Senior Section 2025

Senior Section

THE SENIOR SURVEY

The Crimson surveyed hundreds of seniors about their Harvard experience, postgraduate plans, and views on the most pressing issues facing the University.

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DEAR SENIOR YEAR

For four years, one magazine writer has reflected, publicly and movingly, on her time at Harvard. Read her fourth and final installment.

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WEDDING BELLS

Fifteen Minutes talks to engaged and newly-wedded Harvard seniors about finding young love and their path from Harvard Yard to the altar.

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Foreword

As soon-to-be-graduates of the Class of 2025 — and editors for The Crimson — we have had a front row seat to one of the most eventful periods in Harvard’s history. Our time on campus began with the lingering effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, and ended with Donald Trump’s reelection to the presidency and unprecedented attacks on Harvard and higher education.

In this Senior Section, our class marshals share their own reflections, as does one of our magazine editors in a letter to her senior year. As always, we profiled engaged couples and newlyweds on finding romance at Harvard. And we share the results of our annual senior survey, trying to capture our peers’ reactions to these times of sweeping change. For our last time ever, thank you for being a reader of The Crimson.

Senior Section Staff

Editors

J. Sellers Hill ’25

Miles J. Herszenhorn ’25

Elias J. Schisgall ’25

Claire Yuan ’25

Tommy Barone ’25

Hewson Duffy ’25

Rahem D. Hamid ’25

Yusuf S. Mian ’25

Jacob M. Miller ’ 25

Multimedia

Julian J. Giordano ’25

Addison Y. Liu ’25

A Letter From the 2025 Class Marshals

First and Second Class Marshals Uzma A. Issa ’25 and Srija Vem ’25 reflect on a bittersweet end to four years at Harvard.

Senior Survey

Hundreds of seniors shared information about their academics, lifestyles, postgraduate plans, and thoughts on the most pressing questions facing Harvard.

John N. Peña ’25

Charlotte P. Ritz-Jack ’25

Paton D. Roberts ’25

Kaitlyn Tsai ’25

Design

Sami E. Turner ’25

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Campus Politics

See how seniors responded to two years of uproar on Harvard’s campus.

At a Glance

Graphs that illuminate and encapsulate the Class of 2025 experience.

National Politics

After the election, seniors share their views on politics and the direction of the country.

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Dear Senior Year

Academics and Student Life

Statistics on concentrations, grading, academic integrity, and house life.

Lifestyle

Sex, drugs, and parties: seniors share what keeps them busy outside of the classroom.

After Harvard

See how Harvard’s newest batch of graduates is planning to launch their adult life.

Crimson Magazine editor Michal Goldstein ’25 writes poignantly about four undergraduate years marked by grief and love.

25 4 Years in Photos

Triumph and tumult at Harvard, captured in 12 vivid Crimson photographs.

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Wedding Bells

Hear from eight couples in the Class of 2024 who are married or engaged to be married.

Laurinne Jamie P. Eugenio ’26

A Letter from the Class Marshals

Uzma A. Issa ’25 and Srija Vem ’25

Dear Class of 2025,

Since we anxiously clicked “check status update” and saw confetti explode on our computer screen, we’ve navigated the end of a global pandemic, historic campus unrest, and an unprecedented war on higher education. But as the nation’s eyes turned towards our campus, we’ve learned one thing: Uncertainty doesn’t define us — resilience does.

We moved into the Yard in Boston’s intense summer heat, wondering how we would possibly survive without air conditioning, and in the thick of a oncein-a-century pandemic. That year, we took Color tests three times a week and grabbed to-go meals from Baby ’Berg. We sat masked and a safe distance apart in EC10a, LS1a, and CS50, and didn’t see many of our peers’ faces until the spring.

And yet, we didn’t just survive — we thrived. We gathered in groups outside by the Charles, took advantage of Tasty Burger basement, and talked for hours over brunch in Annenberg. We made friends that quickly became like family, pandemic or not.

The next year, many of us experienced sophomore slump, tested not only by harder courses in our newly-declared concentrations but also by the wider world. We watched as the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, race-conscious admissions came to an end, and University President Lawrence S. Bacow stepped down.

For the first time, we saw that even Harvard is not immune to change. Still, we remained optimistic. We rallied for what we believed in, attending protests and supporting causes near to our hearts. And in the midst of it all, we found support and community in our new Houses as we tackled each other in intramural flag football, danced together on Quad lawn, and shared meals in the dining hall.

We probably thought our time at Harvard couldn’t get more eventful. We were wrong. Junior year, just as we were finding our footing, divisions con-

sumed our campus, our classmates fell victim to a vicious doxxing campaign, and Claudine Gay resigned as University president.

We confronted the difficulties with having dialogue in the face of such fear, loss, resentment, and intimidation. But we refused to allow these challenges to stop us.

We protested, voiced our convictions, and had tough conversations with our classmates and friends. Campus discourse was far from perfect, but we remained resilient and fought for our beliefs while striving to understand those who disagree.

This year, these events culminated in a war on higher education. As the government has cut billions of dollars in research funding and sought to compromise our institutional integrity, we stood proud as Harvard became the first university to fight back. As President Alan M. Garber ’76 wrote, “we stand for the values that have made American higher education a beacon for the world.” That we do.

Despite these difficult times, life has gone on. We’ve bonded with our class in these final weeks crawling through Cambridge bars, arranging flower bouquets, competing in spikeball tournaments, running 5Ks together, learning personal finance from professor David I. Laibson ’88, dancing like there’s no tomorrow, and chasing each other with spoons in a more than 500-member game of senior assassins.

Class of 2025, no one could have predicted the road we’d walk. But the resilience with which we’ve walked it speaks volumes.

As we depart campus at 2 p.m. tomorrow, we don’t just leave as classmates. We leave as a family bonded through

hard times, yes, but also through fond memories — dorm-storming during Housing Day, late night essay writing at Lamont Cafe, and cheering proudly at Harvard-Yale. Although we will separate into different cities and careers, we will forever be connected by the crimson thread that weaves us together. As we go through life, we must never forget the memories or the family we’ve built together. We’ll be sharing these college stories with our kids one day.

Don’t forget college and the community you’ve built here. Show up for your friends, your family, and yourself, no matter what obstacles life throws at you. Say yes to adventures, making new memories and pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone. Let’s all go out and do some good in the world.

Class of 2025, thank you for showing up today and saying yes to the experiences we all shared together. See you all at the five-year reunion!

With immense love and gratitude, Uzma & Srija

Uzma A. Issa ’25 is a Neuroscience concentrator in Lowell House and First Marshal of the Class of 2025.

Srija Vem ’25 is a Neuroscience concentrator in Quincy House and Second Marshal of the Class of 2025.

JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

By MILES J. HERSZENHORN

In fall 2021, we arrived on campus as anxious but eager freshmen, concerned about the Covid-19 pandemic but excited for in-person instruction after many of us finished high school virtually. More than anything else, we were looking for some normalcy.

Instead, the Class of 2025 lived, studied, partied, and debated through four deeply exceptional and historic years for Harvard.

Class of 2025 Senior Survey

As sophomores, we saw Harvard elect Claudine Gay as the University’s 30th president, who became the first person of color to lead the University in its nearly 400-year history.

As juniors, we witnessed major crises as Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel led to a rise in antisemitism and anti-Palestinian bias on campus — and contributed to Gay’s resignation just a few months later.

And as seniors, we watched these tensions ease as students, faculty, and staff united to resist the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against Harvard.

Unlike some of his counterparts at other Ivy League schools, Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 has largely received praise from the Class of 2025 over his response to the Trump administration’s attacks on the University. The Harvard Crimson’s annual senior survey reveals that 58 percent of respondents expressed a favorable opinion of Garber and 90 percent expressed support for his decision to sue the federal government over its decision to withhold billions in federal funding.

But even as surveyed seniors approved of Garber, they also expressed serious concern about some of his administration’s actions and policies. For instance, respondents largely disagreed with the University’s handling of campus protests, with a plurality of surveyed seniors describing the administration’s approach as “too re -

strictive.”

Read on for the rest of our findings from the Class of 2025’s Senior Survey, which dives into seniors’ views on campus politics, national politics, Harvard’s academics and student life, and their postgraduate plans.

But even after a college experience colored by campus divisions and national controversy, 95 percent of surveyed seniors agreed on one thing: if they had to choose, they would do Harvard all over again.

Methodology

The Crimson distributed the survey by email to 2,194 graduating seniors and members of the social Class of 2025 through emails sourced in summer 2021 and May 2025 from Harvard directory information. Participants accessed the survey form via anonymous links from April 28 until May 19, 2025, when the survey closed. During that period, The Crimson collected 957 surveys, representing a response rate of 43.6 percent of those who received the survey.

