So close and yet so far
Clare Goslant was in the first week of her freshman year at Harvard, but she already knew her way around. She grew up 90 seconds away. On the other hand, Colin Lu came from a city that is 10,522 air miles from Boston. Getting here from Melbourne, Australia, involved about 20 hours of flying, with stops along the way. It was his first trip to the United States. Goslant and Lu represent the nearest and farthest distances traveled by new freshmen to start their academic careers at Harvard. In between those geographic extremes, there is nearly everything else, from Albania to Zimbabwe. The Class of 2016 represents 75 countries and every state except Wyoming. There are freshmen from Texas and Puerto Rico, and from New Zealand, Vietnam, Japan, China, Nepal, Mongolia, and India. From Africa, there are freshmen from Nigeria, Gabon, Swaziland, Madagascar, Kenya, and Burundi. In the class of 1,600, there are...