Getting Through the Stress of Choosing Your Concentration

Even though you won’t be declaring your concentration (or what every other normal college in the nation calls a “major”) until your sophomore fall, many of you are undoubtedly already uneasy about your nebulous academic futures. Sure, a bunch of you, fast-tracking your way to medical school, might be resolute in concentrating in some kind of biology. Some of you might guiltily enter Harvard’s gates feeling obligated to honor the impossible applied math-physics-philosophy triple major you put on your college application. But many of you probably have no clue. (For those of you who think you do—you’re probably wrong.)

Think of it this way: not so long ago, freshman spring was the deadline for choosing concentrations, and somewhat longer ago, freshmen had no choice whatsoever in area of discipline. (History and Literature, the oldest concentration, was also once the only concentration.) It wasn’t until the early 1900s that then-Harvard President Abbott Lawrence Lowell began pushing for more concentrations, musing that a “well-educated man must know a little bit of everything and one thing well.” Thus came the Core Curriculum (now General Education for all you froshies), along with 46 individual concentrations to choose from. Here’s some advice we wish we had when we were thinking about concentrations:

You are not limited to courses in your concentration.

Don’t just pick the concentration you think will have the highest concentration (guffaw) of fun classes exactly like the one you just took and are obsessed with. Nor should you go with the concentration that you think will cover as many topics as possible. Just because you’re an art and architecture concentrator doesn’t mean that you won’t get to take your fair share of math and science courses (in fact, Gen Ed will shove a few down your throat). And don’t forget about related field courses that count for credit in your concentration: literature, for instance, counts up to four semesters of foreign language, in addition to the required three classes from psychology, philosophy, linguistics or English. Other concentrations are separated into several “tracks;” psychology, for instance, includes a general track, a Mind/Brain/Behavior track, and a Life Sciences track, all with plenty of overlap and elective freedom. Then again, some engineering tracks boast as many as 27 required classes, so it’s worth deciding early if you’d like to suffer that pain.

Consider class size and type.

Do you like small departments with tiny, discussion-based seminars? Or do you like to be that one student who always speaks up during large auditorium lectures? While all concentrations will have required tutorials—smaller, narrow-topic classes that can end up being one-on-one by the time you are a senior—tutorials in larger concentrations take more of a lecture-and-section format. You won’t find much in the way of small seminars in government or economics (especially with Harvard’s budget cutting).

Shop upper-level courses to get a clearer picture of what a concentration entails.

Life Sciences 1a and 1b do not give you a good idea of the breadth of the human evolutionary biology or molecular and cellular biology concentrations. Course titles can also be misleading, so take a careful look at the class syllabus and reserve reading list. (Expecting Sigmund Freud in your psychology class? Wrong. Try English or philosophy instead.) All this being said, if you already have an inkling of what you’d like to concentrate in, do get the introductory requirement course over with. And if you are even the slightest bit interested, take CS 50 before you become one of the juniors regretting not concentrating in Computer Science.

Double concentrating, special concentrating, and secondary fielding:

A few years ago, the College introduced Secondary Fields—what every other school calls a minor—but promptly began discouraging students from getting them. Which makes sense! Don’t think of it as only needing a few more courses to get a super-decorated diploma. Think of it as having to slog through classes you would not otherwise take, miss two treasured electives you would, all for the sake of an extra designation NOT noted on your diploma that no one else will really care about anyways.

The College also discourages students from double concentrating and working out a unique concentration. (Is your desired concentration really not among those 46 already available?) Double concentrating requires a joint thesis and an enormous amount of intellectual wrestling, and most concentrations are flexible enough that you can probably write a thesis on that joint topic anyways. And classes from many different departments can count towards your concentration as well.

Do you want to write a thesis?

It’s not necessarily too early to think about this. For concentrations like Social Studies, a thesis is required. For a concentration like psychology, a thesis will eventually require serious research on fickle human subjects. For many concentrations, the thesis is optional, but required if you are seeking honors on your diploma. Right now it seems like a way to prove your academic mettle, a test of rigor, a brilliant idea. Next year when you see the same seniors shuffling down to brain break every night, wearing the same pajamas and desperate expression, it may start to seem like a crazy idea.

Are you Pre-med/Pre-law/Pre-Wall Street?

There’s generally no need to cater towards professional schools. From what we’ve seen and been told, this is unnecessary. To love your concentration and to do well in it is sufficient for medical schools, law schools, and business schools. Choosing a humanities concentration to go with your pre-med course load is insane but increasingly common. But if you love neurobiology and are pre-med, don’t feel the need to forsake the neurobio in order to differentiate yourself.

—Staff writer Chelsea L. Shover can be reached at clshover@fas.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Shan Wang can be reached at wang38@fas.harvard.edu.

For more information on the ins and outs of Harvard life, visit the My First Year homepage.