Students who may once have had to decide whether to apply to Harvard or MIT are now making the best of both worlds.

Particularly in computer science at the graduate level, students from MIT are coming to Harvard for classes they cannot get elsewhere.

According to students and professors, MIT students are drawn to the range of research interests as well as to the prominence of Harvard professors, who are part of a computer science faculty that has grown stronger in recent years.

“Even though MIT has larger math and computer science departments than us, we do have some offerings not available at MIT,” says Salil P. Vadhan, professor of Computer Science 225, “Pseudorandomness,” which has seven MIT students in a class of 19.

Occasionally, MIT students also take math courses that are only offered at Harvard, such as Mathematics 55, “Honors Advanced Calculus and Linear Algebra,” which has one MIT student in a class of 18 this year.

“I don’t think MIT has a course similar to Math 55. I think first-year courses for MIT are essentially for everybody. All the students take the same kinds of courses,” says Yum-Tong Siu, professor of Math 55.

There are over 300 MIT students cross-registered at Harvard, and over 400 Harvard students at MIT, according to the MIT Registrar.

DIFFERENT STROKES

According to several professors, some Harvard courses are particularly attractive to MIT students because liberal arts institutions are more likely to offer applied science and engineering courses based on individual professors’ research interests.

This allows students, those at the graduate level in particular, to better match their interests to specific classes.

“I happened to do research that was different from faculty at MIT,” says Vadhan. “There is no course at MIT similar to CS 225, so it’s quite natural for MIT students to take it here.”

“When you take such classes, it’s good to have professors who are actually doing research in that particular area,” Mihai Patrascu, an MIT student in CS 225, wrote in an e-mail.

MIT students say that the prominence of a Harvard faculty member and the small size of the class he or she teaches draw MIT students as well.

“If the Harvard professor is one of the best in the area, and the class is for such a small community,” MIT does not need to offer a counterpart to a computer science course at Harvard, Patrascu wrote.

GROWING STRONG