The Veritas About Harvard: An Outsider's Inside View

By accidents of birth and geography, I grew to maturity without succumbing to that fascination bordering on obsession that some Americans have with Harvard, America’s oldest institution of higher learning and the setting for Erich Segal’s awful novel “Love Story,” among other middle-brow works of art. When I arrived on the east coast after college, I met people whose parents had taken them to Harvard Yard when they were fresh out of diapers in the hope that, by osmosis perhaps, the aura of the place would be absorbed by their offspring. I also met men who, as soon as they had finished a night course at the Harvard Extension School (a sort of bargain basement to the main educational department store) would rush out to buy a polyester tie with the Harvard seal on it. What is it about Harvard that mesmerizes parents and children into thinking that, if they can in some way become associated with the school, they’re set for life? Having known both brilliant and dull graduates of the place whose success has varied widely I’m not sure, but the follies of those who will do anything to get in, and those who having graduated will do anything to make sure you know it, provide the disinterested observer with a continuing source of amusement.