Harvard Extension School

My last course really went below any level I thought possible and all for $ 2400! If the administration was actually monitoring the lectures and labs, they should have intervened within the first two months. Instead, these people will continue to teach, waste your time and take your money. It really is disgraceful. Yes, I got an A, but what I really wanted was to learn. Do not take IT /​CS courses without due diligence. You simply cannot trust Harvard Extension to actually care about what they are offering.

Solid academics. In 2012, I took a math course at the Extension School to help prepare for the GRE. The professor was top notch; although the math department tutors were not as useful.
At that time, all undergraduate courses had a flat rate of $ 750, which made it incredibly affordable, even more so than going to the local community college.
Unfortunately, as of this year, Harvard Extension became greedy and raised undergraduate tuition by 80%. Each undergrad level course now costs $ 1,350 at minimum.
Affordable higher education in the US? hahahaha! Dream on.
«At Harvard Extension School, we keep our tuition rates competitive, aligning our costs with those at similar institutions.» Read: tuition rates are competitive, not affordable.

Haters gon’ hate.

I graduated from Harvard Extension class of 2000 and had a great learning experience. There was much camaraderie among those of us who had to work days and attend school nights and sometimes weekends. We all helped each other out with homework, sharing class notes when some had to travel for work or stay with sick kids.
Harvard professors were also happy to have us! Some told us stories about regular Harvard College day students that made us wonder how they got into ANY college, let alone Harvard.
Yes, the prestige of going here made some difference but I received a GREAT education and made lifelong friends and connections at age 40.

I earned the ALM degree focusing on marketing management. I absolutely loved the program and miss my classes. They were very challenging, and definitely real world experiences. I got to do a lot of presentations which has helped with my current sales role. I would highly recommend the program. The value is excellent. Students are determined and intelligent, and teachers are top notch.

Serious teaching at a reasonable price.
Some continuing ed courses are amateur hour with some self-​declared expert reminiscing about something they used to work at, or a hobby of theirs.
Not Harvard Extension School. This is the real deal. A lot of the classes are the same ones that the same professor teaches during the day. Some require a very serious commitment; several I took were 20 hours a week between classwork, homework and labs. There was one I had to pass on because it was close to 40 hours, with a calendar for what would be needed on every day of every week for the semester, including Sunday. (Organic chemistry, wouldn’t you know).
However, the intensity can be graded; some classes are offered audit-​only, others can be taken at undergraduate level, and for the immersion experience, you can take it graduate level. The price also adjusts accordingly. Speaking of price, it’s not at all what you would expect with the Harvard brand; $ 1250/​$ 2000 for undergrad/​grad; a whole Masters will cost around $ 20k. Not bad when you think what a single year of undergraduate at Harvard could cost!
One tip: look out for courses taught by people who teach during the day. Individual researchers who are moonlighting are much more hit and miss. Some know how to teach, how to set up homeworks and exams, others are just winging it.
Another trick is to sit in on the first class of 3 – 4 courses and decide which course grabs you the most for that semester. I’ve found it’s not always the subject I most wanted to learn, but how well the teacher and the subject went together.

I’m over halfway done with a Masters in Software Engineering (Information Technology). The classes are mostly fantastic, although there are clearly some problems with their hiring practices that let a few bad apples in. Harvard has a great CS department, however, they have far fewer professors to fill the positions in the IT program than in other programs. This leaves a big gap that, I feel, has been filled by sub-​standard professors with questionable teaching abilities. So far, I’ve found that these are not professors who teach in any other colleges in the University, but just in the Extension School, which is somewhat telling.
I’d go from taking the Theory of Computation, taught by Harry Lewis (a world-​renowned lecturer, who taught this same class to Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg) to a class on content management systems that *I* was more qualified to teach. The professor knew only the basics of programming, and was stumped by simple questions about WordPress and CSS. The professor’s resume also left their appointment to this position in the first place somewhat of a mystery.
When a class was good, it was very very good. The security class by Scott Bradner was another excellent one. When the classes were bad, they were an exercise in tedium, but hey, at least you get a degree at the end, right?
I never had a class where the ineffective teaching practices negatively influenced my grade. There were many sleepless nights and tears shed over difficult assignments, however, these were usually in the better classes, taught by professors who knew how to challenge clever students. I felt elated at the end of the process — I stepped up to the challenge, and received a hard-​won education and credit for it. The bad classes were usually fairly easy. Painful not because they were hard, but because they were badly taught, and lacking the real educational value I thought I was paying for.
About a third of the classes have been mind-​blowingly excellent, a third have been extremely useful and routine, and a third have been… meh.
The Extension School really needs to concentrate on weeding out the less-​than-​excellent professors, especially in IT. Just a few switches here and there would, I think, vastly improve the program. For the most part, however, it’s a fantastic program, at a great price, and I feel far more competent as a software engineer after completing just over half of the program. I can’t wait to finish it and get my degree!

