A Balanced Review of Harvard Extension:
The positive aspects about HES are that you get genuine Harvard credentials. Fixsen, who runs HCP, the Health Careers Program at HES, is quite responsive, whether in person or over email. HES offers fantastic and unparalleled preparation for the MCAT - you cannot beat that!! You get to live in the Cambridge area. There are many opportunities for shadowing, volunteer work, hospital work, etc. There are also some unexpected positives. Like, you don't need a car, some apartments actually let you rent without a deposit and without a lease, the dating scene is superb, it is a perfect town to find a life partner. Or like the condensed Jan semester which many Harvard students take advantage of. And on any given day, you can find a talk by a Nobel prize winning economist or a world-famous poet or a prominent politician or someone else at Harvard or the Kennedy School or elsewhere in the Harvard system. I wish more HES students took advantage of such opportunities. On any given day you can find free food at Harvard (http://events.college.harvard.edu/ and check free food). I spend Decembers and summers with my sister at Harvard and I eat FREE every day somewhere in Boston or at Harvard - been doing this for 4 years now. Most HCP students don't even know of such opportunities. Free food saves a lot on expenses! If you like Arts, you cannot be in a better city! Check out http://ofa.fas.harvard.edu/cal/. Harvard has about 100 libraries! Harvard Medical School has over 11,860 professors. 11,860 professors!!! Of which 8,924 are full time. (http://hms.harvard.edu/content/facts-figures-0#numbers)
On the negative side, my sister and her friends constantly bitch about how HES and Harvard do not treat Extension students well. If you go down and talk to one of the advisors or deans on Brattle, you will know because they treat you like ****. There is one Black lady who is one of the dean of students - she absolutely hates HES students. There are also many annoyances you need to put up with at HES. The only bathroom in Sever Hall stinks to high heavens, the computer staff treat you like ****, if you print on only one side of the page the annoying white lady with a foreign accent in Grossman computer lab screams at you. The very tall, bald guy who mans the computer lab in Grossman is an exception - he looks white but he is actually a Black dude - because he is about the only HES employee who is nice. You also cannot print more than 20 pages at one time, Grossman library is as tiny as a matchbox, you cannot even borrow books from Grossman library which is the only library for HES students, the computer lab in Grossman - try to squeeze to the upper level on those stairs if you work out because it is even smaller than a matchbox, the two scanners in Grossman - try to get them to work, the other computer facility on Church Street is just as bad, try going into one of the other Harvard libraries (sadly almost all of the 100 libraries at Harvard don't allow HES students), try calling 495-8400 which other Harvard students get to use to get a free ride back home, try getting a letter of recommendation on Harvard letterheads from your professors, or try getting an on-campus apartment at Harvard - I could go on and on. Oh and the hand sanitizer dispensing machines in Sever are always dry. Why do I keep talking about Sever?? Because you may spend 8 years at Harvard Extension getting an ALB, that's at least how long most people take, but you will see the insides of only 3 or 4 buildings - that dirty Sever for the most part, Brattle, Science Center and one or two others for your finals. One girl was stuck in Sever's elevator during her final when she took a break to use the bathroom. That elevator takes forever and forever but that day it broke down and she was trapped inside for over an hour. The professor said, no way, you won't get a make-up final and after the fire department let her out, she had to go in to take the rest of the final but had only about 10 minutes left. She complained to the deans but nothing came out of it. Don't take the elevator in Sever when you have your exams!!
But their biggest complaint is how HES absolutely murders your transcript with B's and C's and how many, many dreams of law school, PhD school, MD school and MBA programs are killed when HES professors, clearly under instruction from the HES admin, give you B's, C's and D's. You see, HES' ALB degree is a Harvard degree, so they make you "pay your dues" and the only way they know to make you earn Harvard credentials (ALB) is by assigning insane amount of work and murdering your transcript with B's and C's. And by writing very luke-warm recommendation letters to even someone who gets straight A's. Don't get a letter from any HES professor at Harvard!!!!!! Get them from professors who have taught you in your undergraduate college. The rumor is HES faculty are instructed by the HES admin to NOT write strong letters and by all indication those rumors are true.
If you go to HES, your chances of getting into medical school actually get significantly diminished because HES deliberately murders your transcript. Only about 33% of the students - and many drop out even before - manage to get into medical schools, limping on a transcript peppered with B's and C's. The national average is about 44%, so Harvard Extension does significantly worse than the national average because of transcript damage and bad letters of recommendation.
Columbia has the School of General Studies that sounds better than "Extension" although it is the same as Extension. But SGS students are treated well and integrated into the Columbia community. If you want Ivy League credentials, get one from the SGS instead of HES.
On the other hand, if you want the world's best preparation for the MCAT or a chance to encounter some of Harvard's 11,860 medical school professors, then HES is for you (if you don't mind B's, C's, W's and F's on your transcript!)
Your mileage may vary and HES students who get offended may call me a "troll" which really indicates they had nothing substantial to say.
