About Harvard College

The pursuit of excellence has long been a hallmark of Harvard. Since its founding in 1636, the College has assembled promising students and distinguished faculty and provided them with an environment and resources to develop their talents to the fullest. Harvard’s tradition of excellence has put generations of students at the center of the search for new ways of thinking.

Students come from all 50 states and from over 80 countries; from cities, suburbs, small towns and farms; from public, private and parochial schools; from every ethnic and religious background; and from across the economic spectrum. Based on longstanding tradition, Harvard is committed to making educational opportunity accessible to all.

Harvard offers extraordinary scope. Students arrive with a remarkable diversity of interests as well as a wide variety of personal and professional goals or perhaps no clearly defined goals at all. What they share are keen intellectual curiosity, energy and an eagerness to fulfill their considerable promise. They seek a university with the resources to enable them to pursue their interests vigorously, whether their chosen area is philosophy, photography or physics; literature or linguistics; engineering or environmental studies. They find fellow students and teachers with whom they can share their passions and discover new ones, while forging friendships that will last a lifetime.

For generations, Harvard has played a major role in educating future leaders for every endeavor—from academia to the arts, from private industry to public service. Harvard students are very well prepared for service to society and enjoy extraordinarily high rates of admission to Harvard’s and other universities’ graduate schools.