About the Authors

Alice Fishburn is a British student in her final year at Harvard.

Anthony Nemecek is Director of the Educational Advisory Service of the US-UK Fulbright Commission based in London.

Stephen Baldock, who has written a foreword to the book, is the recently retired High Master of St Paul's School, London.

Alice writes:

I have a confession to make. I owned a pair of Harvard pyjamas as a child. There are pictures of me looking charming in them and reading Beatrix Potter. My indoctrination in the merits of an American education may well have started at this point, although I am certain that I held out for a good many years. But finally, having spent the better part of my teenage years ignoring parental suggestions, I ploughed my way through my SATS as well as my A Levels, submitted my applications and found myself on a plane to Boston. Now, in my final year at Harvard, I am the recipient of an education that has been considerably harder than Peter Rabbit but just as rewarding. And as the deadly date of graduation creeps ever nearer, I find myself thinking back over the decisions that got me here.

Try as I might, I don’t think I can blame the pyjamas. Even the skilled psychological tactics of my parents were not the deciding factor. Instead I realized that I simply couldn’t get what I wanted from England. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and the thought that, aged eighteen, I would be limited to one academic subject for the next three years gave me claustrophobia. America, on the other hand, refused to let me confine myself. I had to take a variety of courses –in three years here I have studied physics, Chinese politics and musical theory while majoring in history and literature. I was given the freedom to choose what I wanted to do and the flexibility to go back and correct any initial mistakes (did I really think I wanted a degree in classics?) The American education offered me the chance both to explore and to specialize – an option that many undecided students in the UK are simply not aware of.