colleges in universities

[Joanne0012 at aol.com]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Amy Z" <aiz24 at h...> wrote:
> Joshua wrote on the main list:
> 
> >Actually, in the US, we also use college as a "super-department"
> >within a University, although it is also used to denote a small
> >collegiate entity.
> 
> In the US, "college" is also, very rarely, the term for a separate dorm and 
> entity within the undergraduate institution, as at Oxford and Cambridge; 
> Yale's Berkeley or Davenport or Jonathan Edwards College correspond to 
> Oxford's Balliol etc.
> 
> Yale is actually the only university I know that has this system.  Harvard 
> has the same, but the entities are called houses, not colleges.  Still, at 
> both universities the meaning goes beyond dormitory; people are assigned to 
> a college/house their first year and remain there for their entire tenure, 
> and Harvard alumni of 40 years will still get to know each other by saying 
> "what house were you in?"
> 
> Amy Z

The Harvard system really is just dorms; they don't have the classes and other 
activities as the Yale colleges do. All Harvard first-years live together in the 
yard in special freshmen dorms; they are assigned to their Houses at the 
beginning of sophomore year.  (Don't students at most colleges and 
universities stay in the same dorm all the way through, unless special 
circumstances come up?)  And until assignments were "randomized" about ten 
years ago, Harvard students chose their own houses, and of course they 
started getting more homogeneous (a la Hogwarts): One was known for 
attracting jocks, another for arts and drama types, and so on.  So an alum from 
that pre-randomization era is finding out more than just where you lived, 
they're finding out quite a bit about your preferences and personal lifestyle, 
just as Hogwarts houses tell us a lot about their residents.