The data includes academic and social seniors. Eight percent indicated they matriculated earlier than 2021, meaning they took leaves of absence from Harvard and later re-classed as members of the Class of 2025. Meanwhile, 6 percent indicated that they will graduate in December of 2025 or later, meaning they affiliate as “Social Seniors” but will not graduate with the majority of their class this May. Overall, 10 percent took time off from Harvard.

To check for potential response bias, The Crimson compared respondent demographics with publicly available information on student demographics provided by the University — information regarding gender, race, and ethnicity. Overall, the respondents to the survey were broadly in line with the demographics of the student body. The data was not otherwise adjusted for response biases.

By RAHEM D. HAMID AND ELIAS J. SCHISGALL CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

The Class of 2025 spent their final semester in Cambridge looking on as Harvard emerged as an unlikely foil to the Trump administration, taking the federal government to court over billions in funding cuts.

The seniors are proud, to say the least.

After witnessing deep divisions emerge on campus after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, the Class of 2025 offered near-universal praise for the University’s lawsuit against the Trump administration, which has blocked more than $2.6 billion in federal funds over allegations of pervasive antisemitism on campus.

Seniors also gave strong marks to Har-

Campus Politics

vard President Alan M. Garber ’76, who was suddenly appointed to helm the University in the middle of their junior year. Garber initially spent his tenure trying to keep Harvard out of the national spotlight — until he unexpectedly became the face of the resistance to Trump’s higher education agenda.

But the senior class did not lend unequivocal support to Garber. Many seniors indicated disapproval for some of Garber’s signature actions, including cracking down on student protests and pro-Palestine academic programming. Half of the survey respondents said they believed Harvard should divest from institutions with Israeli ties — a key demand from pro-Palestine protesters that University administrators have firmly rejected.

Seniors also weighed in on topics in-

cluding Claudine Gay’s presidency, diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, campus speech culture, and student organizations.

Harvard Administrators

More than 58 percent of surveyed seniors said they viewed Garber very or somewhat favorably, giving him the highest approval ranking for any Harvard president since The Crimson began surveying seniors in 2016. Garber’s approval rating rose nine points compared to the Class of 2024.

The 2025 survey also found a bump in support for former President Claudine Gay, who resigned in January 2025 amid criticism of failing to adequately address campus antisemitism and allegations of plagiarism in her academic work. Nearly

45 percent of survey respondents reported a somewhat or very favorable view of Gay, up 10 points from the Class of 2024.

Still, a slim majority of respondents — 52 percent — said they supported Gay’s resignation, while 31 percent said she should not have resigned. Of respondents who supported her resignation, more than 35 percent said they did so because the pressure on Harvard was too great, while only 16 percent said they felt Gay was unfit to lead the University.

For those that said that they felt Gay was unfit to lead, roughly equal percentages of respondents — 33 and 35 percent, respectively — pointed to her plagiarism and to her testimony before Congress as the primary factors in their thinking.

But not all of Harvard’s top brass enjoyed greater approval. Only 13 percent of surveyed seniors approved of the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, an approximately 10 percentage point drop from last year. The famously secretive Corporation came under scrutiny from students last spring after it voted to withhold degrees from a group of seniors who participated in the pro-Palestine Harvard Yard encampment. It eventually conferred the degrees over the summer.

Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra, who has stayed largely under the radar this past year, had an approval rating of approximately 25 percent, but 68 percent of surveyed seniors said they either did not have enough information about Hoekstra or had neither a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the dean.

Campus Activism and the War in Gaza

The Trump administration has framed its attacks on Harvard — slashing billions and threatening to revoke the school’s nonprofit status — as necessary measures to address a campus overrun with antisemitic students and faculty. Trump administration officials have cited Harvard’s own report on antisemitism, which was released shortly after The Crimson’s survey opened and described rampant social exclusion of Jewish and Israeli students.

But Harvard seniors resoundingly said the Trump administration was making a mountain out of a molehill. More than 60 percent of respondents said the government’s characterization of antisemitism on campus was “very exaggerated,” and almost a quarter said it was “somewhat exaggerated.”

That left only 2 percent of respondents who said the administration accurately characterized antisemitism at Harvard, while fewer than 1 percent of respondents said the characterization was understated.

Seniors broadly indicated that antisemitism at the University was far from prevalent, contradicting the federal government’s primary justification for withholding Harvard’s federal funding. Roughly 66 percent of respondents said antisemitism was very or somewhat uncommon, while only 12 percent described it as very or somewhat widespread.

Respondents who self-identified as Jewish were more divided. Roughly 50 percent of self-identified Jewish respondents said antisemitism was very or somewhat uncommon, while 46 percent said it was very or somewhat widespread.

In contrast, 29 percent of respondents described Islamophobia at Harvard — also the subject of a University task force report this spring — as very or somewhat widespread, while roughly 35 percent of respondents described it as very or somewhat uncommon.

The survey results also revealed a senior class sympathetic to the demands of pro-Palestine activists. Half of all respondents said Harvard should divest from institutions with ties to Israeli settlements in the West Bank or the war in

sively promoted the Intellectual Vitality Initiative as an effort to engage students in civil dialogue on contentious topics.

But a plurality of respondents — almost 40 percent — said they did not have enough information to view the initiative favorably or unfavorably. Around 32 percent of respondents had a favorable view, while 11 percent of respondents had an unfavorable view.

Asked whether their peers had become more or less tolerant of dissenting views since their freshman year, nearly 40 percent of senior respondents said students have become less tolerant, while only 22 percent said students became more tolerant. About a quarter of respondents said acceptance of dissenting views stayed about the same.

the crosshairs of the Trump administration, which has said they violate anti-discrimination laws, and many major corporations and universities have rebranded or rolled back their DEI initiatives. The Crimson’s survey was first released on April 28, just hours before Harvard announced that it was renaming and revamping its Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging to the Office of Community and Campus Life.

Gaza, while only 19 percent said Harvard should not divest.

The results come in stark contrast to last year, when only 34 percent of seniors said they would have supported a similar Harvard Undergraduate Association referendum on divestment, compared to 48 percent who opposed it.

Seniors were largely split over Garber’s steps to combat antisemitism, which included adopting a controversial definition of antisemitism, cracking down on academic programs with an anti-Israel bent, and centralizing student disciplinary processes. Almost 30 percent of respondents viewed the University’s efforts to combat antisemitism favorably, while 22 percent viewed them unfavorably. Nearly half of respondents either said they had no strong opinion or not enough information.

When it came to the administration’s tightening of protest guidelines — a hot button issue for much of the senior class’s time on campus — a plurality of respondents, 40 percent, said Harvard’s handling of pro-Palestine protests was too restrictive, which marked a 13-point increase from last year.

Nearly 20 percent said they were satisfied with the protest response, and about 17 percent said the school was too permissive, down 14 points from last year’s survey.

Speech and Discourse on Campus

The aftermath of the war in Gaza and Harvard’s leadership crisis saw a renewed interest from administrators in addressing self-censorship and ideological orthodoxy on campus. At the undergraduate level, the College has aggres-

A plurality of respondents, 43 percent, also said they believe there exists a “Palestine exception” to free speech at Harvard — a frequent allegation from pro-Palestine students and faculty who have said their views are unfairly targeted as hateful or antisemitic.

About 28 percent of respondents said a “Palestine exception” does not exist, while 20 percent said they were unsure and 10 percent had no opinion.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives have found themselves squarely in

Still, the survey results suggest broad student support for Harvard’s DEI work. More than31 percent of respondents said that Harvard should not roll back its DEI efforts, and a similar percentage — just under 29 percent — said that the University should expand its DEI efforts. Meanwhile, over 27 percent of surveyed seniors said that Harvard should roll back at least some, if not all, of its DEI initiatives.

But students did not have strong opinions on the former EDIB office itself. An exactly equal number of surveyed respondents — at 23 percent each — said they either had no opinion or not enough information on the EDIB office, while just under 36 percent reported somewhat or very favorable views.

A 41 percent plurality of respondents said they have not been personally affected by Harvard’s DEI initiatives, while 33 percent said they have personally benefited from such initiatives. About 9 per-

cent of respondents said Harvard’s DEI work has negatively impacted them.

Campus Organizations

The Harvard Crimson, the University’s only student-run daily newspaper, enjoyed a nearly 15-point boost in its favorability rating compared to last year, with 63 percent of respondents who viewed the publication favorably compared to 14 percent who viewed it unfavorably.

