New England Conservatory began offering a joint 5-year program for a combined Harvard Bachelor's degree and NEC Master of Arts.

[edit] Student organizations

Harvard has hundreds of student organizations. Every spring there is an "Arts First week", founded by John Lithgow during which arts and culture organizations show off performances, cook meals, or present other work; in 2005 over 40% of students participated in at least one Arts First event. Notable organizations include the student-run business organization Harvard Student Agencies, the daily newspaper The Harvard Crimson, the humor magazine the Harvard Lampoon, the a cappella groups the Din & Tonics and the Krokodiloes, and the public service umbrella organization Phillips Brooks House.

[edit] Media and campus publications

The Harvard Lampoon "castle" with its characteristic rooftop ibis and its purple and yellow door
The Harvard Lampoon "castle" with its characteristic rooftop ibis and its purple and yellow door

[edit] Community service organizations

  • The Phillips Brooks House Association is an umbrella community service organization operating in Phillips Brooks House of Harvard Yard, consists of 78 program committees and over 1,800 student volunteers, and serves close to 10,000 clients in the Cambridge and Boston area.

[edit] Political organizations

  • The Harvard Institute of Politics, a non-partisan living memorial to President John F. Kennedy that promotes public service and provides political opportunities to undergraduates.
  • The Harvard College Democrats, one of the largest partisan political group on campus.
  • The Harvard Republican Club, one of the largest groups on campus and the nation's oldest college political group, founded in 1888.
  • Harvard Model Congress, the nation's oldest and largest congressional simulation conference, provides thousands of high school students from across the U.S. and abroad with the opportunity to experience American government first-hand.
  • The Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations, the campus's major student group focusing on Asian politics and business.

[edit] Musical groups

[edit] A cappella groups

[edit] Choral groups

  • Harvard University Choir, the oldest university choir in the nation, formally established in 1834 but in existence since the eighteenth century, performs the oldest Christmas Carol Services in continuous existence in North America.
  • Harvard Glee Club, the oldest college chorus in America, founded in 1858.
  • Radcliffe Choral Society, founded in 1898, an all-women chorus.
  • The Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum is a select mixed-voice choir formed in 1971 when Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges merged.
  • The Harvard Radcliffe Chorus is the largest mixed choir at Harvard University and has a diverse membership consisting of faculty members, staff, community members, and both undergraduate and graduate students. HRC was founded in 1979 and continues to perform twice a year as of 2005.
  • The Kuumba Singers of Harvard College, is the largest multicultural organization in the College and focuses on the music and art of the black Diaspora.

[edit] Orchestras and bands

[edit] Theater and dance

  • The Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club is an organization that connects smaller campus theater groups and supports all campus productions. The HRDC directly oversees productions within the Loeb Theater, which it shares with the nationally acclaimed American Repertory Theatre. The HRDC also organizes seminars and workshops to connect students with professionals in the field.
  • Hasty Pudding Theatricals, known informally simply as The Pudding, is a theatrical student society at Harvard University, known for its burlesque musicals. They present original student-written and -composed musicals with near-professional production values. Formed in 1795 as a fraternity, the Pudding has performed a production every year since 1891, except during World Wars I and II. Each production is entirely student-written. Although the cast remains all-male (with female parts performed by actors in drag), women participate in the productions as members of the business staff, orchestra, and tech crew.
  • The Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert and Sullivan Players, founded in 1956 is an independent, nonprofit student theater group, dedicated to performing comic opera.
  • The Immediate Gratification Players (IGP) and On Thin Ice (OTI), Harvard's two undergraduate improv troupes, are among the oldest collegiate Improvisational comedy groups in the nation. Unlike many college troupes, both groups' constitutions require they present all campus shows free of charge.
  • Harvard blackC.A.S.T. (Community and Student Theater) is Harvard's theater group dedicated to black theatrical production and fostering a black theater community on campus. Past productions include Amen Corner, Before it Hits Home, and The Colored Museum.
  • The Harvard-Radcliffe Dance Company
  • The Harvard Ballet Company
  • The Harvard Ballet Folklórico de Aztlán
  • The Harvard Intertribal Indian Dance Troupe performs Native American powwow dances.
  • The Harvard Pan-African Dance and Music Ensemble is dedicated to raising awareness of the depth and diversity of African expressive culture through the performance of dance and music from all over the continent.
  • The Harvard Crimson Dance Team

[edit] Academic organizations

[edit] Athletics

According the university, Harvard is home to the largest Division I intercollegiate athletics program in the U.S., with 41 varsity teams and over 1,500 student-athletes.[3] Harvard is one of eight members of the Ivy League, along with Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Princeton University, The University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University.[4]

Harvard and Yale enjoy the oldest intercollegiate athletic rivalry in the United States, the Harvard-Yale Regatta, dating back to 1852, when rowing crews from each institution first met on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire. Harvard won that contest by two boat lengths. Since 1859, the crews have met nearly every year (except during major wars). The race is typically held in early June in New London, Connecticut.

Better known is the annual Harvard-Yale football game, known to insiders of both institutions as simply, "The Game." It was first played in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1875. Harvard won the initial contest 4-0. In recent years, The Game is always played on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, making it one of many significant games played on "Rivalry Day."

[edit] Recent news

  • As of Sept 12th 2006, it was announced by the University that a change in policy regarding admissions deadlines would take place. Starting in 2007, the University will eliminate its early action program and set a single application deadline of January 1st.[5]

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:


[edit] Notes

  1. ^ The New York Times, The Week in Review: Harvard Ends Early Admissions and Guess Who Wins, 17 September 2006
Schools of Harvard University
Faculty of Arts and Sciences: College • Graduate School of Arts and Sciences • Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences • Continuing Education
Faculty of Medicine: Medical School • School of Dental Medicine
Divinity School • Law School • Business School • Graduate School of Design
Graduate School of Education • School of Public Health • Kennedy School of Government
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (successor to Radcliffe College)
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