HGSE Admissions Blog

HGSE students have the option to cross-register at other schools during the the course of the year. This, of course, is dependent on being able to fulfill program requirements and also making sure that the majority of your classes are taken at HGSE.

I didn’t cross-register at all during the fall because I was too concerned with fulfilling my program requirements. However, the spring has been much more flexible and cross-registering has allowed me to get exactly what I’ve wanted from my last semester here.

In my experience with cross-registration, there are generally four types of classes you’ll run into during the course shopping period at other schools:

• The instructor is very friendly towards cross-registrants because they enjoy the diversity of perspectives.
• The instructor enjoys having cross-registrants in the class, but they have to give priority to students from that school. In these situations, you attend classes until the add/drop fluctuations settle down. Then the professor can tell if he/she will have room for cross-registrants.
• The class is taught by a famous professor or word has gotten around how great the class is and so the competition is fierce. As a cross-registrant, you have no leverage in these situations unless the instructor has explicitly saved some spots for cross-registrants.
• The class is not open to cross-registrants.

I found a good mix of these types while shopping at the other Harvard schools. In the end, I decided to take a city government field lab at Harvard Kennedy School and an immigration law and policy course at Harvard Law School. I also considered a course at MIT, a course at the Graduate Schools of Arts and Sciences, and several others at HKS.

I will say that cross-registering takes a bit of independent effort. You have to reach out to the professors, you have to figure out the credit conversions, you have to know the rules and limitations of being a cross-registrant. For example, cross-registrants at HKS have to take the course for a letter grade. Or at the law school, you can only cross-register for a max of six credits (about one course and one module).

Cross-registering also means figuring out a new school culture. For example, there is a culture of “cold-calling” at the law school. Cold-calling is basically being called on by the professor without indicating that you had anything to say. Thankfully, my professor hasn’t done this yet in class, but the class definitely keeps me on my toes.

One of my goals for graduate school is to expose myself to new ways of thinking. I want to leave Harvard with an idea of how economists think, or how a lawyer would approach a problem versus an educator, a policy analyst, or a researcher. Cross-registering has given me this opportunity and despite the heavy lift of figuring out the logistics, it has been worth the effort for me.

Jenni Myung is in the International Education Policy program. She is from Columbus, Ohio but her most recent home before HGSE was Arvaikheer, Mongolia. At HGSE, Jenni is interested in exploring how language policy at the institutional level affect issues of equity and access in schools and societies. She has chosen to do her internship at the Boston Mayor’s Office this year in order to apply her academic interests to real world contexts. Jenni is also serving as the Student Council representative for her cohort. Jenni is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, former AmeriCorps VISTA member, and an alum of Emory University.