Other campus publications did not fare so well. The Harvard Lampoon, a semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine, saw only a 31 percent favorability rating, compared to 41 percent who viewed it unfavorably.

The Harvard Independent, Harvard’s other campus newspaper, had a 15 percent favorability rating, compared to 36 percent who viewed it unfavorably. And a large majority of respondents — 72 percent — said they had an unfavorable view of the Harvard Salient, a conservative student magazine known for distributing copies to all undergraduate dorm rooms.

Harvard’s student government, the Harvard Undergraduate Association, continued to receive poor ratings from seniors, even despite a year relatively free from controversy. Only 10 percent of senior respondents had a favorable view of the three-year-old student government, compared to 51 percent who viewed it unfavorably.

The senior class committee, which or-

ganizes social events for graduating seniors, saw a comfortable favorability rating of 45 percent, compared to 26 percent who had an unfavorable view.

Admissions

As Harvard navigates the post-affirmative action college admissions landscape following the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to strike down race-based admissions nationwide, the Class of 2025 expressed broad support for both race and class-based affirmative action and opposition towards legacy admissions.

Over 62 percent of survey respondents said they viewed race-conscious admissions very or somewhat favorably, compared to just 20 percent of respondents who reported somewhat or very unfavorable views on race-conscious admissions.

Class-based admissions, an oft-suggested alternative for colleges in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, received even more overwhelming support. A whopping 77 percent of respondents said they viewed class-conscious admissions very or somewhat favorably, with just over 7 percent expressing somewhat or very unfavorable views.

Meanwhile, the Class of 2025 was generally critical of legacy admissions, which have attracted much criticism from both the political left and right. Nearly 54 percent of survey respondents said they viewed legacy admissions somewhat or very unfavorably, compared to the approximately 23 percent of respondents who viewed legacy admissions somewhat or very favorably. Nearly 20 percent of respondents expressed neither favorable or unfavorable views.

At a Glance

PAGE DESIGN BY SAMI E. TURNER — CRIMSON DESIGNER

Congratulations, Luke Richey!

You weren’t thrilled with the idea of taking a photo with our Harvard family t-shirts for the annual Christm card on your first day in the Yard, bu it has become a treasured family picture It represents the love and admiration we all have for you, Luke

We are so very proud of you and the man you have become You’ve worke very hard to earn your degree! Enjoy this momentous day! You’ve earned

“For I know the plans I have for y declares the Lord, plans to prosper y and not to harm you, plans to give y hope and a future ” - Jeremiah 29:11

By YUSUF S. MIAN AND CHARLOTTE P. RITZ-JACK CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Between the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the re-election of President Donald Trump, the Class of 2025 witnessed a reorientation of the international and domestic political order while on campus. Graduating seniors also felt its direct effects on Harvard.

Following the longtime trend of previous classes, the majority of the Class of 2025 identified as politically progressive. On the whole, graduating seniors — who identify as even more progressive than the Class of 2024 — overwhelmingly disapproved of Trump, while also expressing increased skepticism of both the Democratic Party and former President Joe Biden.

National Politics

Respondents from the Class of 2025 nearly universally expressed concern about the political future of the United States. Nearly 89 percent of respondents, including nearly 61 percent of self-identified conservatives, said they believed the country is not headed in the right direction.

Political Allegiances

While most respondents described their views as progressive or very progressive, the survey revealed that the Class of 2025 became slightly less progressive during their time on campus.

Seventy percent of respondents indicated that they were progressive or very progressive prior to arriving at Harvard, but just 64 percent – a drop of six percentage points — said they current-

ly identify as progressive or very progressive. Meanwhile, more than 10 percent of respondents currently identify as conservative or very conservative, up from approximately eight percent who identified as such prior to arriving on campus.

Twenty-four percent of seniors described their current views as moderate, up from the 20 percent of seniors who described themselves as moderate prior to coming to Harvard.

Still, respondents in the Class of 2025 identified as more progressive than the Class of 2024. Last year, 55 percent of respondents described themselves as progressive or very progressive, 13 percent as conservative or very conservative, and 25 percent as moderate.

The political beliefs amongst respondents showed some differences by gen-

der, with significantly more female respondents — 71 percent — identifying as progressive or very progressive compared to male respondents, at 55 percent.

Despite the large number of progressives in the Class of 2025, the majority of respondents said they did not believe the University should actively recruit more conservative perspectives. 60 percent of respondents did not think Harvard should make efforts to enroll more conservative students, whereas 16 percent said the University should. Efforts to recruit more conservative faculty were slightly more popular, with 27 percent of respondents in favor and 52 percent opposed.

These preferences manifested in the Class of 2025’s voting behaviors. Nearly 56 percent of respondents who reported

they were from one of the 50 states said they were registered as Democrat, 19 percent as independent, and just a scant 5 percent as Republican. Among respondents who said they were from the United States, 71 percent reported voting for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, while just 6 percent reported voting for Donald Trump; 19 percent said they did not vote.

Respondents also suggested political allegiances are important determinants of their romantic and platonic relationships. Approximately 63 percent of responding seniors said that most or all of their closest friends shared their political views, while only 2 percent said none of their friends do. Only approximately 26 percent of respondents reported that they would be willing to enter a romantic relationship with someone who sup-

ported the opposite party’s nominee in the 2024 presidential election.

Policy Preferences

Four months into Trump’s second term, opinions of Trump were overwhelmingly unfavorable among seniors who responded to the survey. A whopping 92 percent of respondents reported unfavorable views of Trump, including 85 percent who described him as very unfavorable.

Respondents also expressed increased disapproval toward former President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. Approximately 44 percent of seniors reported unfavorable views towards Biden while 40 percent reported favorable views, down from 49 percent in the Class of 2024.

Respondents in this year’s survey reported net unfavorable views of the Democratic Party as well, with 44 percent saying they view the Democratic Party unfavorably compared to 36 percent who reported favorable views. The Republican Party was rated unfavorably by approximately 85 percent of graduating seniors.

The Class of 2025 also demonstrated overall dissatisfaction with Vice President JD Vance, who earned a 4 percent favorable rating from respondents. Harris was much more popular among seniors but still failed to receive support from the majority of respondents, with 47 percent indicating that they had a favorable opinion of the former Vice President.

The majority of surveyed seniors — 65 percent — expressed unfavorable views on U.S. aid to Israel amid the war in Gaza, a marked increase from the 48 percent of seniors who said the same last year.

Respondents were also split on support for the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, which is championed by pro-Palestine student groups on Harvard’s campus. Nearly 35 percent of respondents reported a favorable sentiment toward BDS, while approximately 28 percent responded unfavorably. In last year’s survey, a plurality of respondents disapproved of the BDS movement.

Respondents to the survey were more favorable of U.S. aid to Ukraine, with nearly 67 percent of respondents reporting favorable views and only 11 percent reporting unfavorable views.

Academics & Student Life

By J. SELLERS HILL AND JOHN N. PEÑA CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

The Harvard Class of 2025 looks a fair bit older than it did four years ago. Then again, so does the Harvard classroom.

After a freshman year of masked classes and thrice weekly Covid-19 testing, graduating seniors were among the first Harvard students to navigate the rise of artificial intelligence in classrooms.

Seniors also witnessed Harvard’s split from shopping week, which was phased out in favor of a previous-term course registration model in May 2022. And the last two years of their time at Harvard was marked by renewed conversations about grade inflation and the rigor of University coursework.

Before College

Many of this year’s graduates were first

offered admission to Harvard in 2020, just before the Covid-19 pandemic upended higher education. Roughly 22 percent of senior respondents took a gap year before matriculating at Harvard as many students looked to avoid beginning their Harvard experience via Zoom.

More than 90 percent of the class matriculated to the College in 2021, compared to 8 percent who did so in 2020 or earlier. Just under 1 percent matriculated in 2022 or later.

Prior to attending Harvard, 60 percent of respondents attended public non-charter high schools, 26 percent attended private non-religious schools, 10 percent attended private religious schools, and 4 percent attended public charters.

First-generation college students made up 16 percent of responding seniors. About 71 percent of respondents said they had no relatives who attended either Harvard or Radcliffe College, while 19 percent had at least one alumni parent. About 11 percent of the class had a sibling

who attended Harvard.

Concentrations

Economics remained the most popular concentration this year, accounting for more than 16 percent of surveyed seniors. The top three concentrations remained unchanged from the Class of 2024, with Computer Science and Government making up 12 percent and 10 percent of respondents, respectively.

Neuroscience and Social Studies rounded out the top five in a tie for fourth place, with 6 percent of students concentrating in each.

