Janky Harvard Websites, Ranked

Harvard websites: love them or hate them, you have to use them. Unless you plan to enroll in only MIT classes and hack the laundry machines (which, for the record, Flyby does not condone), Crimson Cash and my.harvard are unavoidable parts of the college experience. For a school with a computer science professor on the payroll for over a million a year, we do not seem to have the website area smoothed out. Read on to count down Harvard’s clunkiest websites, and maybe find one to redo for your CS50 final project (I’m begging, please!).

4. Harvard Syllabus Explorer

Rank 4: Syllabus Explorer By Kaia I. Thomas

Have you ever wondered if you could take a class about a really specific topic? Maybe you were looking for an English class that could justify your purchase of the new Sally Rooney book, a class where you can learn to paint, or a class that talks about memes? Well, the Harvard Syllabus Explorer should be the right place for you… except for the fact that syllabi are often missing, classes don’t always show up properly, and the information you can find is frequently out of date. At the same time, this website has so much wasted potential, so I’m placing it 4th.

3. HUHS Patient Portal

Rank 3: HUHS Patient Portal By Kaia I. Thomas

Whether dying of strep throat, booking a flu shot, or trying to upload all your vaccine information before freshman year so you can actually register for class, the HUHS patient portal is always an unpleasant experience. Coupling that with the fact that if you make a mistake filling out the intake form, it makes you go all the way back to the start, the HUHS website could definitely use some revamping.

2. Crimson Cash E-Accounts Portal

Rank 2: Crimson Cash By Kaia I. Thomas

This website looks supremely unofficial. It is not a place I visit for fun but only against my will when I try to do laundry and my card comes up short. Filled with anger for a college this expensive charging even more for laundry, this website will not be missed when Crimson Cash is fully phased out. If you’re looking for something scary this spooky season, this website could be for you. Every time I use it, I’m frightened that my credit card information is about to be stolen!

1. my.harvard

The Winner… my.harvard By Kaia I. Thomas

As a supremely indecisive liberal arts college student, I have a very love-hate relationship with my.harvard. For a site that serves so many important uses, I do not understand why I have to erase my browser history once a week to be able to log in. At the same time, I love browsing random classes and creating 10 different semester schedules, so at least I’ll be ready when Crimson Carts open on OCTOBER 23????

Despite my daily grievances against these websites, hating my.harvard might be the most unifying take one can have on this campus. So maybe it’s not about the classes you sign up for, the medical appointments you make, or the money you waste on laundry but the friends you make along the way by complaining about the unnecessary difficulty of these tasks.