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Harvard or Princeton for undergraduate?

kidclutch

Joined
4/17/14
Messages
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Points
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I'm interested in all of CS/stat/math/econ, and I want to go where I will get the best education, grad school placement and networking/opportunity for employment. I can imagine working anywhere in tech, business or finance at this moment in time, and am looking to start my college education the best way possible as I discover my exact interests. Also, I am thinking about doing the ORFE program if I go to Princeton and applied math with econ concentration if I go to Harvard; are these good options to pursue for someone in my position? I know I'm splitting hairs here, but after visiting both schools and doing about a hundred hours of research I still find myself unable to come to a conclusion. Any advice would be much appreciated.
 
You're splitting hairs. But if you go to Harvard you can easily take classes at MIT. It's also a more fun area in my opinion.
 
I think Harvard would be the best decision here (imo), just because of the possible cross-registration between Harvard and MIT, as pointed out by C S. This will allow you to be extremely flexible in terms of what classes you want to take and what really interests you eventually. As of now, you may think ORFE is great, but this is quite a narrow field (which I love) and you might change your opinion after taking a few classes.

I personally believe Harvard will give you the most opportunity for flexibility.
 
You didn't like the advice you got on WSO?

Responding to a few other comments:

I honestly don't think ORFE (undergrad) is that narrow. You can do anything from an Econ to a CS PhD with it; given a Princeton ORFE degree and a decent GPA, you can find jobs anywhere from Google to WalMart to Goldman in that field.

Undergrad econ, even from Harvard, cuts off a lot of opportunities. You will *probably* never be an engineer. You will *probably* never work as a developer at a tech firm. You will not be a Jeff Bezos or an Elon Musk, which is a tail case but not completely ridiculous going to Harvard or Princeton. If that's not what you want, it's not a big deal, but you may decide that you truly enjoy programming or engineering. With the undergrad econ degree, it will be too late.

Careers and educations tend to move from more quantitative to less quantitative. You see math majors sometimes do CS or engineering for grad school, but you don't see a lot of Finance majors jump (gracefully) to CS. You don't see as many Econ majors switch to Engineering. You can always go to a softer discipline for grad school- or do an MBA- but I would lean more towards an engineering undergrad assuming you can handle the math.

I would lean away from taking MIT math courses if you're going to Harvard. There are the Harvard and Princeton math people... and then there are the MIT and Caltech math people who scare the bejeezus out of the H/P folks. Regardless of your standardized test scores, there are pretty darned smart people who get perfect SAT scores, and then there are downright geniuses who get perfect SAT scores. You don't want to be competing against those people for an A; heck, you don't want to be competing against those people for a B-.

Grades-at-Colleges.jpg
 
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You're young and 4 years of college will leave a lasting impression on you for the rest of your life. So location is important. I'd go with Harvard because Cambridge is a great place to hang out with friends (and college friendships are very important). I'm concerned about seeing so many young people (18 and under) here at Quantnet thinking about preparing for a career in quantitative finance at such a young age when you should be soul-searching, discovering who you are and what your passions are, and exploring the world. To become so narrowly focused at such a young age potentially limits your horizons in the future.
 
MNRC said:
You're young and 4 years of college will leave a lasting impression on you for the rest of your life. So location is important. I'd go with Harvard because Cambridge is a great place to hang out with friends (and college friendships are very important). I'm concerned about seeing so many young people (18 and under) here at Quantnet thinking about preparing for a career in quantitative finance at such a young age when you should be soul-searching, discovering who you are and what your passions are, and exploring the world. To become so narrowly focused at such a young age potentially limits your horizons in the future.
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First, with admission rates now hovering below 6%, you should broaden your perspective. The Almighty himself would probably get waitlisted unless he made the all-state soccer team.

Second, @MNRC is right. Colleges like that aren't about preprofessional studies. Worry about getting and education. Vocation comes after.
 
I honestly think that once a school like Harvard, Stanford, or Princeton gets to the last 20%, it's a coin toss.
 
I was thinking about your post today and have to also add that college is like an extended childhood--albeit with academic pressure. Never again will you have such limited responsibility unless you come from unusual circumstances (having a disabled parent, etc.). You're responsible for you and your grades. That's it. There is no work pressure, no office politics, no losing sleep over getting fired and being scared you can't pay mortgage, no children to take care of, no spouse who might need to depend on you, no elderly parents you have to care for and deaths you must bear through. You have relatively NO responsibilities in college! Rent a van and drive cross country with your friends to Coachella! Run wild at Burning Man! Or at least hang out late at pubs in college town and play hooky once in a while! Go live because you won't get to do it once the Real World begins because you'll have to get up at the crack of dawn to go to work and your aging body will no longer be able to handle all-niters :)
 
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MNRC said:
I was thinking about your post today and have to also add that college is like an extended childhood ...
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Once upon a time it was (forty or fifty years ago). Not in today's neoliberal age, where the consequences of faulty decisions are high, the fees are up in the stratosphere, and there may be no second chances. This isn't the world of Animal House.
 
bigbadwolf said:
Once upon a time it was (forty or fifty years ago). Not in today's neoliberal age, where the consequences of faulty decisions are high, the fees are up in the stratosphere, and there may be no second chances. This isn't the world of Animal House.
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agreed. especially for some relatively high paying corporate professions (e.g. private equity, mbb consulting), if u screw up where to attend college and dont focus on recruiting since freshman year, there is little/no 2nd chance. of cos, a humanity major with a 200k student loan has extremely high prob of life desaster
 
Granted this is true, but you can pull average grades in college and still do well in a career in finance. Not that it's recommended but a mediocre performance in college is not the end of the world. However, you can be an outstanding student and still enjoy your college years. Having fun at Coachella and Burning Man doesn't equate to being a frat guy in Animal House.
 
I go to Carnegie Mellon, "where fun goes to die", and is known for being an academic clusterfuck, but still had good enough grades to get offers within finance and the free time to join a social fraternity and enjoy myself. So to the OP, don't stress yourself - it's not an all or nothing attitude that I think bigbadwolf is suggesting.
 
Daniel Duffy said:
A lot has changed since GingerMan.
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First time I heard of it but I'll put it on my to-read list. Somewhere in his essays I think Martin Amis argues that until 1973 it was possible to live on a few quid a week. The kind of life you see captured in the film, Withnail and I. The music right at the end of the film evokes memories of an era that has passed forever. But I digress.

 
bigbadwolf said:
First time I heard of it but I'll put it on my to-read list. Somewhere in his essays I think Martin Amis argues that until 1973 it was possible to live on a few quid a week. The kind of life you see captured in the film, Withnail and I. The music right at the end of the film evokes memories of an era that has passed forever. But I digress.

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I lived on 20 quid a week in 1973 (3 quid for a room, 16p for a pint of Harp).

Some actors I knew lived on 10p a day....
 
Cornholio said:
Inflations a bitch, eh?
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Not just inflation. One of my mates -- a semi-skilled Welsh painter -- was recalling how you could walk out of a job in the morning and have another by the afternoon. A whole style of life came to an abrupt end in the '70s. Granted, the jobs weren't much of anything -- "factory fodder" -- but they were there for the asking. The situation in the USA was analogous, probably even better, as Gregg Shotwell recalls here. Quadrophenia is another film that captures the spirit of that bygone era well:

 
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