The number of students completing a double concentration jumped 5 percentage points for a second consecutive year, to 14 percent of respondents. The figure has steadily increased since the Faculty of Arts and Sciences first approved double concentrations in 2022. Meanwhile, 10 percent of the Class of 2025 reported pursuing a joint concentration.

A majority of respondents found their concentration somewhat or very difficult, while about 20 percent said their concentration classes were easy.

GPA

Roughly 21 percent of graduating seniors reported a GPA that rounded to a 4.0, in line with grades from the classes of 2023 and 2024. Seniors graduating with at least a 3.7 GPA, which rounds to an A-, made up 82 percent of the class.

The grade distribution among graduating classes is unlikely to ease concerns about grade inflation at the College. A 2023 faculty report found that Harvard College grades have steadily risen over the past two decades, and Harvard updated its guidelines for grading in General Education courses to combat grade inflation last October.

Academic Integrity

ChatGPT gained popularity in late 2022, during the Class of 2025’s sophomore year, prompting policy clarifications from professors and administrators.

But the survey suggested use of the technology remains widespread, as 30 percent of respondents said they had turned in AI-generated work as their own — in line with the share reported by the Class of 2024.

The share of students who reported cheating in an academic context at Harvard was 30 percent, a marked decrease from the 47 percent reported by the Class of 2024.

Of those who said they had cheated in an academic context, 93 percent said they had done so on a problem set or homework, while 61 percent said they had cheated on a paper, take-home test, or project. One-quarter of students who reported cheating at Harvard said they had done so on an in-person exam.

Only 5 percent of responding seniors said they had been before the Administrative Board or Honor Council for a disciplinary hearing.

House and Student Life

For the second year in a row, Lowell

House residents reported the highest rate of satisfaction with their living arrangements, with 94 percent of responding Lowellians saying they were either very satisfied or satisfied. Winthrop House and Cabot House were the next two most highly rated Houses, making gains from last year when they ranked 8th and 7th, respectively.

Notably, while an ongoing renovation of Adams House temporarily shuttered some of the house’s spaces, resident satisfaction appeared unchanged compared to previous years. Reported satisfaction with Leverett House tumbled the furthest; the House ranked last among the 12 undergraduate houses this year, compared to fourth in 2024.

When it comes to blocking groups — the groups of up to eight people that freshmen select to be sorted into a House with — bigger remains better, according to seniors. Blocking groups of six or more comprised 66 percent of responses. Nearly 30 percent of respondents reported forming groups of eight, which has been the most popular size for years.

Roughly 50 percent of responding seniors reported that their groups did not remain together through the end of college, and 69 percent of responding seniors said they would feed at least one of their blockmates to the Harvard Square turkeys.

Social Life and Final Clubs

In keeping with the past year, seniors again rated extracurricular organizations as their most important source of social connection, with 90 percent saying clubs were important, somewhat important, or very important for their social lives on campus.

Off-campus venues like restaurants and bars were rated, on average, the second-most important factor in seniors’ social lives, with 75 percent of respondents rating them so. Final clubs were rated by far the least important factor among responding seniors, with only 40 percent saying the clubs had been important to their social experience.

At the time of the survey, 65 percent of respondents said they had attended a final club party at some point during their four years. A slim majority of respondents (55 percent) said they had a somewhat or very unfavorable opinion of the male final clubs. Just 40 and 37 percent of respondents said the same about female final clubs and co-ed social clubs, respectively.

THOMAS BARONE III

4 AMAZING YEARS AT HARVARD & THE RHODES SCHOLARSHIP! YOU NEVER CEASE TO AMAZE US!

CONGRATULATIONS ON ALL YOUR ACCOMPLISHMENTS & THE BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIPS YOU’VE MADE. WE ARE BEYOND PROUD!

CAN’T WAIT TO SEE HOW YOU’LL CHANGE THE WORLD!

LOVE YOU TO THE MOON & BACK, MOM, DAD & MIA

By PATON D. ROBERTS AND CLAIRE YUAN CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

When the Class of 2025 first arrived at Harvard in the fall of 2021, thrice-weekly Covid-19 testing, mask mandates, and limits on in-person gatherings governed their social life.

By senior year, however, the class was taking full advantage of their time outside of academics and extracurriculars — attending parties, using drugs and alcohol, and having sex. The majority of respondents went out to dorm parties, final clubs, off-campus venues, and College-wide events like Yardfest.

More than half of respondents said that dorm parties were at least somewhat important parts of their college experience. Three-quarters of surveyed seniors said restaurants and bars beyond campus were also important components of their undergraduate social life.

More than 65 percent of respondents reported attending at least one final club event, but just under 41 percent of respondents indicated that events hosted by final clubs and other social organizations were not at all important to their social lives at Harvard.

Lifestyle

A plurality of surveyed seniors indicated that College-wide events like Yardfest were only somewhat important to their college experience, and more than 41 percent reported they were not very important or not at all important. Nearly two-thirds — 64 percent — of respondents reported that undergraduate House-sponsored events were at least somewhat important.

Sex and Dating

The plurality of respondents at 22 percent indicated having no sexual partners during college — a change from last year, when a plurality of respondents reported having one sexual partner. This year, 20 percent of respondents indicated having one sexual partner while at Harvard, 13 percent indicated two, just under 33 percent indicated between three or nine, and just

under 13 percent indicated more than 10.

Forty percent of responding seniors reported having sex before beginning college, 20 percent their freshman year, 8 percent their sophomore year, 5 percent their junior year, and 5 percent their senior year. Just under 22 percent of respondents reported that they have not had sex, marking a similar trend to the Class of 2024.

Roughly 75 percent of respondents reported dating at least one person during their time at Harvard, with approximately 36 percent reporting one partner, 25 percent reporting two, and 7 percent reporting three. Just under 59 percent of respondents reported using dating applications during their time at Harvard.

Drugs and Alcohol

Alcohol and marijuana — which are legal in Massachusetts for consumption by those over the age of 21 — saw the highest usage among respondents, similar to results in previous years.

Just under 93 percent of surveyed seniors reported drinking alcohol at least once in college. A plurality of students reported drinking once per week, while just over seven percent of respondents reported not drinking at all during college.

More than half of surveyed seniors — just over 52 percent of respondents — used marijuana at some point in college, with a plurality of those who reported using marijuana at some point saying they used it less than once per semester.

Approximately 70 percent of respondents said they have never used tobacco, and just under three-quarters reported never using e-cigarettes, both sharp decreases from the Class of 2024. Eight percent of respondents used cocaine at least once, 17 percent reported taking psychedelic mushrooms at least once, and 7 percent reported using illicit study drugs at least once.

Despite the national popularity of so-called “study drugs” like Adderall, only 7 percent of respondents said they took study drugs without a prescription at any point while at Harvard — a three percentage point drop from last year’s survey.

This year’s senior class started their substance use young. Over 59 percent of respondents started drinking before college, while just over 48 percent of respondents reported using marijuana

they waited until turning 21 to drink or use marijuana.

The Four Things

Alongside the traditional graduation requirements — four general education classes, divisional distribution requirements, and concentration courses — many undergraduates turn to a more informal to-do list.

The core three tasks — peeing on the John Harvard statue, having sex in the stacks of Widener Library, and streaking through Harvard Yard during “Primal Scream” — are often joined by a more informal fourth one: jumping into the Charles River from John W. Weeks Footbridge.

age of surveyed seniors who participated in Primal Scream remained consistent with last year’s class, but remained lower than the Class of 2023, which had 36 percent of respondents complete the task.

Social Media

The most used social media platforms among the Class of 2025 remained consistent with the years before, with Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Sidechat — an anonymous app — reigning as the most popular.

before starting college. Only approximately 10 percent of respondents said

Just over one-third of the respondents in the class had done at least one of the four tasks, with the most common being Primal Scream, followed by urinating on the statue. The percent-

The class held mixed opinions on the apps: more than 41 percent said they believed Sidechat had a positive impact on their college experience, while the rest of respondents said it did not have a positive impact or they were unsure.

Just over 2 percent of respondents said they do not use social media.

By ELIAS J. SCHISGALL CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

Barely 24 hours after Harvard College’s Class of 2025 processes out of Harvard Yard for their Commencement ceremonies, they will be forced to pack up their things and vacate their dormitories, officially venturing into the world as graduates. But most aren’t going very far.

Once again, New York and Massachusetts remain the most popular postgraduate destinations for seniors, at 24 percent and 18 percent respectively, as a substantial majority — 64 percent — plan to enter the workforce directly after graduation. Finance, technology, and consulting continue to attract Harvard graduates in large numbers, and many will rake in six figures or more for their starting salaries.

