Mon 11 Apr 2016
Choose Williams Over Harvard
Posted by David Dudley Field '25 under Admissions at 6:26 am
In celebration of previews, reasons why you should choose Williams.
There are several hundreds high school seniors¹ who have been admitted to both Williams and Harvard (and Yale and Princeton and Stanford and . . .). Fewer than 10% of them will choose Williams over these more famous schools. Some of them are making the right choice. They will be better off at Harvard, for various reasons. But at least half of them are making the wrong choice. They (you?) would be better off at Williams. Why?
1) Your professors would know your name. The average Harvard undergraduate is known by name to only a few faculty members. Many students graduate unknown to any faculty. The typical professor at Harvard is primarily concerned with making important contributions to her field. The typical professor at Williams is primarily concerned with educating the undergraduates in her classes. Consider this post by Harvard professor Greg Mankiw, who teaches EC 10, the equivalent of ECON 110/120, to over 750 students each year.
Being an ec 10 section leader is one of the best teaching jobs at Harvard. You can revisit the principles of economics, mentor some of the world’s best undergraduates, and hone your speaking skills. In your section, you might even have the next Andrei Shleifer or Ben Bernanke (two well-known ec 10 alums). And believe it or not, we even pay you for this!
If you are a graduate student at Harvard or another Boston-area university and have a strong background in economics, I hope you will consider becoming a section leader in ec 10 next year. Applications are encouraged from PhD students, law students, and master’s students in business and public policy.
Take a year of Economics at Harvard, and not a single professor will know your name. Instead, you will be taught and graded by (poorly paid) graduate students, many with no more than a BA, often not even in economics! But, don’t worry, you will be doing a good deed by providing these students with a chance to “hone” their “speaking skills.”
2) You will get feedback on your work from faculty at Williams, not from inexperienced graduate students. More than 90% of the written comments (as well as the grades) on undergraduate papers at Harvard are produced by people other than tenured (or tenure track) faculty. The same is true in science labs and math classes. EC 10 is a particularly egregious example, but the vast majority of classes taken by undergraduates are similar in structure. Harvard professors are too busy to read and comment on undergraduate prose.
3) You would have the chance to do many things at Williams. At Harvard it is extremely difficult to do more than one thing in a serious fashion. If you play a sport or write for the paper or sing in an a cappella group at Harvard, it is difficult to do much of anything else. At Williams, it is common — even expected — that students will have a variety of non-academic interests that they pursue passionately. At Harvard, the goal is a well-rounded class, with each student being top notch in something. At Williams, the ideal is a class full of well-rounded people.
4) You would have a single room for three years at Williams. The housing situation at Harvard is horrible, at least if you care about privacy. Most sophomores and the majority of juniors do not have a single room for the entire year. Only at Harvard will you learn the joys of a “walk-through single” — a room which is theoretically a single but which another student must walk through to get to her room.
5) You would have the opportunity to be a Junior Advisor at Williams and to serve on the JA Selection Committee and to serve on the Honor Committee. No undergraduate student serves in these roles at Harvard because Harvard does not allow undergraduates to run their own affairs. Harvard does not trust its students. Williams does.
6) The President of Williams, Adam Falk, cares about your education specifically, not just about the education of Williams undergraduates in general. The President of Harvard, Drew Faust, has bigger fish to fry. Don’t believe me? Just e-mail both of them. Tell them about your situation and concerns. See who responds and see what they say.
Of course, there are costs to turning down Harvard. Your friends and family won’t be nearly as impressed. Your Aunt Tillie will always think that you actually go to “Williams and Mary.” You’ll be far away from a city for four years. But, all in all, a majority of the students who choose Harvard over Williams would have been better off if they had chosen otherwise.
Choose wisely.
¹The first post in this series was 11 years ago, inspired by a newspaper story about 18 year-old Julia Sendor, who was admitted to both Harvard and Williams. Julia ended up choosing Williams (at least partly “because of the snowy mountains and maple syrup”), becoming a member of the class of 2008, winning a Udall Foundation Scholarship in Environmental Studies. Best part of that post is the congratulations from her proud JA.