I honestly dont understand the stigma associated with HES. Look at the quality of the professors here, it is freaking amazing. Sure some may only teach at HES and not in HC or HGAS or HBS or HMS but i bet there are professors from say HC who only teach at HC and professors at HBS who only teach at HBS. It doesn’t make them less of a harvard faculty, does it? Some of the professors/​TA/​Lecturers i am most impressed with are John Komlos, Teo Nicolais, Bruce Watson and Richard Keith. I graduated from NEU and I thought the professors at HES is on the same, if not another stratosphere (thats not to say NEU is bad, because they are great!!! which speaks volume about the quality of HES classes.) Sure the admission policy is different but less than 5% walk out with a Harvard alumni status. You cant graduate with a GPA below 3.0, if you get under a B– in your class, the class wont count towards your degree program. The fixed admission policy is also great (do well in harvard courses and get in, no lame admission officers). Harvard Extension IS Harvard University. HES students are similar to LGBT people, there are some who dont agree with the way we EARN the harvard degree but nevertheless we are as legitimate as any harvard student from other schools of harvard. The same way everyone from the LGBT community are humans who are entitled to every human right non LGBT people are entitled to. Cheers.

It may sound counter intuitive to many, but I have found the Harvard Extension School to not only be at the same level academically as Harvard College, but more difficult, too. And especially more difficult to graduate from because of the following:
1– The education is exactly the same as the rest of Harvard. This is Harvard! Same campus and all.
2-​While Harvard college focuses on making it hard to get in, they loosen up when you are in. It is hard to get in, but not that hard to graduate. I have friends who graduated from Harvard College who were employees of mine at one point. It is the opposite with the extension school. Unnecessary tests are not needed to see how brilliant you are, because most people who apply are professionals with years of proven experience and many have the scars to prove it. What you need to get accepted is pass three classes with at least a B– grade. This is more than fair. Then you need to have a B– grade to graduate. So graduating with a degree from HES is way more difficult.
3-​HES was created over a century ago at Harvard, but it may be the most innovative program yet. The traditional education system in America and in most countries doesn’t match up to the technological and businesses breakthroughs we experience frequently these days. Harvard college students are paying 4−9x time the amount for a degree that is just as valuable as that from HES. I don’t blame the students for this. But their parents don’t get any brownie points in the «smart parents» category. But some don’t care because they have the money and want their kids to have a proper college experience, which is perhaps the most valuable part of any school anyway.
There are many reasons why the Extension School trumps the Harvard College any day. I am making some great connections, learning from the same faculty and getting the same education, I wear the same badge, I get access to all the facilities and resources, and I am sitting next to people with real world experience.

I just finished my first semester at the Harvard Extension School and I cannot believe what an incredible experience it has been! The courses are everything and more in what I have always dreamed a Harvard education would be. At first I was hesitant in dedicating myself to a second masters degree program that would require me to travel from Washington D.C. each week for the two on-​campus terms while juggling a full-​time demanding career. However, after making it through this semester, I know made the right decision and I am thrilled to see where my newfound journey will continue to take me.
Education is the key to life. If you have a curious mind and passionate goals, the Harvard Extension School is the place to be! What I appreciate most is that the Harvard Extension School allows talented people from around the world to be able to participate in this rigorous and prestigious program through semi-​distance education. With my career, I would not have been able to move to Boston but this program affords me an opportunity of a lifetime to study under the world’s finest scholars. For this, I am profoundly grateful.

Do you love feeling smart? When I was younger, this was not the case for me; I preferred feeling cool, pretty and popular. I hated most of my classes and most of my teachers. Now that I am old, my priorities have changed, so when I want to feel intellectual, I sign up for courses at the Harvard Extension School. There’s absolutely no way I’d get into Harvard following the normal pathway, but The Extension School lets me work with Harvard professors, lounge around in Harvard lecture halls and work hard. No application required. I love being a Harvard student.
I’ve now taken three courses here, and I have really appreciated each one, although the teachers were all very different. There’s a lot of reading and writing involved, which I enjoyed, and we had some assignments that really challenged me. Two of my courses involved field trips, which were fascinating as we got to go behind the scenes and meet some incredible people. My courses were in the evening, but you can also take online courses if you do not want to go to Cambridge at night.
You can get a degree if you want (undergraduate or Master’s), or you can just take the courses for fun. I have studied alongside a few high school students and quite a few middle aged folks and grandparents. I really enjoy meeting my fellow students who share similar interests; we are all here because we want to be. Biotech, Museum Studies, Journalism… it’s all here. There are now more than 600 courses.
Worth every penny for me. The Extension School has an awesome staff and all of my questions have been answered promptly and efficiently.
So now I feel smart. Thanks, Harvard. I never expected to make that statement.

