Harvard Outreach Newsletter

Most students from the UK who have started their first year at Harvard return home to their families during the January vacation.  Brimming full of experiences from their first four months in a dynamic new environment, they can’t wait to tell the folks back home all about it. 

As part of our outreach work, the Harvard Club of the UK encourages first-year students to visit their old high schools while they are back in the UK and give a presentation to current students who will be applying to university in a year or two.  The talks can be extremely effective in inspiring them to apply to US colleges when they hear first-hand what a fantastic experience it has been, both socially and academically, from someone who went to the same high school as them. 

Elizabeth Bennett, an alumna of King Edward VI High School, Morpeth, Northumberland, returned there on 11th January and gave a stimulating and informative talk to students in Years 11 and 12 (US 10th and 11th Grade) about her impressions of her first few weeks living on Harvard Yard.

Starting with the academic program, she loved the wide-ranging liberal arts degree offered at Harvard, where every student is encouraged to explore new subjects.  “An amazing opportunity to try something new,” as she described it.  Her favourite class so far has been California in the 60s, one of two first-year seminars she will take this year.  Having been unable to continue with French after her GCSEs due to the specialist nature of A Levels in the UK, she was delighted to be able to take it up again at Harvard.  Her other two classes in her first semester were Literature, and Music Theory (she is a talented musician and intends to major in Music). 

Housing for undergraduate students is guaranteed on campus for all four years, and Elizabeth loves the fact that “…first-year dorms are right in the middle of campus, only minutes away from school buildings.”  This enables her to fall out of bed five minutes before her first class!

Another plus for the accommodation was the effort made by the Harvard College Housing Officeto place first-year students with compatible roommates.  All of the five students in her dorm are musicians: Elizabeth is a violinist, then there are two violists, one cellist, and one guitarist. 

Not surprisingly, Elizabeth’s extracurricular activities are focused on music.  She sings in the University Choir, which provides choral music for the Harvard Memorial Church and puts on concerts; and in the Harvard Choruses, made up of over 300 students singing in eight faculty-directed choral ensembles. She also plays violin in the pit orchestra of Harvard College Opera. If that weren’t enough, she is also starting up her own steel band! 

But what is the best bit of Harvard overall?  Elizabeth explains:
 
“It’s hard to choose my favourite thing about life at Harvard, as it really is everything I always hoped it would be. However, the thing that stands out to me the most is the sense of community and the wonderful friendships I have made. Even in only a few months, I have met so many amazing people who I know will be my friends for a very long time.”