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.

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

Here are some Harvard Crimson headlines from this week:

• [Sean] Spicer, [Chelsea] Manning to Join [Institute of Politics] as Visiting Fellows
• CIA Director Cancels IOP Appearance After Manning Appointment
• After Backlash, Kennedy School Withdraws Manning's Fellowship

So here we go...

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One of the more annoying things about this affair has been the way the discussion has chased a dramatized, misleading version of the facts. To borrow a phrase, the commentators (in my social bubble) seem content with -- if not actively interested in -- framing the matter to produce heat, instead of light.

The easiest antidote for this is actually to read Dean Elmendorf's statement announcing and explaining the withdrawal of the IOP's Visiting Fellow appointment. I say this not because I agree with the decision or Elmendorf's justification, but because it at least explains what the decision was:

Some visitors to the Kennedy School are invited for just a few hours to give a talk in the School’s Forum or in one of our lecture halls or

Still, this report shows that Harvard could learn a lot from MIT about how to run a university.

—Harry Lewis, "The Report Harvard Should Have Asked For", 2013

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Around the time I came to Harvard, both Mass Ave schools were dealing with the fallout of embarrassing, messy institutional mistakes. Both started with relatively small incidents, compounded by administrative decisions that were incredibly contentious during and after the fact.

Harvard's began with the Gov 1310 cheating scandal -- and it escalated when scandal erupted over the administration's search of faculty emails to find which sub-dean had spoken to the press, raising both privacy concerns and unease about the relationship between the faculty and the administration.

MIT's began with the arrest of Aaron Swartz for downloading academic articles from JSTOR -- and escalated over the Institute's complicity with the US Attorney's Office, which many members of the community felt betrayed the school's values.

That fall and spring, I was a freshman overburdened with courses that I could just barely

A course I used to teach -- cs50 -- has seen some on-campus news (and editorial) coverage recently in the wake of a leak that 60 students in the course were reported to the Administrative Board on suspicions of academic dishonesty. I don't have any relationship with the course since 2016 and I don't have any particularly relevant inside information as a former Teaching Fellow. As a relatively junior member of the course staff, I wasn't asked to work on any cases of academic dishonesty; the revelations that I could give have already been shared with the press.

But there's one thing that's come up in the ensuing commentary that I would

Today's the first time that many of Harvard's graduands will hear the little-known final verse of "Fair Harvard". So it seems as good a time as any to muse on the administration's decision to change that verse's final lyric.

It would be pretty natural to be outraged at the prospect, but after trying to start that blog post and failing for a while, I realized that I'm actually in favor of the change.

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"Fair Harvard", as far as almae matres go, is actually quite good. Here are a few others for comparison:

Notre Dame, our Mother
tender, strong, and true,
proudly in the heavens,
gleams thy gold and blue.
Glory’s mantle cloaks thee;
golden is thy fame
and our hearts forever
praise thee Notre Dame.

MSU, we love thy shadows
When twilight silence falls,
glushing deep and softly paling
o’er ivy covered halls;
beneath the pines we'll gather
to give our faith so

(In which the author, through timely blogging, attempts to rekindle a fading feeling of connection to his alma mater.)

On a Thursday morning four years ago, upperclassmen pounded on the door of my friends' suite where I had slept over (again), and when we let them in, they popped a (well-shaken) bottle of champagne to welcome us to Eliot House. Over the next three years, I'd spend some of the best afternoons (and the most miserable all-nighters) in Eliot, and though I'd be stretching the truth to say that I became close with everyone in the house, I had a place that was home to come bck to, year after year. Of course, I had the best friends I could possibly have asked for, but for that I owe more thanks to the Freshman Dean's Office for throwing us all into Canaday than the housing lottery for giving us the best of all houses.

(My dad puts his arm around my shoulders and gestures at the courtyard, where the