I saved this review for my 100^th Unilocal review because it is special to me. I cannot tell you how welcoming to me they have been and what a great education I have gotten here. Everyone is so nice and they really want you to succeed.
I cannot recommend high enough for anyone who wants to continue their education to come here. You will work super hard but you will learn so much. The professors are great and the staff is great and willing to help you however they can during your degree process.

I finished the ALM program with a concentration in Information Systems. The Professors were world-​class and the TA’s were very helpful. The course work was geared toward comprehension and learning. I work full time, so the online structure made the program more conducive to my schedule.
I would recommend this program to anyone who wants to get a quality education at the best school around.
It’s not cheap, but it was worth every penny.

I can’t believe this is Harvard. I thought Harvard was supposed to have standards. Granted, I have only taken one course so far, but I was astonished at the overall incompetence of the teaching staff.
The course I took was writing-​intensive, but the professors and teaching assistants were the worst writers ever! I saw them write things like, «alot» and «should of,» and I saw assignments with misspellings, redundancies and sentence fragments. Worst of all, they were incredibly verbose, but not in an academic manner. They seemed to think that the more words they packed into a sentence, the smarter they would seem. We all know, of course, that the opposite is true.
I told myself that these teachers may not be gifted writers, but they must be knowledgeable in their field and probably very effective speakers. Wrong again! From what I could see, these teachers knew very little of their subject and most of the info they conveyed was ten years old. The lead professor was a forgetful but amiable coot who insisted on telling the same irrelevant, endless corny old war stories at least two to three times.
After getting only a B on my first exam, I discovered the secret to success. When I skipped their lectures and avoiding reading the teacher’s writings, my grades went UP and I averaged out with a B+. Proof that I performed better with self study than with their tutelage, which is rather sad.
I mention that I got a B+ from professors I abhor to let readers know that I am not disaffected and bitter because of a bad grade. Regardless of the grade, these teachers were really substandard, and should not be teaching anywhere, let alone Harvard.
I truly hope I can get better professors in future courses, but now that I see how low the standard is, I am not optimistic.

I am a young professional who was trying to figure out some way to take more classes without really getting another certification. I am not terribly interested in another degree. just learning more from somebody smart. and being around other motivated people like that.
I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Harvard offered classes. It’s not Harvard. so I hope people are not mislead to think they are getting the same sort of degree as somebody who is actually going there. Remember. you didn’t have to apply to get in here. You just had to pay.
I specifically picked a class from a Harvard lecturer (it’s listed on the website) and I have not regret it yet. He’s pretty interesting. very good.
The only downside is really the cost of the classes. I understand it’s to deter just anybody from going. But with a rough economy like this, there are few employers willing to pay for you to go to school. And of course the parking always blows in this area. There are garages but they give you the sixth degree to get a parking pass.

My first class at Harvard Extension did not go well.
I had a horrid instructor that went over simple concepts in class and tested us on the dumbest details at length (like methods sections in scientific articles).
Waste of my life. Yeah, I’m bitter.
So, I vowed never to take an extension class.
Until the next semester when I found myself wanting to pick up some computer programming skills for work.
Now, I find this class very slow moving and wasting my time (again). The online aspect of this class has put procrastination on a different plane of existence. Now, I can watch all of my classes on top of scrambling to get my homework done all in the same evening/​night/​overnight/​next morning.
Is this really Harvard? If you don’t add «extension» on your resume, folks around these parts consider that an unforgivable sin. If you plan on moving to the Midwest, people will think you’re a genius even if you emphasize that it’s extension.
I do not see the quality in the education that people are commenting on in the reviews. For science, classes are mostly taught by post-​docs. Your experience depends on your instructors as any other school. Maybe, I’m just unlucky. Twice. In two different fields. I mean, it’s not THAT bad, but it’s not excellent either.
The price is right (~$ 1,900 per graduate class), and the evening classes make it possible to actually work while going to school, so they get brownie points for that.
Picking up a masters from here would probably be beneficial.

I took one class here to get me back into a studying frame of mind. Unfortunately, the class I took didn’t do much studying. However, I found it so useful. I learned so much from my team leadership class that I apply to work on a daily basis. I was very impressed by the level of discourse. While sometimes, a few students might bring the class down, the majority really participated and knew what they were talking about.
I can’t speak about their programs, but people who I knew that were enrolled really seemed happy with them. Definitely if you’re looking at taking a few classes, spend the extra cash and go here.

