The mystique surrounding Harvard education rests on a tacit agreement that none shall inspire too closely just how the College changes schoolboys into Harvard men: the mystery must be preserved to maintain the power of Harvard's uniquely successful system.

This deep-seated conviction is reflected in the many debates on educational policy tend to center on what the student should be taught rather than what he actually winds up learning, and in the resounding resolution with which Faculty members will assert that they have no influence over either the interests or the efforts of undergraduates. The same attitude makes admissions most important problem of the College. If Harvard only offers opportunities rather than holding attitudes and talents, the raw material the most important part of the educational .

Perhaps the most succinct, if exaggerated, statement of this myth of importance was made a harried administrator. Accused of seeking turn every undergraduate into a library- graduate student, he snapped, "I wish I how to make one student spend as much one more hour in Lamont."

Yet existing studies of College life suggest the decisions of Faculty and governing , the specific regulations of the Administration, indeed, they very day-to-day attitudes values of the Faculty, shape the development of new Freshmen. Beyond direct influence, College determines by its physical structure, its rules, and by its daily operation the way Freshman picks up ideas and discards about the College. A Harvard man does at just happen by accident.

Almost every student comes to the College a particular personal utopia, challenge, opportunity, and almost none finds what he expects. Many are fortunate and never realize badly they guessed; others are blessed with accurate enough to be changed without pain; some are so little committed that they can change their ideas easily. But for the majority, the discovery that Harvard is not what they anticipated is critical in forming their attitudes toward the College and toward higher education.

The first week is often remembered as the most crucial time of the Freshman year, for then the newness and confusion of Harvard is most expected and noticed. But a week of physical dislocation and uncertainly is superficial compared to the continuing demands of adjustment to Harvard's values and requirements.

The disillusion so evident in Freshmen may be precipitated by the grading system and course assignments, but often the intellectual tone of the Freshman environment and the social structure of the class are equally important. The particular source of discord is likely to be determined by what the Freshman looks for rather than where Harvard fails to meet general expectations: a student who is looking for an intellectual atmosphere and finds one will be far less disturbed by academic difficulty, even if he led his school class.

More often, however, the academic system is the arena of conflict. One descriptive explanation divides the class into 'linear' and 'diffuse' students. Linears study everything on the reading list and attend all the lectures, or try to. The diffuse dabble, without much plan, through the course material, often achieving very little. As the Fall progresses, linears divide into a group which works ever more intensively and one which begins to learn the ropes and read selectively. The diffuse split into a segment which appears to be learning the ropes--actually begins to work fairly intensively along lines of personal interest--and one which achieves almost nothing, eventually leaving College or adopting an entirely different approach if they are not so talented that they do not need to study.

When mid-term grades arrive about Thanks-giving, which is also the first break from classes, many students find themselves forced to reappraise not only their study habits, but also their intellectual self-image, and, by implication, what they seek from education.

In study habits, change is fairly visible, largely reflecting the way grades measure up to expectation, but, when forced to abandon their own habits as inadequate, Freshmen do not rely on Harvard experience, for they have not been around long enough, or been sufficiently at ease to absorb the approaches characteristic of Harvard.

Instead, reaching back into school years, they dredge up the alternatives they once rejected, looking for a solution to the present problem in a reconsideration of the past decision. The situation is easier for the prep school product, for he is often more accustomed to accepting a B as a satisfactory grade, something which is harder for the high school graduate who has always led his class. But since preppies generally do not work as hard as their high school confreres, the difference tends to even out.

In psychology, coping with a present crisis by reverting to a past critical decision is known as regression, usually with highly perjorative overtones. There need be nothing wrong with reconsidering high school decisions--often it is essential if the Freshmen is not to become bogged down in an intellectual dead end--but it is ironic that he often is forced to change those attitudes which originally led him to Harvard: his views on the meaning of education, his own intellectual pretensions, and the relation of intellect to his own social outlook.

Possibly the classic example of this irony is the "Exeter Syndroms". Among the best prepared students in the country, Exeter graduates reject academic values, rebel against the system, and leave Harvard in greater numbers (and percentages) than any other group. These graduates of a tough sink-or-swim system much like Harvard rate themselves highly, and especially prize their own sophistication. Many of those most dependent on this self-esteem are attracted to the College.

Convinced that they are only continuing in the same kind of education, they expect to do well with the same low-work system that succeeded in school, a system peculiarly adapted to Exeter's unique teaching and testing system. When Harvard gives them C's instead of B's, and they are not taken as a superior species despite their conspicuous sophistication, they tend to react by doubting the worth of Harvard's system, pointing out its weaknesses and defects, and thus refuting its rejection of their performance. Substituting independent intellectual activity and creativity, both subjectively defined, they become mere academic hangers-on, and dissatisfaction frequently terminates in departure.

A clearer case of regression is the "Andover Syndrome." From a school where a majority of the top of the class is bound for Yale, Harvard receives a group which has thought of itself as an intellectually oriented and superior minority. On arrival they find that the grading system does not endorse their superiority, that people with the same social outlook they rejected at Andover are quite successful at Harvard, and Harvard is not quite as ready as they had hoped to embrace all intellectuals with unqualified social success.

Finding their image of the place of learning has become unworkable and that intellectual success no longer comes easily, the Andover graduates often reject their intellectual role, join clubs, and start behaving much like the students they refused to associate with at Andover. They complete the protective change by forgetting their erstwhile intellectual pretensions and remembering a far more social outlook than they actually held at school.

Since Exeter and Andover are nearly academic twins, it is tempting to suppose that these syndromes are just the results of big intensive boarding schools. But what is attributed to the individual schools is actually neither confined to their graduates not universal among them. Moreover, the two cases, though parallel, are quite different, and other parallels can be found which owe no scholastic allegiance.

Prospective scientists, for example, comprise almost half the entering class, but little more than a quarter graduate as science concentrators. It is true that Harvard does exert various kinds of indirect pressure against science, but the change is also the natural result of the easy form science takes in school. Science is one area where the talented student can show clear and measurable competence and be drawn into a orientation toward college which produces a clear articulation of the relation between education and life.

In Harvard's more rigorous competition and more competitive atmosphere, once-impressive talent is devalued, and the careerist orientation it engendered weakens. Instead, the image of Harvard as center of liberal education, which draws scientists to the College, becomes the dominant theme in their approach to learning. The outsider's view of liberal education becomes their guide in an effort to attain one.