Advice for First-Year Students
Your initial semesters at Harvard are a time for exploration and discovery, with an eye towards choosing a concentration that speaks to your passions, serves your interests, and points you toward a future career. We offer a variety of ways to explore your interest in politics:
Attend events
One way to find out if Government is the best concentration for you is to attend events that we sponsor especially for students. If you would like to be informed of upcoming events of particular interest to concentrators or potential concentrators, please click here and we’ll add you to our list!
Courses
There is no single course that begins a Government concentration. With limited space in your schedule, of course, you’ll want to know which courses will give you a feel for the concentration and the Department. Karen Kaletka serves as the advisor for first-year outreach; please contact her with questions or if you’d like to set up an advising meeting.
Peer Concentration Counselors can be a great help
Another resource for first-year students looking for advice about Government courses or the concentration in general is to ask one of our Peer Concentration Counselors (PCCs). These students are Government concentrators who have volunteered to act as peer advisers.
Recommended courses for first years
When you register for courses, consider the following ones, which previous students have found to be good gateways into a Government concentration:
First-Year Seminars: The following seminar offered during Fall 2024 may count toward the Government concentration elective requirement:
- First-Year Seminar 72X: Holding Politicians Accountable. (Julie Weaver)
(Please note that each concentrator is allowed to count only one non-letter-graded course toward the Gov elective requirement. All First-Year Seminars are graded SAT/UNSAT.)
General Education Courses: The following Gen Ed courses offered during Fall 2024 count as a Government concentration elective, and some can be used to fulfill a subfield requirement, as noted:
- Gen Ed 1092: American Society and Public Policy (Theda Skocpol & Mary Waters)(may also count for American subfield)
- Gen Ed 1123: Islam and Politics in the Modern Middle East (Malika Zeghal)
- Gen Ed 1200: Justice (Michael Sandel) (may also count for Theory subfield)
Foundational Courses: These introductory courses in the Government department provide an overview of the different subfields in political science:
- Gov 10: Foundations of Political Thought
- Gov 20: Foundations of Comparative Politics
- Gov 30: American Government: A New Perspective
- Gov 40: International Conflict and Cooperation in the Modern World
- Gov 50: Data Science for the Social Sciences
We recommend that those planning to concentrate in Government take Gov 50 before the end of the sophomore year. This course introduces basic statistical techniques used in quantitative political methodology. Topics covered include descriptive statistics, sampling, estimation, hypothesis tests, and applied linear and logistic regression. Gov 50 is meant to help you achieve “literacy” in political science, so that you can understand what many political scientists are saying and how they verify their claims. Gov 50 (or another course in statistical methods) is required of all concentrators.
1000-level Courses: Finally, if you already have specific interests that you want to explore, many of the 1000-level courses in the Government department have no prerequisites and are appropriate for first-year students, including the following:
- Gov 1008: Introduction to Geographic Information Systems (fall) (Kanglin Chen)
- Gov 1125: The Success and Failure of Protest Movements (spring) (Sarah Hummel)
- Gov 1171: The Making of Modern Politics (fall) (Peter Hall)
- Gov 1249: Authoritarianism (fall) (Sarah Hummel)
- Gov 1280: Government and Politics of China (fall) (Yuhua Wang)
- Gov 1433: Tech Science: From Democracy to Technocracy and Back (fall) (Latanya Sweeney)
- Gov 1560: Latinx Politics (fall) (Marcel Roman)
- Gov 1759: Behavioral Insights & Public Policy: Nudging for Good (spring) (Michael Hiscox)
- Gov 1790: American Foreign Policy (fall) (Joshua Kertzer)
Intensive Summer Language Programs: Many government students want to focus on studying the politics and society of specific regions of the world (usually done through the comparative politics subfield). We strongly encourage these students to become proficient in the language of that region, which is a valuable skill for research and for seeking jobs in that region after graduation.
Harvard Summer School runs a variety of intensive summer language programs that help students learn languages more quickly than is possible during a regular semester. In years’ past, the following programs have been offered:
- Arabic: Aix-en-Provence, France
- Chinese: Beijing
- Czech: Prague
- French: Aix-en-Provence
- German: Vienna & Berlin
- Korean: Seoul
- Italian: Calabria
- Russian: Tblisi, Georgia
- Spanish: Buenos Aires
Financial aid is available for many of these programs through the Office of Career Services.