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14 Responses to “Choose Williams Over Harvard”
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Whitney Wilson '90 says:
How about Williams vs. Princeton? This Washington Post article is about an undocumented DC kid with very little money who is originally from El Salvador trying to pick between Princeton, Williams, and Emory.
April 11th, 2016 at 4:48 pm'20 says:
@Whitney Wilson ’90
The point of these posts, at least as I understand them, isn’t to do fantasy match-ups w/ Williams and every school in existence but instead to articulate the main differences between an elite LAC like Williams and an elite research university like Harvard.
Only 4) in the above list is really particular the Harvard; everything else could as easily be about Princeton or Yale or Stanford.
If we’re really interested in searching out the particular differences between here and other places I think we’d be better served by starting with schools that resemble us more — Swarthmore, Amherst, Pomona.
But of course the short answer is that
April 11th, 2016 at 9:53 pmJohn C. Drew, Ph.D. says:
I’ve found a website that uses the political donations of the faculty and staff to identify the most liberal and conservative education institutions. See, https://www.crowdpac.com/games/lookup/universities
Based on political donations of the people who work there,
Williams College is rated 8.4L or the 18th most liberal out of 150.
https://www.crowdpac.com/games/lookup/universities?name=Williams%20College
In contrast, Harvard University is 7.7L or only the 55th most liberal out of 150.
April 11th, 2016 at 11:40 pmhttps://www.crowdpac.com/games/lookup/universities?name=Harvard%20University
Whitney Wilson '90 says:
@’20.
I agree with your post. The (not well explained) point of my comment was that the article itself is very interesting as window into a very accomplished high school student facing a problem very few kids of his academic caliber do, and Williams has a fairly prominent role in the article.
April 12th, 2016 at 10:16 am'20 says:
@John C. Drew
I think it’s pretty well known that the academy leans disproportionately left, and I’m not terribly interested in the degree to which Williams might outpace Amherst or Harvard in its liberalism.
What I’d really like to know is the degree to which each elite college sustains a population of heterodox scholars and students. Trying to pick a non-liberal university, given the current political persuasion of the academy, doesn’t really seem possible, but, some elite schools, despite their overall liberalism, do better jobs at sustaining a climate where dissent can happen.
Princeton has the Madison program, Yale the Buckley lectures, Stanford has a pretty active (although not large) cohort of Libertarian students and I believe a publication.
It’d delight me to no end, as an incoming student, if the college could establish a beachhead of sorts from which the heterodox at the school could, if not equal their liberal peers at the college proportionally, at least emerge from the shadows somewhat.
I don’t think it’d take a lot to do either; maybe five or six conservative (or just generally heterodox) professors at a Williams and a small cohort of students, if organized intelligently, could make a real difference.
At the moment though my hopes for diversity of opinion at the college are fairly low. I know what I got myself into, pretty much, and while I love the school it pains me to no end that this is the state of our “marketplace of ideas”, so to speak.
April 12th, 2016 at 11:49 amJohn C. Drew, Ph.D. says:
’20
Late last month I had an email exchange with the authors of Passing on the Right, a new book that explore the barriers that keep conservatives — and mainstream conservative opinions — out of the academic profession.
See, https://global.oup.com/academic/product/passing-on-the-right-9780199863051?cc=us&lang=en&
This is a great book and you can get it on Kindle for less than $10.
In their view, the the worst place for conservatives is at the elite liberal arts colleges. Apparently, it is easier to find conservative mentors and scholars at prestigious research universities or state-run institutions.
Sadly, conservative scholars who hide their true beliefs from their colleagues prior to gaining tenure report that they feel most guilty about how they had to shun their conservative students simply to keep their job hopes alive.
April 13th, 2016 at 2:14 amanon says:
Williamstown or Boston? Seems like apples and oranges to me. One places is going to be much more liberating in terms of being able to live on the economy, get a job, live in town, have a car, mix with other groups, be an adult… per say. That would be Harvard.
If you want an extension of the prep school environment- which I know David likes- with JA’s for everyone- no car, living in a dorm- that would be Williams. Perhaps a better environment to study because it is more restrictive and you are not going to mix with any outsiders. No annoying distractions from the people at MIT, Boston College…
Would also depend on athletic goals.
