Don’t Kid Yourself, Prefrosh. It’s Harvard.

Dear Prefrosh,

You’ve had your Visitas weekend, got your free drawstring backpack, slept on a common room couch, heard about Harvard’s courses and extracurricular activities, and maybe got a taste of Harvard’s bumping social scene. Now it’s time to make your decision.

Maybe you need pictures of Gothic architecture for Instagram, and you’re drawn to an odd village called New Haven. Maybe ever since watching High School Musical 3, you’ve been idealizing that West Coast college life. Maybe you want to be close to home because you don’t know how to do laundry (or maybe because you will just miss your family).

Whatever is causing you to be undecided, take it from us: Harvard is your top choice.

Here’s why:

1. Getting to eat in the Great Hall at Hogwarts: Harvard’s freshman get to eat in Annenberg Hall, which is basically the Great Hall in Hogwarts. Yale’s dining hall looks like Durmstrang’s, and who even goes there?

2. The Harvard Square Turkey: Harvard’s unofficial mascot (because what is a Crimson) is a turkey. A physical live turkey that can be found roaming Harvard Yard and the streets around it. There’s nothing quite like running into a turkey on your way to class. Your other choice’s mascot animal 1) probably isn’t alive and just can’t compete.

3. Lowell Tea: Lowell Tea is what your friends envision social life at Harvard to be. Every Thursday, live out your inner Princess Diana and sip tea out of porcelain teacups and eat pastries. You’ll be sad at any other school when your classiest teatime experience is drinking Lipton out of a take-out paper dixie cup.

4. Tourists: Not everyone gets to go to school in a tourist attraction. Nothing makes you feel more special than waking up and looking out your window to see 30 tourists taking hundreds of photos of your building. Competing for sidewalk space is just too great an experience to give up to go to your other, quiet, isolated school.

5. Primal Scream: Nothing says tradition like taking your clothes off and screaming in Harvard Yard the night before final exams! Even if you don’t do it, there’s nothing quite like pausing your studying to see a naked mob run a lap outside your window. Other schools’ traditions include chugging 15 cups of espresso and pulling three consecutive all-nighters, but that’s just not fun without the chance to get naked too.

There you have it—loud and clear—Harvard is unequivocally your top choice. See you in the fall.

Love,

Flyby