The positive aspects about HES are that you get genuine Harvard credentials. Fixsen, who runs HCP, the Health Careers Program at HES, is quite responsive, whether in person or over email. HES offers fantastic and unparalleled preparation for the MCAT - you cannot beat that!! You get to live in the Cambridge area. There are many opportunities for shadowing, volunteer work, hospital work, etc. There are also some unexpected positives. Like, you don't need a car, some apartments actually let you rent without a deposit and without a lease, the dating scene is superb, it is a perfect town to find a life partner. Or like the condensed Jan semester which many Harvard students take advantage of. And on any given day, you can find a talk by a Nobel prize winning economist or a world-famous poet or a prominent politician or someone else at Harvard or the Kennedy School or elsewhere in the Harvard system. I wish more HES students took advantage of such opportunities. On any given day you can find free food at Harvard (http://events.college.harvard.edu/ and check free food). I spend Decembers and summers with my sister at Harvard and I eat FREE every day somewhere in Boston or at Harvard - been doing this for 4 years now. Most HCP students don't even know of such opportunities. Free food saves a lot on expenses! If you like Arts, you cannot be in a better city! Check out http://ofa.fas.harvard.edu/cal/. Harvard has about 100 libraries! Harvard Medical School has over 11,860 professors. 11,860 professors!!! Of which 8,924 are full time. (http://hms.harvard.edu/content/facts-figures-0#numbers)
On the negative side, my sister and her friends constantly bitch about how HES and Harvard do not treat Extension students well. If you go down and talk to one of the advisors or deans on Brattle, you will know because they treat you like ****. There is one Black lady who is one of the dean of students - she absolutely hates HES students. There are also many annoyances you need to put up with at HES. The only bathroom in Sever Hall stinks to high heavens, the computer staff treat you like ****, if you print on only one side of the page the annoying white lady with a foreign accent in Grossman computer lab screams at you. The very tall, bald guy who mans the computer lab in Grossman is an exception - he looks white but he is actually a Black dude - because he is about the only HES employee who is nice. You also cannot print more than 20 pages at one time, Grossman library is as tiny as a matchbox, you cannot even borrow books from Grossman library which is the only library for HES students, the computer lab in Grossman - try to squeeze to the upper level on those stairs if you work out because it is even smaller than a matchbox, the two scanners in Grossman - try to get them to work, the other computer facility on Church Street is just as bad, try going into one of the other Harvard libraries (sadly almost all of the 100 libraries at Harvard don't allow HES students), try calling 495-8400 which other Harvard students get to use to get a free ride back home, try getting a letter of recommendation on Harvard letterheads from your professors, or try getting an on-campus apartment at Harvard - I could go on and on. Oh and the hand sanitizer dispensing machines in Sever are always dry. Why do I keep talking about Sever?? Because you may spend 8 years at Harvard Extension getting an ALB, that's at least how long most people take, but you will see the insides of only 3 or 4 buildings - that dirty Sever for the most part, Brattle, Science Center and one or two others for your finals. One girl was stuck in Sever's elevator during her final when she took a break to use the bathroom. That elevator takes forever and forever but that day it broke down and she was trapped inside for over an hour. The professor said, no way, you won't get a make-up final and after the fire department let her out, she had to go in to take the rest of the final but had only about 10 minutes left. She complained to the deans but nothing came out of it. Don't take the elevator in Sever when you have your exams!!
But their biggest complaint is how HES absolutely murders your transcript with B's and C's and how many, many dreams of law school, PhD school, MD school and MBA programs are killed when HES professors, clearly under instruction from the HES admin, give you B's, C's and D's. You see, HES' ALB degree is a Harvard degree, so they make you "pay your dues" and the only way they know to make you earn Harvard credentials (ALB) is by assigning insane amount of work and murdering your transcript with B's and C's. And by writing very luke-warm recommendation letters to even someone who gets straight A's. Don't get a letter from any HES professor at Harvard!!!!!! Get them from professors who have taught you in your undergraduate college. The rumor is HES faculty are instructed by the HES admin to NOT write strong letters and by all indication those rumors are true.
If you go to HES, your chances of getting into medical school actually get significantly diminished because HES deliberately murders your transcript. Only about 33% of the students - and many drop out even before - manage to get into medical schools, limping on a transcript peppered with B's and C's. The national average is about 44%, so Harvard Extension does significantly worse than the national average because of transcript damage and bad letters of recommendation.
Columbia has the School of General Studies that sounds better than "Extension" although it is the same as Extension. But SGS students are treated well and integrated into the Columbia community. If you want Ivy League credentials, get one from the SGS instead of HES.
On the other hand, if you want the world's best preparation for the MCAT or a chance to encounter some of Harvard's 11,860 medical school professors, then HES is for you (if you don't mind B's, C's, W's and F's on your transcript!)
Your mileage may vary and HES students who get offended may call me a "troll" which really indicates they had nothing substantial to say.
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There were 44,000 new grads produced out of law schools last year according to a story in today's Wall Street Journal. (That's almost equal to the number of medical school applicants.) Alas there are only 23,000 jobs for new law school grads who have passed the bar. Many of the rest are in low paying jobs that make it tough to pay off their school loans.
