The Master in Real Estate degree program provides students with foundational knowledge and technical skills required for investing in, developing, owning, and managing financially viable, well-designed real estate that seeks to achieve beneficial spatial, social, and environmental outcomes.
For nine on-campus months from late August to the end of May, students take a mixture of required and elective courses, including a development project course that simulates the multidisciplinary, holistic, collaborative, and transactional environment in which real estate projects are successfully launched. The concluding two-month off-campus summer term Practicum following the nine months of Harvard residency places students in a cooperating private for-profit, private not-for-profit, or public real estate organization to participate in projects and programs that seek socially and environmentally beneficial outcomes. Students subsequently return to the GSD for several days to reflect on their Practicum experience through presentations and discussions and turn in a Practicum paper.
Students possessing superior knowledge of material covered in most required courses may take a waiver examination and, if successful, substitute a specially created MRE elective course in fall or spring terms. MRE students take one elective course in the fall term and one in the spring term at the GSD or through cross-registering in any course offered by other Harvard schools, including the Business School, the Law School, the Kennedy School, and the College, as well as at MIT, as long as such non-GSD courses permit cross-registration. Students must follow the rules for cross-registration at the various schools. With program director permission, MRE students may take a second elective course in the fall and a second elective course in the spring.