Personal opinions on my Harvard courses
A prospective Harvard student wrote the other day asking for advice about CS+Math at Harvard, and (among other questions) asked if I'd share the courses I took to help them compare with their own plans. As always, I was happy to help. I figured it might also be useful to someone else to have an (admittedly idiosyncratic) sample of a Harvard CS+Math schedule on the Internet, so I'm posting it here, too.
note: There really isn't much more here than it says on the tin, so if you're not interested in that, you really can skip this post.
It should be obvious, but no one should take this as a prescription -- not everything was the right choice for me in hindsight, so it's definitely not exactly right for you. At best, it's a data point for people exactly like me, and at worst you should consider reversing the major takeaways.
I also feel compelled to pass along the best advice I received about picking a major, which came from Harry Lewis:
- Pick the 32 courses you most want to take.
- See if any major will give you a degree for exactly those.
- If so, then you're done.
- If not, find the one that will give you a degree with the fewest changes. Pick that one.
Don't take extra courses to get extra pieces of paper. As Harry would say, "Don't let getting your degree get in the way of getting your education!"
But, without any further caveats, here we go...
First, I'll list just the course numbers. Below that, I've listed the course titles, professors, and some light thoughts on the professors and/or the