Depends on what you want to study as well.
Just a few days ago didn’t David advocate for picking Harvard over Williams- given the current climate of censorship on Williams’ campus?
April 14th, 2016 at 3:23 pmanon says:
I don’t know… Boston or Williamstown at age 18… hmmmm…. a dorm or a brownstone with a job at Fathers Too catching games at the Garden and Fenway. Gillett Stadium for some Patriot Football. Tailgating for Yale V Harvard.
Three bars you cannot get into- or thousands that you can?
I know which one spikes the interest on the party meter, if nothing else.
April 14th, 2016 at 3:27 pm'20 says:
@John C. Drew
I’d have to agree that elite LACs most easily fall to the vicissitudes of group think, partially because its easier to maintain a party line when the whole college community consists of a few hundred professors and a few thousand students.
But on the flip side the relatively small size of Williams means that a few students or professors can have an outsize effect on the school’s culture. I assume some regular EphBlog readers are students; for the love of god, organize.
It needn’t be to prop up conservative thinkers (which frankly is what UL seems to be doing a lot of) but there should be more energy on campus committed towards making sure Williams is a place where heterodox scholars and students can participate in a free exchange of ideas.
If we can’t fix that, I think, EphBlog will eventually be in the position of counseling Harvard/Williams cross-admits to go to Boston instead of come to Williamstown.
Ideological diversity isn’t an existential crisis for Williams, but, I think it is a spiritual one.
April 14th, 2016 at 3:49 pmDavid Dudley Field '24 says:
> EphBlog will eventually be in the position of counseling Harvard/Williams cross-admits to go to Boston instead of come to Williamstown.
The issue of ideological diversity is only important to a tiny percentage of students. If you are the sort who is pissed that Derbyshire speaks at Yale but as banned at Williams, then you are probably better off at Yale. But such a description applies to only a handful of students and, even then, I might argue that you are better off at Williams because it would be such fun to go to war against Adam Falk!
April 14th, 2016 at 10:08 pmanon says:
David- You did just argue that one should choose Harvard over Williams just a few days ago.
Why the change of heart?
Going to war against Falk does not seem as appealing as living in Cambridge and having a great time with a wide range of people in the largest college town in the world.
Of course, going to Harvard would mean that you will probably miss your chance at marrying an Eph, given the insane rate of purple cow on purple cow marriage…
I don’t know, this argument to choose Williams seems to get weaker by the day- with every covered monument and banned speaker. Even if they did adopt such a policy at Harvard, you could always walk across the bridge and catch a controversial speaker at BC/ BU/ Northeastern… endless choices to get a wide variety of uncomfortable views. At Williams, they hit the censorship button, and you need to hop on a bus for three hours to go to Boston just to get some real diversity. The college even tells you how to disagree. Do you really want to be at in an academy that tells you how to disagree?
No way- Harvard it is!
April 17th, 2016 at 1:09 pmanon says:
“The issue of ideological diversity is only important to a tiny percentage of students.”
So what is the argument… that Williams is better than Harvard because you do not get a wide range of views? Williams bests Harvard for education because Williams restricts thought?
I don’t know Dave- seems like a pretty weak argument for your alma mater…
April 17th, 2016 at 1:13 pm'20 says:
@David Dudley Field ’24
Ideological diversity might only be valued by a minority of students but it’s eminently valuable to every student on campus. I don’t want to sound overly paternalistic, but, sometimes what students like or seek out are not what students need out of their educations.
April 17th, 2016 at 7:04 pmanon says:
20′- Do you think that Williams offers students the ability to grow “outside of Williams” and really find their own path- or is it restricting?
The college seems pretty cookie cutter and rather controlling to me. A branding occurs. While that may be true at Harvard “to a degree” the size of the institution and the ability to blend with people outside of that school has to give a much broader perspective.
You cannot own a car until senior year. You have to live on campus. Very few Williams students have jobs while in school… those that do probably work-study for the school in some capacity.
These things are restrictive. Young adults that age normally have work, drive cars, and find living accommodations on the economy.
Do you really get to grow on your own at a place as controlling as Williams? I have my doubts…
April 18th, 2016 at 3:11 am