{"id":3733,"date":"2012-06-14T00:03:05","date_gmt":"2012-06-14T04:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/?p=3733"},"modified":"2012-06-14T00:03:05","modified_gmt":"2012-06-14T04:03:05","slug":"ptp-plp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/2012\/06\/14\/ptp-plp\/","title":{"rendered":"PTP =\/= PLP"},"content":{"rendered":"

SUPER sorry I\u2019ve been MIA<\/a> these last two weeks! I promise to be more consistent as of now since I\u2019ll be living with a host family (THE nicest host family in the world!) in Peru for the next two months and will have internet access. These past two weeks I\u2019ve been living out one of my personal dreams: Euro-tripping with friends. In a whirlwind of two incredible weeks, we were able to hit up Paris, Venice, Florence, Rome and Barcelona.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Crepes + Eiffel Tower = as Parisian as we could get!<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

San Marco Plaza in Venice: Home of the Scariest Pigeons<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Florence: Illegal but mandatory picture of me and David! Can't believe Michelangelo touched that and I stared at it!<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Perfection and Happiness captured at the Leaning Tower in Pisa - mini trip during our stay in Florence<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The Roman Ruins are anything but literal<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Barcelona but not the Sagrada Familia...oops<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The Peruvian group beachside! It's like I never left home \ud83d\ude42<\/p><\/div>\n

I never thought I\u2019d be able to freely roam Europe in great company, but the generous Harvard funding that I received for my summer internship in Peru bestowed me the freedom to apply my personal savings towards granting one of my own wishes. Although my Euro-exploration will always be a source of exciting\/embarrassing\/once in a lifetime stories that will cease any awkward silences to come, I was also without wifi whenever I wasn\u2019t in the vicinity of a McDonald\u2019s or Starbucks which not only made communication slightly impossible, but also made blogging a feat I could not triumph.<\/p>\n

My Peruvian internship (don\u2019t worry I\u2019ll definitely be blogging more about this!) and reliable internet access begins at such a clutch time because this summer, Harvard College gives undergraduate students June 4-18 to submit our PTP<\/strong> (Pre-Term Planning<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

Since I now proudly hold one year of organic chemistry education under my belt, whenever I see the three letters PTP chained in this specific order, I automatically think of the electron sink cofactor and freak out. Before I was enlightened (cursed?) with this knowledge, I equated PTP as PLP: pre-life planning \u2013 the mechanism Harvard used to passive aggressively force students to plan out their lives in concrete. Both these perceptions are entirely wrong.<\/p>\n

What is pre-term planning??<\/em><\/p>\n

PTP can be perceived as a win-win situation. Deadlines for PTP provides the needed kick in the butt for students to start thinking about next semester\u2019s classes, how their graduation requirements fit in during their remaining time at Harvard, and future plans in general. On the administrative end, PTP gives the university a slightly more accurate count of course enrollment so that faculty can prepare and allocate resources as needed such as how many teaching fellows (TFs, pretty much the same as a CA: course assistant or a TA: teaching assistant). A student\u2019s PTP declaration is in no way binding. You can think of it as a casual conversation with a friend who asks you what classes you\u2019re thinking of taking next semester. Here are two official websites that explain PTP:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.registrar.fas.harvard.edu\/fasro\/ugrad\/ptp.jsp?cat=ugrad&subcat=information<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/isites.harvard.edu\/icb\/icb.do?keyword=k73810&tabgroupid=icb.tabgroup116459<\/a><\/p>\n

PTP is a new tool that started the same time I began college (Fall 2010) so you can expect that there have been a few bumps in the road. However, you can also expect that the university is actively working towards smoothing out these bumps \u2013 you can see their reaction to student suggestions through this technology forum<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The undergraduate campus newspaper, The Harvard Crimson chronicles the history of PTP pretty well in these successive articles:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.thecrimson.com\/article\/2012\/2\/1\/ptp-planning-overhaul\/<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.thecrimson.com\/article\/2012\/2\/21\/admin-considers-changes-to-PTP\/<\/a><\/p>\n

But I know it\u2019s the summer and these articles have a lot of words. I\u2019ll try to summarize its history below, especially for those with senioritis – although if reading these blogs is your form of procrastination, I completely condone (and empathize)!<\/p>\n

I think PTP was instated because Harvard\u2019s system of course selection is one of the most relaxed I\u2019ve ever heard of. Students do not have to know what courses they\u2019ll be enrolling in until a week after the semester begins. The first week of every semester is termed \u201cShopping Week\u201d because students are allowed to sit in \u2013 or walk out \u2013 of any classes they choose in order to sample the class and evaluate if they\u2019d like to commit to the material and professor for a whole semester. With this super chill system, it can be difficult for faculty and administration to anticipate how to allocate resources in a timely manner in order to get the semester rolling. PTP helps give staff a better idea of students\u2019 interests and more adequately prepares them for the upcoming semester.<\/p>\n

The theoretical purpose behind PTP is awesome because it aims for optimal efficiency and doesn\u2019t call on too much effort from students. However, in PTP\u2019s early days, the tool used to submit our anticipated classes was absolutely horrible \u2013 and even more dreadful if you take into account the technology and coding we have available today. The tool was super redundant and NOT user friendly at all which made every student feel completely technologically incompetent. Also, the university use to request PTP super early i.e. when you haven\u2019t yet become accustomed to the current semester\u2019s workload which encouraged students to not complete PTP as accurately or genuinely as they could have.<\/p>\n

The majority of the hassle on the students\u2019 side has been diminished with the new way to submit PTP. With this most recent PTP submission, students are able to submit their intended classes directly through my.havard.edu in the same way that students commit to their classes so the routine is not only familiar, but also easy.<\/p>\n

Here’s what it looks like now:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

much more self-explanatory!<\/p><\/div>\n

Positive results have also been reported by Harvard: \u201cThis early and generally accurate information has allowed us to more effectively allocate course sections and to minimize late TF (teaching fellow) appointments. Possibly related, last fall we had the lowest number of TFs in recent historical memory who scored poorly on the Q (Q guide<\/a>).\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026proving my original hypothesis that PTP is a win-win. Now it\u2019s up to how much we all win!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SUPER sorry I\u2019ve been MIA these last two weeks! I promise to be more consistent as of now since I\u2019ll be living with a host family (THE nicest host family in the world!) in Peru for the next two months and will have internet access. These past two weeks I\u2019ve been living out one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4466,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37381],"tags":[64776,64775,654,37385],"class_list":["post-3733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jeanies-blog","tag-pre-term-planning","tag-ptp","tag-shopping","tag-shopping-week"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4466"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3733"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3761,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3733\/revisions\/3761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/collegeadmissionsstudentblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}