Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1636 and named for clergyman John Harvard (its first benefactor), its history, influence, and wealth have made it one of the world’s most prestigious universities. Harvard is the United States’ oldest institution of higher learning, and the Harvard Corporation (formally, the President and Fellows of Harvard College) is its first chartered corporation. Although never formally affiliated with any denomination, the early College primarily trained Congregational and Unitarian clergy. Its curriculum and student body were gradually secularized during the 18th century, and by the 19th century, Harvard had emerged as the central cultural establishment among Boston elites.[10][11] Following the American Civil War, President Charles W. Eliot’s long tenure (1869–1909) transformed the college and affiliated professional schools into a modern research university; Harvard was a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900.
The university is organized into eleven separate academic units—ten faculties and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study—with campuses throughout the Boston metropolitan area: its 209-acre (85 ha) main campus is centered on Harvard Yard in Cambridge, approximately 3 miles (5 km) northwest of Boston; the business school and athletics facilities, including Harvard Stadium, are located across the Charles River in the Allston neighborhood of Boston and the medical, dental, and public health schools are in the Longwood Medical Area.
Harvard is a large, highly residential research university. The nominal cost of attendance is high, but the university’s large endowment allows it to offer generous financial aid packages. It operates several arts, cultural, and scientific museums, alongside the Harvard Library, which is the world’s largest academic and private library system, comprising 79 individual libraries with over 18 million volumes.
Harvard was established in 1636 by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1638, it obtained British North America’s first known printing press. In 1639, it was named Harvard College after deceased clergyman John Harvard, an alumnus of the University of Cambridge, who had left the school £779 and his scholar’s library of some 400 volumes. The charter creating the Harvard Corporation was granted in 1650.
A 1643 publication gave the school’s purpose as “to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present ministers shall lie in the dust”; in its early years trained many Puritan ministers. It offered a classic curriculum on the English university model—many leaders in the colony had attended the University of Cambridge—but conformed to the tenets of Puritanism. It was never affiliated with any particular denomination, but many of its earliest graduates went on to become clergymen in Congregational and Unitarian churches.
Between 2014 and 2016, Harvard University reported crime statistics for its main Cambridge campus that included 141 forcible sex offenses, 33 robberies, 46 aggravated assaults, 151 burglaries, and 32 cases of motor vehicle theft.
The Harvard Business School and many of the university’s athletics facilities, including Harvard Stadium, are located on a 358-acre (145 ha) campus in Allston,[58] a Boston neighborhood across the Charles River from the Cambridge campus. The John W. Weeks Bridge, a pedestrian bridge over the Charles River, connects the two campuses. Intending a major expansion, Harvard now owns more land in Allston than it does in Cambridge. A ten-year plan calls for 1.4 million square feet (130,000 square meters) of new construction and 500,000 square feet (50,000 square meters) of renovations, including new and renovated buildings at Harvard Business School; a hotel and conference center; a multipurpose institutional building; renovations to graduate student housing and to Harvard Stadium; new athletic facilities; new laboratories and classrooms for the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; expansion of the Harvard Education Portal; and a district energy facility.
Undergraduate admission to Harvard is characterized by the Carnegie Foundation as “more selective, lower transfer-in”. Harvard College accepted 5.2% of applicants for the class of 2021, a record low and the second lowest acceptance rate among all national universities. Harvard College ended its early admissions program in 2007 as the program was believed to disadvantage low-income and under-represented minority applicants applying to selective universities, but for the class of 2016, an early action program was reintroduced.
Harvard’s undergraduate admission policies on preference for children of alumni have been the subject of scrutiny and debate as it has been claimed that it primarily aids Caucasians and the wealthy and seems to conflict with the concept of meritocratic admissions. The freshman class entering in the fall of 2017 will be the first to be predominantly (50.8%) nonwhite.
The four-year, full-time undergraduate program comprises a minority of enrollments at the university and emphasizes instruction with an “arts and sciences focus. Between 1978 and 2008, entering students were required to complete a core curriculum of seven classes outside of their concentration.
University policy is to expel students engaging in academic dishonesty to discourage a “culture of cheating. In 2012, dozens of students were expelled for cheating after an investigation of more than 120 students. In 2013, there was a report that as many as 42% of incoming freshmen had cheated on homework prior to entering the university, and these incidents have prompted the university to consider adopting an honor code.
The Harvard University Library System is centered in Widener Library in Harvard Yard and comprises nearly 80 individual libraries holding over 18 million volumes. According to the American Library Association, this makes it the largest academic library in the United States, and one of the largest in the world.
The Harvard Art Museums comprise three museums. The Arthur M. Sackler Museum includes collections of ancient, Asian, Islamic and later Indian art, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, formerly the Germanic Museum, covers central and northern European art, and the Fogg Museum of Art, covers Western art from the Middle Ages to the present emphasizing Italian early Renaissance, British pre-Raphaelite, and 19th-century French art.
Harvard’s legacy as a leading research and educational institution has a significant impact in both academy and popular culture. Furthermore, the perception of Harvard as a center of either elite achievement, or elitist privilege, has made it a frequent literary and cinematic backdrop. “In the grammar of film.
All India Call & WhatsApp Helpline for MBBS/MD Admission : +91 9001099110
Popular Links | MBBS in India, MBBS in China, MBBS in Bangladesh, MBBS in Georgia