At Harvard, student organizations, such as Harvard University Consulting Group, Harvard Undergraduate Law Review, and Harvard Financial Analysts Club, serve as a hub for pre-professional opportunities for undergraduates. These extracurricular endeavors reflect the high-performing student body, impassioned not only by their selected concentrations and career prospects but also by their chosen student organizations. Students within these organizations reap the benefits of a community that gives them experiences with high-profile companies, exciting perks, and valuable professional growth—yet these clubs also demand intense time commitments and long hours of dedication.
For many Harvard undergraduates, these clubs are not just résumé-builders—they offer something deeper. Student organizations can create a sense of community and identity on a campus where finding one’s interests and skills can be daunting alongside seemingly exceptional peers.
Ocean Ma ’28 stressed the importance of finding another social community outside her tight-knit squash team. As a varsity athlete, in addition to her academic course load and 20-hour-a-week training during the squash season, Ma is a member of Harvard Undergraduate Consulting on Business and the Environment.
“The squash itself is very tight, but I think with CBE, it’s a completely different set of people who would be able to support me professionally,” she said.
While many first-years dive into campus life by immediately joining multiple student organizations, Ma took a more intentional and selective approach. “I wasn’t looking to just join any club that I [was] interested in,” she said. “I was looking for the right one.”
Ma decided to comp—Harvard slang for club admission requirements—CBE this past semester, after reflecting on what she wanted to gain from the breadth of extracurriculars offered at the College. “I think finding my community and finding the work that I wanted to do was really important, and I was able to figure that out throughout the first semester, seeing what clubs my friends were in,” she said.
While Ma’s experience reflected a more careful and planned strategy, Wafiqah Zubair ’26 embraced trial-and-error exploration outside the classroom.
“Especially as a freshman, you have no idea what you’re actually interested in,” she said. “So I would recommend they join many clubs, but be completely open, and in fact try to leave as many of those clubs that they’re not as interested in.”
This flexibility in allocating time also shaped Zubair’s journey at Harvard, as she sought to find a commitment outside of class that matched her interests. A bioengineering concentrator, Zubair tried out several consulting clubs during her first year until she found the right fit her sophomore fall: Harvard Undergraduate Biotech Consulting, of which she now serves as a case leader. “I had also realized that throughout the process, from some upperclassmen bioengineering students, that it was a lot more lenient, a lot more chill. So I decided to give it a go, and I really enjoyed it.”
“I felt [HUBC] was also more meaningful work in terms of my interest, and then also in terms of the impact it was having, since we were working with biotech [companies],” she said. “I liked the fact that I was dealing with healthcare products.”
While a particular club may initially appeal to students because of its social scene or promising professional opportunities, Zubair’s experience reflects the reality that it often takes time to discern whether a club remains a good fit for one’s academic and personal priorities. “I think that’s what kept me coming back [to HUBC],” she said. “Knowing that I could have an impact on something that I was interested [in], while still having the flexibility to move things around, and having the process not be so difficult or rigid.”
Like Zubair, Matteo Cagliero ’27 dove headfirst into club life during his freshman year, utilizing them as a starting point to explore and expand upon his potential interests further. “I joined [Harvard Ventures] my freshman year because I knew that I loved startups, but didn’t really know what that meant.”
However, despite the challenges of Harvard Ventures occasionally spreading him thin, Cagliero created an organizational plan for approaching all of his endeavors on campus. “I make sure to be as tidy as possible with my Google Calendar,” he said. “It’s crazy how many small gaps of time we have that are so small they seem impossible to work during. Doing a little work a lot of times, however, does accumulate quickly!”
Alex Gerstenhaber ’26 decided to start his own club, Harvard Undergraduate Emerging Markets, during his junior spring. “I wanted to build a community of people who would produce great research and produce intellectually autonomous research, as well as just be a forum for people interested in emerging markets, because it didn’t really exist,” he said.
The urge to found a new student organization stemmed from his dissatisfaction with the numerous financial clubs he was formerly part of, as they did not serve his deeper interest in policy. “I tried out a lot of the policy research groups, econ research groups—I was involved with the Center for International Development, and I felt that nothing really allowed me to write with the level of frequency and depth that I wanted to,” Gerstenhaber said.
Contrasting the demanding process of applications and comps for joining selective clubs, Gerstenhaber recalled the difficulty of transforming a nascent vision for an emerging markets club into a community centering on carefully selected, yet extensive membership. “It was really challenging at [the] start,” he said. “It was really hard to get members, but…we pubbed an application to all the house email lists.”
Zubair valued her wide-ranging involvement in clubs during freshman year, even if some of the experiences did not end up sticking. In the end, stepping out of her comfort zone and pushing through demanding comps paid off—earning her a case leader role in a club that now plays a meaningful role in both her professional and social life. “And that’s something I carry on as a case team lead now, because I think it’s really important to develop an inner team bonding so that people want to keep coming back. So I think it has definitely helped,” she said. “I do enjoy seeing these people every week because I do get to know more about them each week.”
Acknowledging his recent founding of HUEM this past semester, Gerstenhaber echoed Zubair’s sentiments about the challenges and rewards of early involvement in campus organizations. “You don’t really have many responsibilities at all as a first-year, except to be curious and to try and figure out what you like and enjoy,” Gerstenhaber said. “And oftentimes that’s not going to be exactly what you thought going in.”
Lucie Stefanoni ’27 (luciestefanoni@college.harvard.edu) has no pre-professional club to add to her résumé.