About 17 percent of seniors plan to go to graduate or professional school, while 6 percent are pursuing

After Harvard

fellowships. About 12 percent reported that they still don’t know their postgraduate plans.

Company Men

As is typical of Harvard’s graduating classes, a large swath of seniors are headed toward lucrative positions in finance, tech, and consulting — which represent, respectively, 21 percent, 18 percent, and 14 percent of seniors entering the workforce. Health and academia/research were close runners-up, at 8 percent each.

But many seniors had aspirations beyond simply getting their bag. When asked what industry they hope to be working in after a decade, responses varied widely: 14 percent of respondents said health, 12 percent each said law and academia, and 10 percent said technology.

Only 8 percent of senior respondents said they hoped to work in finance after a decade, while fewer than 1 percent said consulting.

And while many respondents suggested they would be content to

have a career with a sizable salary or significant social impact, some seniors have even bigger plans. Nearly 10 percent of respondents said they plan to run for public office in the future, and another 20 percent said they are at least considering it.

Homebodies and Globetrotters

As with last year, many seniors are opting to stay in Massachusetts, while roughly a quarter of respondents are relocating to the Big Apple. Another 13 percent said they were planning to move to California, and 10 percent said they were going abroad. About 13 percent of respondents said they don’t know where they’ll be living after graduation.

Students’ choice of locations was highly related to their desired industries. About 61 percent of seniors going into research or academia said they were staying in Massachusetts, while 63 percent of seniors entering finance were planning to go to New York.

Among students entering the tech sector, roughly 37 percent said they were moving to California, while many others reported that they were settling down in New York and Massachusetts.

Paying the Bills

Harvard’s graduates are also poised

to enter the workforce as top earners. Just about half of respondents reported that their starting salary will exceed $90,000 a year — well over the 2022 median earnings for bachelor’s degree holders, roughly $66,600 — and 20 percent said they

will earn $130,000 a year or more.

Among seniors going into consulting, the proportion of seniors making $90,000 or more a year was higher than 70 percent. For those going into finance, that figure rose to more than 90 percent.

Asked what was the biggest factor in choosing their postgraduate plans, only 20 percent of seniors said that money was the primary reason behind their decision. But 75 percent of respondents said that their family’s socioeconomic status influenced what they would do after graduation, with 33 percent saying it greatly informed their decision.

About 17 percent of respondents said they were graduating with student loans, up five points from last year. But among seniors with student loan debt, only 27 percent said

that their loans have affected their postgraduate planning.

And as seniors attempt to make it in the post-college world, many won’t be doing it alone. About 42 percent of respondents said their parents were giving them minor financial support next year, and 21 percent said they expected significant financial support.

Happy and Sappy

Broadly, seniors said they were pleased with their postgraduate plans. Nearly 75 percent of respondents said they were satisfied or very satisfied with their plans, while only 10 percent described themselves as dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with their postgraduate prospects.

Roughly 47 percent said they were planning to keep in touch with 10 or more of their classmates after graduating, and another 20 percent said they would stay in touch with at least seven.

And 19 out of 20 respondents said that four (or more) years after they accepted their offer of admission to the University, they would choose it again.

By MICHAL GOLDSTEIN CRIMSON MAGAZINE EDITOR

Dear Senior Year

Dear Senior Year, Just last week, as I walked along the river at sunset, I had a moment where all I felt for this place was love.

It was no small thing, no fleeting feel-

ing. It was a big, huge love, a totality of adoration. Emotion bubbled up from my abdomen and into my chest — a literal, physical feeling. So much affection for one thing I could hardly breathe.

I still don’t know what to name it, this feeling. Gratitude, maybe, but it felt like more. It felt like a pause, though my feet still moved forward, and the sun still

slipped toward the horizon. Tiny movements pulling me through time and inching me closer to the finish line of May 29th. The day that marks the end of you, counterintuitively called “commencement.”

I am wary of what I felt at the river, a feeling I have grown familiar with. It pops up every once in a while, more often now that the word “graduation”

floats through the air with each passing day. I worry it is my body telling you, “Please do not let me go.” Revolting against the change your very existence threatens.

But I don’t think that’s it. At least, I hope it’s not. I think the emotion is pure. The truth is that I am unafraid of novelty, that I’m content with what’s to come.

I will say goodbye to you, and I will say goodbye to college as a whole, and that will be it.

I will write out my final letter, and I’ll sign it off with my typical, “Yours, Michal,” and that will be the last time it’ll be true, the last time I’ll belong to you enough to say it.

I’ve been thinking about this letter for four years. For a while, I thought it’d be the most devastating thing I’d ever write. Dramatic, I know. But the letter I envisioned — one of sadness, longing, and gut-wrenching nostalgia — is not the one I’m writing.

In the same way, the life I envisioned is not the one I’m living. What I expected of college was a normal series of ups and downs, highs and lows. What I did not expect of college was to live the hardest years of my life here.

I did not expect to lose a best friend to mental illness after only a year and a half of knowing them. I did not expect to organize a memorial for a 19-year-old, to write him a eulogy, to go to grief therapy every week and have something to talk about each time. But that’s what I got.

Real life bleeds into the supposed utopia of college, no matter how much we try to stop it from doing so. Mine is not the only life that’s been touched by something greater than I can understand. I’ve seen so many peers go through the unimaginable, then pick themselves up, go to class, and eat their lunch. I’ve seen so much strength go unnoticed.

College has been hard for many of us, but that isn’t all it’s been. It has restored my faith in good friendship, empathetic mentorship, and my own fortitude. If these years have broken me, they’ve also stitched me back up.

I find myself choosing recency bias. I am grateful, not dismayed. I think, in the end, we brave the storms of the people and places we love. ***

When I arrived on campus in August, I anticipated a version of you that looked like a repetition of my Harvard life before I went abroad last spring. Same friends, same routines, but more time on my hands. Instead, you’ve been a reinvention of everything I thought I knew.

You introduced me to beautiful people it took me three years to meet and made

me wonder what had taken so long. You brought me on weekend trips to Vermont and New Hampshire and Philadelphia and New York. You ran with me through the Samaritans 5K, a fundraiser for suicide prevention, and the Cambridge Half Marathon, to which I wore all blue. You watched me pour my heart and soul into a year-long project I’ve dreamed of since I got here — writing a novel for my thesis — and helped me enjoy the process. You walked by me through many “lasts”: last PAF training, last Harvard-Yale, last Fifteen Minutes writers’ meeting, last ceramics class. You made a finite set of time feel limitless.

At moments, I’ve traced your wrinkles of age, manifestations of the way you’ve changed and matured since freshman year. I’ve bemoaned the truth of time’s passing: people grow in different directions, and we don’t always get to keep what we once had.

In turn, life gives us something else to soften the blow — confirmation that the growth is taking us someplace we want to go. Sometimes we are even lucky enough to take old friends along with us, those we see walking the same way.

My best friends now include people I met on the first day of freshman year and people I didn’t meet until this fall. They include those who have chosen me for character and not proximity. Every day I choose them back.

I love the life Harvard has given me, not because it’s been perfect, but because it hasn’t been. Freshman year exhilarated me, sophomore year disarmed me, junior year repaired me, and you, senior year, have made me proud.

I look back at my four years and feel grateful for who I was at every stage, at times unsteady and at others strong. I exit Harvard not with less hope, but with much, much more.

At the end of May, I leave behind my sunny Lowell courtyard, four years straight with a roommate I’ve clung to, a walking distance to all my friends, and my two younger sisters, who will continue to take this campus by storm.

But I take with me the love that doesn’t dwindle. That big, huge love — the one I feel in my bones.

Yours, one last time, Michal

My best friends now include people I met on the first day of freshman year and people I didn’t meet until this fall.

Just last week, as I walked along the river at sunset, I had a moment where all I felt for this place was love.

I am grateful, not dismayed. I think, in the end, we brave the storms of the people and places we love.

You ran with me through the Samaritans 5K, a fundraiser for suicide prevention, and the Cambridge Half Marathon, to which I wore all blue

Congratulations to the 151st Gaurd!

Four Years in Photos

Back to Class

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

All students return to Harvard’s campus for in-person classes for the first time since March 2020, with a strict testing and masking requirement.

HGSU On Strike

OCTOBER 27-29, 2021

In its second strike in two years, members of the Harvard Graduate Student Union picketed for three days — during freshman family weekend — before ultimately ratifying a contract in November.

