As he welcomed the class of 2018 this fall, Dean of Harvard College Rakesh Khurana invited the 1,667 newcomers to settle in—but not too much. He urged them to seize the opportunity of their Harvard education to transform themselves intellectually, socially, and personally.
“College is not a stop on the way to the rest of your life,” Khurana told the freshmen gathered on Science Center Plaza. “These four years of college are where the patterns for your lives will be set.” Students who take risks by exploring unexpected fields, embracing different outlooks, and reflecting on who they want to become—rather than following their high school scripts—“will have taken the first step of fulfilling the College’s mission of educating the citizens and citizen-leaders for our society.”
Harvard College inspires the risk taking and exploration that transform the lives of students and faculty alike by opening doors to new experiences, new friends, new knowledge and understanding. The magic happens in classrooms and laboratories, on theater stages and in concert halls, on athletic fields and online. It happens in Harvard’s Houses, where learning and living combine like nowhere else. And it happens thanks to Harvard’s industry-leading financial aid program, which welcomes extraordinary students from every corner of the country and the world, fostering a rich exchange of ideas, perspectives, and cultures.
“Don’t compare, connect,” Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Michael D. Smith advises first-year students. Instead of worrying about measuring up against your classmates, focus on making connections with them and others. “It is Harvard’s connections, more than its expansive resources or its long history, that truly set it apart from its peers.”
“Harvard connects the lessons of the past to the challenges of the future,” Smith says. “It connects formerly discrete disciplines to each other. It connects classrooms to the world outside of them. But most importantly, it connects people, and in doing so shapes what we know, who we are, and how we make our impact on the world.”
On the pages linked below, you’ll learn how renewed House spaces and Harvard's financial aid program are connecting people and transforming lives.
Harvard’s Houses: Transformational Learning and Living Communities
Financial Aid Changes Lives, Strengthens Community
Harvard College: A Place of Discovery and Possibility
As seen in HARVARD MAGAZINE
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