Hello,
I would like to visit Boston in June, but want to avoid the crowds associated with all of the various colleges having graduations. When are most of them done by?

Most of them are done by mid-May; BUT

MIT and harvard both have theirs the first weekend of June.

So you'll be fine if you come during the second week of June.

Harvard's Commencement is Thursday June 4 and MIT's is is Friday June 5. Many families stay in town for the subsequent weekend.

Starting in September 2009, Harvard will switch to an academic calendar that is comparable to other local schools, and Commencement in 2010 will be on Thursday May 27.

Starting in September 2009, Harvard will switch to an academic calendar that is comparable to other local schools

Just wondering, what's the change (from what to what)?

Basically, each semester will begin and end about 2 weeks earlier; the main effect is to have first-term finals before Christmas.

http://www.registrar.fas.harvard.edu...n/calendar.jsp

anonymous - I didn't know Harvard's schedule is like that, but I know someone at Princeton and he gets a short holiday break and returns for finals after Xmas - I think that's lousy.

Well, Centralparkgirl, that's the way all colleges used to be! Start college in mid-September, ten days off for Christmas, back for a week of classes, then a one week reading period (when you wrote your papers), then two weeks of exams. Start second semester right after first semester exams, finish the second semester about Memorial Day.

Harvard and Princeton may have been the last two holdouts.

This schedule was kind of chopped up, but it allowed students to have jobs for the whole summer season -- Memorial Day through Labor Day. In my part of New England, employers went to Irish and then East Europeans for summer employees since Americans can't work the whole time.

MIT switched from the traditional schedule to an earlier start and finals-before-Christmas schedule back in the early 1970s, but they don't start second semester until around February 1, that's why their graduation is still so late.

The month of January is designated as "Independent Activities Period" (IAP) and can be used for extra research (independent or in collaboration with faculty), vacation, or mini-courses. The mini-courses range from extremely academic and esoteric courses taken for credit ("Design of Heterogeneous Polymeric Gas Separation Membranes") to purely fun ("Obsidian and Flint Knapping," origami, cooking, square dancing) to credit for fun (Mechanical Engineering's "Design-a-palooza").

Ackislander - not to my personal experience (although it was a long, long time ago - lol). I went to a CUNY school and we had the week off for Xmas and returned for finals only. All my friends who went 'out of town' had long intersession vacations.

Thanks YK and Anonymous.

CP and Anonymous, my schedule when I started college (a "lesser" Ivy than Harvard ) was exactly what Anon posted, except that after first semester exams, we had 2 or so weeks off for "intersession". That was only my freshman year, we switched to the "new-fangled" schedule my sophomore year.