ZING GEE — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Mask Mandate Lifted

MARCH 14, 2022

Nearly two years to the day after Harvard moved classes online, the University lifts its mask mandate in most indoor campus spaces, beginning a new phase of relaxed Covid-19 restrictions at Harvard and in the Greater Boston area.

JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

UC Dissolved

MARCH 31, 2022

Over 75 percent of voters elect to dissolve the 40-year-old Undergraduate Council, Harvard College’s student body government, replacing it with the new Harvard Undergraduate Association.

J. SELLERS HILL — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Shopping Week Abolished

MAY 4, 2022

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences votes to get rid of shopping week, a beloved undergraduate tradition where students could sample courses before enrolling in them. The system is replaced with prior-term course registration.

Bacow Steps Down

JUNE 8, 2022

Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow announces he will retire at the end of the 2022-23 academic year, ending a turbulent term as president — where he navigated both the Covid-19 pandemic and the Trump administration — after just five years in office.

MARINA QU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Affirmative Action Struck Down

JUNE 29, 2023

The Supreme Court rules in a 6-2 decision that Harvard’s race-conscious admissions policies are unconstitutional, upending decades of legal precedent around affirmative action in college admissions.

JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

It’s Gay

DECEMBER 15, 2022

In the fastest presidential search in nearly 70 years, the Harvard Corporation selects Claudine Gay, the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, as the next president of the University. Gay is the first person of color to hold the job in Harvard’s nearly 400-year history.

ADDISON Y. LIU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

ANGELA DELA CRUZ — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Student Groups Spark Backlash With Oct.

7 Letter

OCTOBER 7, 2023

The day of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, 33 student organizations across the University publish a letter accusing Israel of being “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” The letter receives widespread condemnation from Harvard alumni, faculty, administrators, and elected officials and sparks major backlash against Harvard’s administration. Members of the student groups are also targeted in a doxxing campaign.

JULIAN J. GIORDANO — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Gay Testifies

DECEMBER 5, 2023

Harvard President Claudine Gay, along with the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and MIT, testify at a heated congressional hearing on antisemitism in college campuses.

MILES J. HERSZENHORN — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Gay Resigns

JANUARY 2, 2024

After a disastrous congressional hearing and mounting allegations of plagiarism, Claudine Gay resigns after just six months and two days in office, marking the shortest tenure for a president in Harvard history.

FRANK S. ZHOU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Harvard Yard Occupied

APRIL 24 - MAY 14, 2022

Pro-Palestine protesters begin an encampment on Harvard Yard on the last day of classes in the Spring 2024 semester, demanding the University divest from its endowment holdings in Israel. After 21 days and dozens of disciplinary notices, the encampment is disbanded after protesters reach an agreement with Harvard’s leadership.

ADDISON Y. LIU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

It’s Garber

AUGUST 2, 2024

Alan M. Garber ’76, who had assumed the presidency on an interim basis after Claudine Gay’s resignation, is elected as Harvard’s 31st president. The Harvard Corporation announces that his tenure will last until the end of the 2026-27 academic year.

ADDISON Y. LIU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Khurana Announces He Will Resign

AUGUST 29, 2024

Dean of Harvard College Rakesh Khurana announces he will step down, bringing an end to an 11-year term in which he unsuccessfully sought to sanction the College’s single-sex social organizations and pushed to renew “intellectual vitality” at Harvard.

DYLAN J. GOODMAN — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Donald Trump Elected President

NOVEMBER 6, 2024

In a stunning political comeback, Donald Trump is re-elected as president of the United States, defeating Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee. During the campaign, Trump pledged to deport pro-Palestine protesters and eliminate federal funding for universities.

MAE T. WEIR — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Garber Says Harvard Will Resist Trump’s Demands

APRIL 14, 2025

Garber says the University will reject the Trump administration’s demands for widereaching policy changes in exchange for restoring federal funding, setting the stage for a historic clash between Harvard and the White House.

FRANK S. ZHOU — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

David Deming Named College Dean

MAY 13, 2025

Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra announces that Harvard Kennedy School professor and Kirkland House faculty dean David J. Deming will succeed Khurana as dean of Harvard College.

GRACE E. YOON — CRIMSON PHOTOGRAPHER

Wedding Bells

Hear from the couples in the Class of 2025 who are married or engaged to be married.

ed to go with Candace.

With each passing year, it had gotten progressively harder to guard Joshua in frisbee since they were no longer the same height, but Candace persisted. In their last camp before the Covid-19 pandemic, they went to the Promenade together for a third time — as a randomly-paired duo (though Joshua believes his counselors pulled a few strings to make it happen).

“Back then, we both liked each other, but we were trying not to make the other person notice,” says Joshua.

It wasn’t the last time that Candace and Joshua’s circles would cross due to Csehy, despite living an ocean apart. (Joshua is from Framingham, Massachusetts while Candace grew up in Dubai.) In fact, Joshua’s older brother met his future wife at Csehy — who happened to be Candace’s friend whom she considers “an older sister.” When Candace visited the married couple in 2021, she began chatting with Joshua. Their conversations continued over email after she came back to Dubai, and their threads got longer and longer.

They began dating in December 2022 — which they refer to as “courting” — over seven years after they first met. From the onset, they were dedicated to making the relationship last. “By the time it was 2022, we were both very serious about seeing it going towards marriage,” says Joshua.

Because they were long distance, they only saw each other once a week on Zoom with sporadic text messages in between. It would be late at night for Joshua and early morning for Candace. Their calls would last four to six hours and span everything from politics and theology to aircraft design.

Joshua J. Halberstadt '25 and Candace E. Fox

By JOHN LIN CRIMSON MAGAZINE EDITOR

It all started when Candace E. Fox decided that Joshua J. Halberstadt ’25 would be the one person that she guarded during every game of Ultimate Frisbee. It was 2016 — their second year together as violinists at Csehy Summer School of Music, a Christian classical music camp.

A year later, they were randomly

paired up to go to the Promenade, which occurs just before the camp concert. By then, Joshua had switched to viola, but Candace still played violin. When the next summer rolled through, Candace had also switched to viola, and at least one of her reasons was to sit closer to Joshua during rehearsals. They went to the Promenade together for the second time. Though boys and girls were typically randomly paired, a camper could request to be paired with someone. That year, Joshua had request-

knew he had to pop the question.

When a friend cancelled plans after a late-night Bible study, he sensed that the moment was ripe. It was an hour before midnight, and he took Candace to a manmade island called Creek Harbor. As they were walking along a boardwalk beside the water, Joshua proposed, and Candace said yes before he even finished speaking. In the backdrop, they could see a line of planes gliding through the clear night sky. Joshua later joked that Candace’s dad — a pilot who was flying into Dubai that night — was watching from the cockpit.

On June 21, at the peak of summer, Candace and Joshua will be married in Seattle, where Candace’s mother is from. There will be roughly 200 family and friends flying from across the world for the wedding. “It’s not really a destination wedding, but it effectively is,” Joshua says with a chuckle.

In the fall, they will head off to Madison, Wis., where Joshua accepted a job offer. They are both excited for a change of pace and a new rhythm of lifelong companionship.

“It would be a nice clean slate — much more regular schedule, we’ll actually be living together,” Joshua says. After years of cross-continent Zoom calls, Madison will be a “place to kind of do everything together.”

But it hasn’t all been Zoom calls. Last March, Candace joined Joshua when he went on tour with the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra in Korea. They hiked the same path in Acadia National Park during the summer and winter.

In that time, they realized how much they shared, not only in terms of interests, but in their faith, values, and visions for the future. They played the same instrument and enjoyed the same classical music. They both came from large families and want a large family (“Probably like six,” Candace says. “Like eight or 10 or 12,” Joshua adds, jokingly).

They decided to get married in January 2024.

Five months later, a few days after he finished his last exam of junior year, Joshua flew 6,000 miles to Dubai with the ring in tow. Somewhere in those four days, he

Victoria T. Li ’25 and William N. Brown ’24

By JEM K. WILLIAMS CRIMSON MAGAZINE EDITOR

For most members of the Class of 2025, graduating from college is the biggest life milestone of the year. But for Victoria T. Li ’25, Com mencement is just one of two important events occuring that week.

On May 24, five days before gradua tion, Victoria married William N. Brown ’24 during a ceremony at the First Lu theran Church of Boston, where William grew up attending services.

It marked the culmination of a year in which Victoria got engaged, planned a wedding, wrote an award-winning the sis, got married, and graduated from col lege.

“I’ve learned a lot,” Victoria says. “But it’s also definitely been the single most stressful year of my life.”