It feels a bit cheesy to write a review about an institute of higher learning, but I had trouble finding a great place to take night classes, and the reviews on Unilocal helped me decide. I’ve taken classes at a lot of different places, and I would definitely take another one at HES. Considering both price and quality, I think it’s the best choice in the Boston area.
I took Abnormal Psych this semester, and just finished my final yesterday night (woohoo). The class had a «distance option», which was pretty fabulous– lectures and materials were posted online. In addition, the midterm and final were open book and online. The class was taught by Professor Carson, an actual Harvard Professor, and the class had 3 – 4 dedicated TAs who all had great experience in Psychology and were available outside of class to talk to us about our interests and career.
Like many colleges, there was a good bit of coddling, grade inflation, and requirements that reminded me a bit of high school, but I came out of the course having learned a lot. The quality of the education was fairly high, and the class held me accountable, so I couldn’t slack off. We had to write 5 weekly response papers, participate in 5 sections (online or in person) and write a 12-​page literature review paper. We also had to take a midterm and a final. The class was approximately (this is from memory, so could easily be wrong) $ 600 to audit it for non-​credit, $ 800 – 900 to take as an undergrad, and $ 1.8k to take as grad credit. Their pricing is significantly cheaper than most of the other area colleges.
HES also offers undergrad and grad degrees. I considered getting my masters here as I worked on my applications for PhD programs, but decided against it, mostly because I want to pursue my education full-​time. If not, this would have been a fantastic option. The adviser for the department was so-​so in helpfulness, but the application process is fairly straightforward. For the Psych masters program, you take 3 classes (1 stats, 1 psych, 1 proseminar) and then «apply». Acceptance is mostly based on your grades in those 3 classes and your application. Enrollment in courses are open to everyone.
If you’re looking for a night class to supplement your education, especially while working full-​time, this is definitely a great option!

I had a very painful education experience here studying finance. The prof made material much more complicated than need be. The final was based on trivial formula based information and left much of the practical information alone. Also the prof said all graded material would be covered by his lectures, however some items from homework AKA problem sets, was only available from attending or watching the class sections held by TA’s. My grader would constantly mis-​grade my assignments. I had to correct grader several times, even on the final! Sometimes having to speak with the teacher because grader was so stubborn. It all worked out in the end, but when you’re paying for education you shouldn’t have to put in work just to get the proper grading on assignments– particularly when you’re being graded on a curve!
If you’re military using GI Bill, know you will have to wait a long time to get paid. The veteran coordinator at this school lies like Bill Clinton. He told me I would be compensated in September for Fall semester. I didn’t get any payment until November.
Bottom line I learned some useful information and did good enough to use this as a stepping stone to something better. Don’t regret it at all but wish there was better options. Good is good and bad is bad, but this actually sits on the border and gets sentenced to Purgatory. As for night classes, its the best option I know of, for the material I was interested in. But I would rather move and find another school than suffer through another semester here.

I’ve just recently been admitted to the Extension School’s ALB (Bachelors degree) program, and let me tell you, folks, this is the real deal. Sure, you can bitch about the educational weekend warriors in your class, but I’ve found that the open enrollment policy is part of what makes the classes so good. Instead of sitting in a college class with a bunch of eighteen year olds who haven’t really experienced much outside of high school and proms and summer camps (no offense to eighteen year olds, but you’ll know what I mean once you get a couple cross country road trips under your belt), the HES classes draw a diverse group of people with a wide range of life experiences.
For example: this past spring I took a class about World War II. The average age in that class was probably up in the 50s. There were plenty of us youngins in the class, but there were also a surprisingly large number of people who were children during the war. One man grew up in London and vividly remembers sitting in his mother’s lap in a crowded underground subway station during the Battle of Britain. Some students were the children of Holocaust survivors. Other students were just WWII buffs who came to learn more about their hobby topic. That class sure beat the pants off of any WWII class I could have taken in a more traditional college environment.
I’ve taken 5 classes so far and, for the most part, my fellow students are serious-​minded, hardworking, and are there because they want to be there. The classes are intellectually stimulating and the professors are top notch. Some Harvard College kids may feel threatened by the fact that you’re 67 and pursuing a hallowed Harvard undergraduate degree, but who cares what Harvard College kids think, anyway? (Just kidding, Harvard College kids. Go easy on me when you’re running the world.)
But seriously: if you’re interested, take a look. Peruse their website. If you’re ready to be a serious student you can get an Associate, Bachelor, or Masters degree from Harvard Extension School. If you just want to take a class for personal enrichment or for fun (History of Electronic Music? Sign me up!) you can do that too. Check it out for yourself. I’ve enjoyed my time there, but (as LeVar Burton used to say) you don’t have to take my word for it!