Some 2700 students--more than 40 percent of them women--will register today and tomorrow for the nation's oldest summer school. They will come from nearly every state and from more than 40 foreign countries.

The opening session will take place tomorrow evening at 8 p.m. in Sanders Theatre. William Y. Elliott, Director of the Summer School, will preside over the Convocation. Speakers will be Matthew Page Gaffney, Visiting Professor of Education, and Dana M. Cotton, associate director of the Summer School.

Following the Convocation, a dance will be held in Memorial Hall, which adjoins Sanders. There will be no charge for admission or refreshments.

The Summer School's enrollment this year will probably be its largest ever, except for the postwar period. Approximately 30 percent of the men and women present will be regular students at Harvard or Radcliffe who have come to make up work or to accelerate their academic programs. Another 25 percent will be teachers, drawn here by the Education School's summer program. Nearly 20 percent more will be adults in all walks of life who are using their vacations or free time to refresh themselves on what they learned in college, or to make up for what they never did learn. Finally, about a quarter of the Summer School will be made up of students from colleges throughout the country who have come to sample what Harvard has to offer in both intellectual and recreational facilities for the summer.

In addition, some 40 Summer School "students" will be prominent men from all over the world, here to participate in the International Seminar.

Because of the large enrollment, all available living facilities in the Yard dormitories and the graduate center are already taken. However, the office in Grays Hall 1-2 has a listing of rooms outside the University, which are in relatively abundant supply.

The Summer School faculty will number approximately 100. Some 60 of these teachers are regular members of the Harvard faculty, and the other 40 include outstanding visitors from colleges and universities throughout the world.

Faculty of 100

Among the Summer School courses which seem, on the basis of early registration, to be attracting the largest enrollments, those given by Professor Hans Kohn of C.C.N.Y. are high on the list. These are Government S-178, "The World in the Twentieth Century: A Survey of International Relations," and History S-134c, "Intellectual History of Nineteenth Century Continental Europe."

Other courses drawing considerable interest are such perennial favorites as Chemistry S-1 (general introductory) and S-20 (organic), Economics S-1 (principles of Economics), and English S-7b (American, literature since Emerson.)

Also very popular are English S-181, "Twentieth Century English Novel," given by Professor F. Cudworth Flint of Dartmouth, and Fine Arts S-17, "Great Masters of Western European Painting," given by Associate Professor Hedley H. Rhys of Swarthmore.

Among the Education courses, Education S-A-5, "American School," given by Dean Keppel, is drawing a large enrollment, as are Education S-B-2, "Human Development," and S-B-4, "Measurement: Introduction to Educational Psychology and Child Behavior."