The two met during Victoria’s fresh man fall after she began writing for the Harvard Salient, a conservative cam pus publication. William was the edi tor-in-chief and she considered him nice and respectable. He helped her move out of her freshman dorm. She just wasn’t sure where their friendship was going.

Yet, she does remember thinking, “Whoever marries this guy, that girl is a lucky girl.”

After moving her possessions into storage, they went for a long walk to gether, stopping along the way to grab ice cream. Over the summer, the two be gan to exchange not texts, but handwrit ten letters. Victoria had known since April that she had a crush on William but was hesitant to fully invest her emo tions.

There were a few questions that Vic toria had to work through before she was ready to start dating William; the biggest was about religion. Victoria con verted to non-denominational Christi anity in her freshman fall and William grew up Lutheran. Victoria was unsure if their differing doctrines would be compatible.

Victoria says they were very care ful to “not start something we can’t end well.”

So she and William started having open conversations about their theolog ical beliefs. Early on in her sophomore

PHOTO COURTESY OF VICTORIA T. LI AND WILLIAM N. BROWN

Mitchell Sharum ’25 and Katie J.L. Miri ’25

By KAITLYN TSAI

MAGAZINE EDITOR

When Katie J.L. Miri ’25 met Mitchell Sharum ’25 at the Harvard Catholic Center the fall of their freshman year, she recalls thinking he was “way too cool for me.”

“You were dressed stylishly and you were social and very normal compared to a lot of people that I met here,” she laughs, looking at Mitchell. “I was like, there’s no way.”

The two, however, quickly became best friends, bonding over their hometowns in Texas: Katie is from Austin and Mitchell is from Midland, though his family has since moved to Austin. They formed a group of friends with others from the Catholic Center and soon began to see each other more regularly.

When Datamatch rolled around the following spring, both signed up on the algorithm and received their matches, but two days before Valentine’s Day, Mitchell decided to ask Katie out.

“I was like, ‘There’s no way that this chump is gonna go out with you,’ so I asked her out on the 12th, and then we replaced our Datamatch dates with each other,” Mitchell chuckles. “Sorry to those two people, but it’s been three years since then, and we’ve spent pretty much all this time together.”

Neither entered the relationship thinking they would get married. But Katie recalls a moment a few years ago when she watched Mitchell hold his baby niece and thought, “Oh my gosh, he would be such a good dad.”

For Mitchell, it was a conversation he had with Katie that opened his eyes to marriage being the right choice. At the time, they were more seriously discussing their long-term future together, and the way Katie viewed marriage helped him get comfortable with the idea.

“She was like, ‘When you’re marrying someone, all that you’re really doing is you’re saying publicly, this is my best friend, and they’re gonna be my best friend for the rest of my life,’” Mitchell recalls. “I felt a very strong sense of, ‘She’s right about this.’”

Planning the proposal, Mitchell says, was “one of the most egregiously difficult things I’ve ever done.” With minimal help, he arranged the schedule, decorations, catering, and venue, all while trying — and failing — to keep the engagement a surprise.

On March 14, Mitchell invited Katie out to

a picnic by the Charles River under the guise of celebrating their 37-month anniversary. By the time they got there, however, they were already running a little behind schedule: It was noon, and Mitchell wanted them to have lunch, walk to a bridge where they first felt deeply connected to each other freshman year, get photos of the proposal, and head back for the afterparty at the Harvard Catholic Center by 1 p.m.

“I’m like, ‘OK, we gotta be going in like, five minutes, so eat your sandwiches.’ And she’s like, ‘No, this is so pretty,’” Mitchell recalls. “I was like, ‘You eat. Eat and run and run.’ She’s wearing heels, and I’m trying to shove little Nutella sandwiches down my mouth.”

The two quickly began walking down the Charles, during which Mitchell told Katie how much he loved her. All Katie could think, however, was, “‘Oh my gosh. He’s about to propose. What if I don’t cry?’” As they approached the bridge, Mitchell asked her to turn and face the water.

“I turn around and he’s on one knee, and I start crying immediately,” she says.

The couple is set to get married in October at Emmaus Catholic Church in Austin, with a reception in Lakeway, Texas. Afterward, they will settle in Austin: Katie will be working in cybersecurity, and Mitchell is on the hunt for jobs in the area.

says he would read past editions of The Crimson’s “Wedding Bells” section and

Mitchell

you into the person that you hope to be?” Mitchell turns to Katie.

CRIMSON

PHOTO COURTESY OF HAMZEH B. HAMDAN

PHOTO COURTESY OF HAMZEH B. HAMDAN

Harris Durham ’25 and Emma Sticklen

By DINA R. ZELDIN CRIMSON MAGAZINE EDITOR

What if love was hiding in plain sight — in the pool lane next to yours? For Harris J. Durham ’25 and Emma C. Sticklen, true love unfolded after countless missed connections.

The two Texans, Harris from Dallas and Emma from Katy, grew up driving across their home state to youth swim meets, competing in the same age division. But they only met for the first time at a competition in December 2022, where Harris competed for the Crimson and Emma represented the University of Texas at Austin. After the meet, the teams gathered at Sally’s Saloon, the local college dive, to celebrate. Emma noticed Harris immediately when the Harvard squad arrived.

“He’s super tall, he’s super cute, he’s blonde,” she recalls. She turned to her friends: “I’m gonna go find a husband, bye!” The rest of the bar melted away over the next hour as Harris and Emma talked.

“It was so cute and so fun, and of course, I was obsessed,” Emma says.

They reconnected when Harris moved to Dallas for a summer internship and began driving three hours to Austin to visit Emma on weekends. Between dancing together at a Tyler Childers concert and cooling off in Barton Springs, their love story unfolded, and Harris eventually asked Emma to be his girlfriend.

Back at their respective colleges the following fall, Emma and Harris balanced swim practice and coursework while being over 1,500 miles apart. It helped that Emma’s mom, who works for United Airlines, could snag free plane tickets.

When they were together, they were inseparable, even joining each other’s training sessions. Beyond swimming, they sought out new restaurants, documenting date night meals on the food social media app Beli and TikTok videos which have accrued millions of views.

The next athletic seasons were career bests for both of the swimmers. Emma won her third NCAA championship in the 200 yard butterfly and set the collegiate record in the event.

She says that Harris’s support was what

made the difference. “Sport is something where you place so much of your identity and it’s hard not to, but I felt like I was happy with myself and I loved myself because I knew that Harris loved me,” she says.

And Harris helped Harvard take home the Ivy League title in 2024. “Because Emma was so successful,” he says, “it really rubbed off on me and contributed to my own successes.”

Harris met Emma’s family the next summer in Ireland while cheering her on in the European Championships, where she competed with Team USA. Months later, he was rooting for her from an intern desk in Philadelphia as she competed in the U.S. Olympic Team Trials. On a joint family vacation to Hawaii, Harris knew it was time to ask the question. They kayaked to an island off Oahu and hiked to the top, where he proposed.

Family, friends, and teammates will gather on July 11 in Austin for the couple’s wedding. The ceremony will take place at the Addison Grove, a ranch-style venue where longhorn cattle roam.

“It’s really gonna play into our Texas roots,” Emma says. Pat McLeod, a Harvard Christian Chaplain and longtime mentor to

LHarris, will officiate their ceremony. After honeymooning in Bali and Austra-

Valeria L. Barriobero ’25 and Jonathan Calixto

By KAITLYN TSAI

CRIMSON MAGAZINE EDITOR

ong-distance is not for the faint of heart. But for Valeria L. Barriobe ro ’25 and Jonathan Calixto, dis tance encouraged them to bring a level of intentionality to their relationship that only strengthened their connection to each other.

The two met as freshmen on their first day of school at the New World School of the Arts, a performing arts high school in Miami. Through taking many of the same classes together, the two became close friends and started dating in the middle of the pandemic, the summer before their se nior year of high school.

“We always joked that a lot of the first dates people have, like going out for coffee or to the movies — we were quarantining and seeing each other at each other’s homes,” Va leria recalls. “But I think it was a great way to start our relationship. It opened a path for a lot of nice conversations.”

Having this basis for their relationship

proved crucial for them. When college decisions came around, the two found themselves on opposite coasts: Valeria at Harvard and Jonathan at Stanford. Though four years of long distance has been challenging, Jonathan says, it has also been rewarding.

“We’ve been really committed since we started dating, so we’re very consistent about calling each other,” he says. “I know sometimes relationships at a younger age can be a little bit shallower, but just the nature of only being able to talk and not being physically in the same place pushed us to have these more profound conversations.”

