QS World University ranking
The Harvard University was established in 1636 and the long history makes it the oldest higher education institute in the United States and it is widely known in terms of its influence, reputation, and academic pedigree as a leading university not just in the US but also throughout the world.
The university is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is spread through 209-acres including 10 degree-granting schools in addition to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, two theatres, and five museums.
The Harvard University facilitates the students by providing home to one the largest and most important academic libraries in the world, which consists of 18 million volumes, 180,000 serial titles, an estimated 400 million manuscript items and 10 million photographs.
Just like any other pre-Civil War colleges Harvard University too was found to train clergy, by John Harvard, a clergyman, who was its first benefactor.
Its student body rapidly turned out to be a non-religious one with the intake of a variety of students in the 20th century. After university liberated itself from the political control, in 1865 the university alumni began electing members of the governing board. Charles W. Eliot during his long tenure as Harvard’s president turned Harvard into an institution with national influence.
The school was purpose as an institute “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” which was influenced with the purpose of educating the clergy.
Found on Harvard diplomas, the official seal of the Harvard Corporation carries the university’s original motto, Christo et Ecclesiae translates as “For Christ and Church”, but during the centuries it has changed to Veritas which means «Truth».
The University has grown from nine students with a single master to one large family which has a different culture altogether. At present the number of students enrolled sum up to 21,000 students attend the university, including about 6,700 undergraduate students and about 13,100 postgraduate students as well as professional students.
Harvard is a large, highly residential research university The University has been licensed by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges since 1929. The university offers 46 undergraduate concentrations (majors), 134 graduate degrees, and 32 professional degrees, 1,664 baccalaureate degrees, 400 master’s degrees, 512 doctoral degrees, and 4,460 professional degrees.
Harvard University has 12 degree-granting schools in addition to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. these twelve schools include Harvard Business School, Harvard College, Harvard Division of Continuing Education, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Harvard’s undergraduate school, Harvard College, contains about one-third of the total student body. The core of the university’s teaching staff consists of the faculty of arts and sciences, which includes the graduate faculty of arts and sciences. The university has graduate or professional schools of medicine, law, business, divinity, education, government, dental medicine, design, and public health. The schools of law, medicine, and business are particularly prestigious.
Harvard University is devoted to excellence in teaching, learning, and research, and to developing leaders in many disciplines who make a difference globally. The University has an enrolment of over 20,000 degree candidates and has more than 360,000 alumni around the world.
Harvard’s alumni also include eight US presidents, several foreign heads of state, 62 living billionaires, 359 Rhodes Scholars, and 242 Marshall Scholars. As of October 2019, 160 Nobel laureates, 18 Fields Medalists, and 14 Turing Award winners have been affiliated as students, faculty, or researchers. In addition, Harvard students and alumni have won 10 Academy Awards, 48 Pulitzer Prizes and alumni have also won 108 Olympic medals between them. The university is regularly ranked number one in the world and it is often cited as the world’s top university by many publishers.
Only the academic elite can claim a place at Harvard, and the nominal cost of attendance is high, though the university’s hefty endowment is such that it can offer generous financial aid packages, which around 60 per cent of students take advantage of.
As freshmen, students live in one of the dormitories in Harvard Yard, a prime location, and eat in the historic and picturesque Annenberg dining hall. Harvard students are active around and beyond campus, with over 400 official student societies including extracurricular, co-curricular and athletic opportunities. Whether playing on the field in Harvard Stadium, fostering entrepreneurial activities at the Harvard innovation lab or writing and editing at the daily newspaper the Harvard Crimson, student life is a rich and rewarding experience.
As a university Harvard creates an all-rounder, who is academically, physically and morally complete.
The university environment is created in the best possible way for the students to achieve their targets. And all the top rankings it has achieved through the years cannot prove otherwise.
-Madhusha Dep-