E-Mail This Article to a Friend Through the back door Alternative ways into some of the area’s best schools BY NINA MACLAUGHLIN
	Where to find them • Harvard Extension School, 51 Brattle Street, Cambridge, (617) 495-4024 • School of the Museum of Fine Arts, SMFA Continuing Education Office, 230 The Fenway, Boston, (617) 267-1219 • Wellesley College Summer School, 106 Central Street, Wellesley, (781) 283-2200 — NM

GOOD WILL HUNTING captured it: that secret dream that many of us have, in big-brained Boston, of infiltrating the hallowed halls of some of the country’s most exclusive universities. Because there’s Will Hunting (Matt Damon), working as a janitor, buffing the corridors at MIT, able to peek in on lectures and solve an equation here and there with a vacuum resting on his hip. As Robin Williams’s character points out in the film, he could’ve worked anywhere, could’ve scrubbed tiles and polished faucets in any building in Boston or Cambridge; it’s not insignificant that he chose one of the world’s best math-and-science schools. Will Hunting found a way in. And with some of the schools around here, where admissions rates hover around .002 percent, sometimes you have to take an in-through-the-back-door approach. But that doesn’t mean you have to be sneaky about it. There are ways of sitting in on lectures and courses at some of Boston’s top-tier schools that involve neither a vacuum nor a perfect score on the SATs. The ivory towers in this town are more accessible than you might think.

THERE’S A school in Cambridge called Harvard. Often, when you ask students at said school what university they’re attending, they answer in question form: "I go to Harvard?" Its name carries more clout than any other institution the city or perhaps the nation, and the kids are so worried about living up to their arrogant and overprivileged stereotype that they feign humility. But just because your blood isn’t blue, just because you don’t have the dough or the grades, that doesn’t mean that walking through Harvard Yard is your only option for access to the über-ivy.

The Harvard Extension School was founded back in 1909 as an experiment in "popular education." It’s open enrollment, meaning anyone — whether you have a PhD or never went to college — is welcome to attend. (Three out of four Extension School students have a bachelor’s degree; about 25 percent have graduate degrees.) The Extension School offers 570 classes — choices include "Physiology of Sleep"; Russian; "Cell Biology: Eukaryotic Experimental Models"; and "Becoming J.R.R. Tolkien: Life and Medieval Studies" — in 65 fields of study. Classes are designed for the adult student (the average age is 33) and meet in the evenings.

To enroll in the master’s program at the Extension School, you have to achieve a grade of B or better in three graduate-level courses at the Extension School or at Harvard Summer School. The Extension School started offering a new batch of professional master’s-degree programs last fall, in fields including museum studies, environmental management, biotechnology, information technology, and mathematics for teaching.

But after completing this degree, is it fair to say you went to Harvard? "Absolutely," says Linda Cross, director of communications and marketing at the Extension School. "You get to experience a Harvard class and take classes with professors that teach the same course at Harvard College. You get access to excellent facilities and are surrounded by an educated student body."

So what’s the catch? "People think that it’s expensive," says Cross. In fact, course tuition for the Extension School is among the lowest in the city. You can take a semester-long undergraduate course for $525; graduate credit courses are around $1400. "It’s very accessible," says Cross. "And the quality of the faculty is outstanding."

Furthermore, if you want to pull a Good Will Hunting and get a job at the university, employees are offered a tuition-assistance plan, meaning they can pay around $40 for an Extension School class, with various restrictions based on how long they’ve worked at Harvard. That means you can park cars at a Harvard lot by day, and study the rise of Islam or biomedical ethics by night.

IT SOUNDS like the premise of another lame movie — a group of guys invading an all-women’s college campus for the summer. And the Boston Herald headline this winter — WELLESLEY GIRLS GONE WILD — serves to highlight the potential cinematic absurdity. But who knew? Boys are welcome at Wellesley College for three months out of the year as part of Wellesley’s co-educational summer school. The two sessions (held this year from June 20 to July 15, and July 18 to August 12) are open to all college students, college graduates, and eligible high-school juniors and seniors. Like the Harvard Extension School, Wellesley’s summer school is open enrollment.

This is the seventh year Wellesley has offered summer school, according to Lynne Payson, the summer school’s administrative director. "We’re predominantly college-age students," she says. "One of the benefits of Wellesley Summer School is that it’s a full college-credit program. It appeals to students who are looking for credits they can transfer. It’s great for students who need to catch up on credits if they went abroad or took a semester off or need to fulfill distribution requirements."

In all the subjects they cover, including anthropology, classical studies, economics, history, math, English, music, political science, and women’s studies, the summer courses meet the same standards as classes offered during the traditional academic year. They’re "exactly the same in content and course time," says Payson, "just condensed into a four-week schedule." She adds that students have found that lab classes lend themselves particularly well to a short and intense schedule. "Courses like chemistry and biology seem to be the ones people are really amendable to doing in four weeks."

Wellesley Summer School campus housing is offered for all non-high-school-age students. Room and board is $690 for a four-week session. Tuition is $1900 per one-unit course, and $2375 per 1.25-unit science lab course.

THE MUSEUM of Fine Arts is the Harvard of Boston-area museums. And the School of the Museum of Fine Arts is a top-notch art school whose alumni include the likes of filmmaker David Lynch, photographer Nan Goldin, and mixed-media artist Cy Twombly. It’s not surprising, then, that with 700 undergraduates and 100 graduate students, the Museum School is highly selective. But you don’t have to have an award-winning portfolio to take classes there. Its continuing-education program is open to anyone, from beginning artists to professionals with MFAs. "It’s an opportunity for someone who thinks they have some skill to take classes without the commitment, application, or huge annual tuition," says Tim Grinder, the school’s director of continuing education.

The Museum School draws an interesting mix of students, Grinder notes, from college-age to senior citizens, and all students have free access to the school’s facilities, as well as to the MFA. As at Harvard and Wellesley, many of the faculty members in the continuing-education program also teach regular courses. And the 10-to-12-person classes cover a full range of media. "We pretty much have something in every medium you might expect," says Grinder. "Fine arts is where we excel. We really specialize in that as opposed to commercial and graphic design. Most of our more popular classes are in painting and drawing."

Many Museum School students start out in the continuing-education program, and then matriculate. Class tuitions range from $425 to about $1200, with many costing $635.

So there’s clearly no reason to think that the area’s universities are off-limits, even if you’re not Will Hunting. "Anyone," says Tim Grinder, "can come take a class."

Nina MacLaughlin can be reached at nmaclaughlin[a]phx.com