From the day they started dating, Valeria says, she and Jonathan knew they were going to get married, and in the spring of 2024, they went ring shopping together. Still, when Jonathan proposed a few months later, while the two were doing research at Stanford over the summer, it came as a complete surprise.

He took Valeria out dancing and put on her favorite songs by her favorite artist, Camilo. One of the songs, “La Boda,” which means “the wedding” in Spanish, even cen-

ters on how excited the singer is to marry his bride.

“I should have known — my favorite singer and my favorite playlist,” Valeria recalls. “And I grew up dancing, I’m a big dancer. And when I turned around and least expected it, he was there on one knee.”

The couple is set to get married on July 11 — coincidentally, the same day that they first started dating — at a church in their hometown. Extended family members will travel from Venezuela and Cuba to celebrate with them.

Following their graduation, Valeria and Jonathan will be moving into their first apartment together in Philadelphia, where Valeria will be attending medical school at the University of Pennsylvania while Jonathan finds career opportunities.

“One of the disadvantages of being long distance is that you don’t get those little intimate moments of just doing mundane things, like being together and going for a walk or going grocery shopping,” Valeria says. “That’s what I’m most excited about.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF HARRIS DURHAM & EMMA STICKLEN

PHOTO COURTESY OF VALERIA L. BARRIOBERO

Mehrin M. Faisal ’25 and Shah Akibur ‘Akib' Rahman

By KAITLYN TSAI

The first time Shah Akibur “Akib” Rahman visited Mehrin M. Faisal ’25 in her dorm, Mehrin’s roommates asked to see his ID to verify the extensive internet research that they had already conducted. However, they soon warmed up to him as Akib became a part of the friend group over movie nights and Ramadan meals and prayers.

“I was like, ‘Wow, he can also get along with my friends so well,’” Mehrin recalls. “That was just really nice to see.”

Mehrin first met Akib, who graduated from MIT in 2022, at an event the Bengali Association of Students at Harvard co-hosted with MIT’s Bangladeshi Students Association in September 2022. They exchanged Insays.

Their relationship has always felt organic; their lives flowed together naturally. “I would literally go directly from the gym in my sweaty shirt, I was not trying to impress her, impress her. It was very organic,” Akib says. “ I don’t have to worry about the superficial things as much, and that’s what reassured me.”

When Akib decided to propose to Mehrin in August 2024, he booked a private lighthouse in Newburyport and covered an Uber for a friend to travel separately and take photos of the proposal. “I don’t think she was surprised though,” Akib says.

“I sensed it,” Mehrin interjects. “He kept asking, ‘Hey, do you have a blue dress?’ And I was like, ‘I do have a blue dress, but I’ve worn it already, it’s al ready captured on my Instagram.’ But he was like, ‘OK, let’s get a new

travel to Newburyport with Akib, where he popped the question.

The couple had a formal engagement ceremony at Mehrin’s home in New York on Aug. 31 and got married in late December in Bangladesh. Their wedding spanned across three ceremonies over the course of several days: a sangeet, a celebratory event with singing and dancing; the wedding itself, a more intimate, religious ceremony; and a final reception with almost 1,000 people.

“Everything was really hectic,” Akib recalls. “We had a very short time to pre -

three days.”

Despite the chaos, the couple “had a ton of fun,” Akib says. They traveled around Bangladesh with family, seeing more remote areas of the country that Mehrin had never been to before. In January, they rounded out their celebrations with a honeymoon to the Maldives.

Mehrin and Akib will be staying in Boston. Akib will take on a new role at his current job at CVS Pharmacy, while Mehrin will be working in research at Massachusetts General Hospital as she

ternoon class to pick up her dress and

CRIMSON MAGAZINE EDITOR

PHOTO COURTESY OF ERIC J. VASQUEZ REYES

PHOTO

Edwin Dominguez ’25 and Savannha Walde

By HEWSON DUFFY CRIMSON MAGAZINE EDITOR

It was just after the bell rang for Savannha

Walde’s math class when Edwin Domin-

guez ’25 pulled her aside and asked her to be his girlfriend. The two were friends and freshmen at Ramona High School in Riverside, Calif. To Savannha, it felt “straight out of the movies.”

“But it was also very awkward,” she adds. But seven years later, the couple is engaged. Any awkwardness is long gone.

The transition to college — and long-distance — wasn’t easy. While Edwin adjusted to the demands of school and Division I soccer at Harvard, Savannha was back on the West Coast.

Yet there were silver linings. The time zone difference made his training times line up with her classes and allowed for night ly FaceTime calls, where the pair would chat about their days or simply study together.

“Sometimes just sitting in each other’s presence is good enough for me,” Edwin says.

Once every few months, Savannha visited him in Boston, and Edwin would get ahead on

his schoolwork so they could spend their days exploring the city and trying out hole-in-thewall restaurants. “I like to treat her when she comes here,” Edwin says.

Though she worried about their relationship going into college, Savannha always thought she and Edwin would get married. She knew they “had that deep enough connection” to make it work.

For Edwin, because Savannha always made him happy, “the last box to check was really like, ‘Can we make it through college?’”

Learning how to be there for one another virtually during freshman year showed him they could, and Edwin started talking to his family about proposing. By the fall of junior year, he was shopping for engagement rings, and that spring he secured the blessing of Savannha’s parents.

Last April, while Savannha was visiting Boston, Edwin proposed.

trash cans.

When Edwin got down on one knee, Savannha’s mind went blank. “I literally don’t remember a word,” she says. She had been expecting it to happen back home that summer, so the proposal caught her completely off guard

At first, she didn’t even believe it was real. “I was like, ‘What?’” she says. “I didn’t say yes for a good, like, two to three minutes.”

When Savannha said yes, Edwin gave the signal, and his friends emerged from their hiding spots with flowers.

“That’s the point I knew it was real,” Savannha says. All at once, “my emotions hit and then I started crying.”

In October, the couple’s former youth pastor will marry them in Santa Ana. Then, the two will find a place to live together in Southern California.

By SAGE S. LATTMAN

CRIMSON MAGAZINE EDITOR

It’s a truism that the people you meet during freshman orientation aren’t necessarily going to be your friends for life. But this is far from the truth for now-engaged couple Joanna G. Choi ’25 and Ray B. Noh ’25, who met at the First-Year Fling orientation dance.

That first chance meeting sparked a friendship, and sophomore year sparked something more. Fortuitously, Joana and Ray were both placed in Kirkland House. The two are both Protestant Christians and after spending her freshman year “church-hopping,” Joanna started regularly going to services at the same church as Ray. Time spent together at Kirkland and church made both of them realize they could be more than friends.

“For me personally, he was a big reflection of Christ, and that was the reason why I wanted to start dating,” Joanna says. While Joanna studies Government and

East Asian Studies, Ray is a mechanical en gineer; she has a process-oriented outlook on problem solving, while he is more solu tions-oriented; she takes a more simple, grounded approach to faith, while he wres tles with his faith more intellectually.

“I think all of these things that are real ly different help us complement each other and see things in a different way that helps us,” Ray says.

Soon, Ray and Joanna’s lives started over lapping even more. “The people we were real ly close to kind of started merging,” Ray says.

While the couple loves going on dates to try new things — from tufting rugs to mak ing glass plates to visiting the zoo — one of their favorite activities is cooking and watch ing a shared favorite TV show from their childhoods, the South Korean variety show “Running Man.”

“I think it’s a very shared experience of Korean immigrants or even just Koreans in general that grew up in the 2000s,” Joanna says. Both she and Ray are the children of Ko rean immigrants.

An avid cook, Savannha is excited to have her own kitchen, while Edwin already has a vision for the home’s decorations: He’ll hang up his two sarapes — traditional Mexican shawls — and have “pictures of ourselves plastered everywhere.”

After seven years together, the walls shouldn’t be hard to fill.

Joanna G. Choi ’25 and Ray B. Noh ’25

Though the two went ring-shopping together, Joanna wanted her actual engagement to be a surprise. Ray rented out a space in Somerville on April 5 for the proposal. With help from both of their families, Ray decorated the space with flowers and waited for Joanna while she was at brunch with

Everything went according to plan. “Her friends led her there, I proposed, and then the rest of the day we celebrated with everyone,” he says.

Next year, Joanna is planning on living at home in Southern California while she applies to law school. Ray will be living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Depending on where Joanna ends up for law school, which will influence when they can live in the same city, the couple plans to get married between one and two years from now.

“This is going to be the first time we’re kind of long distance,” Ray says. “We engaged so that we could go into that space with a commitment that we thought would be valuable.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF JAYLEN WILSON

PHOTO COURTESY OF JON VALDOVINOS