With MIT on one end and Harvard on the other, Cambridge was built to be a college town. And if Greater Boston represents a constellation of higher education opportunities, then these two together form its center of gravity, an axis of ambition around which everything else falls into place. Each fall, a fresh cohort of families descends on this city to deposit their very smart children into their dorms. But getting into one of Cambridge’s most elite schools is only the first step—the real challenge is to appear as though you’ve been weekending here for longer than your freshman has been alive.
Cambridge, after all, might be a company town of sorts, but it also serves a lot more than its students that pass through. The city attracts its own ecosystem of biotech executives, leaders working the college speaking circuit, venture capitalists, diplomats, and creatives. It’s the kind of place where Nobel laureates linger on street corners, and where residents casually refer to “the Yard” and assume that everyone knows precisely where they mean. (And no, before you ask, you cannot park cars in Harvard Yard.)