The first day of his freshman year, John Norwalk asked his two roommates what they intended to major in. Government, said one; Philosophy, said the other. "I intend to major in History and Lit," said John.

Norwalk seemed an excellent candidate: good prep school, good grades, articulate conversation, and most of all an intense interest in American history that seemed perfectly fitted to the purposes of his intended major.

In spring of his first year, Norwalk joined scores of his classmates and trekked to the History and Lit office in Holyoke Center to have his interview, submit a representative paper, and hand in his application. His nerves frayed raw and his grades dropped while he waited to hear whether he had joined "the elite."

In spite of everything, he did not. Reapplication as a sophomore raised his hopes but not his finish in the History and Lit sweepstakes. Today he is a discontented History major and his once-promising academic career is something of a shambles.

John Norwalk is not a real name, but the case is a real one. And it is augmented by the hundreds of students here who have felt the frustration and the sting of rejection from a restricted major.

Six undergraduate concentrations at Harvard are restricted: Social Studies, History and Literature, History and Science, Visual and Environmental Studies, Folklore and Mythology, and Applied Mathematics. The oldest and largest, History and Lit, has about 180 concentrators; the smallest, Vis Stud, has about 85.

Vis Stud is the only real department of the six; the other five are degree-granting committees on instruction. Each consists principally of a Faculty committee drawing its members from other departments, a board of tutors who do most of the teaching, and an administrative office.

The six concentrations are all-honors majors, meaning everyone is expected to maintain above-average grades and to write a thesis. And all are selective, to one degree or another. While just over 150 students are entering these coveted majors each year, at least 200 are being rejected, even accounting for multiple applications.

Where did these six majors--and particularly the three interdisciplinary committees--come from, and what are they for? The standard explanation in each case is that particular groups of professors felt inquiry into a certain cross-disciplinary field would be profitable for undergraduates with a strong interest in that area.

But there are additional factors. Isabel G. MacCaffery, chairman of History and Lit, said last week that the major she oversees was formed as a way to surmount departmental boundaries, so that a limited number of students could study the interaction of history and literature in a particular country or time period.

Because these six concentrations offer more personal attention and faculty accessibility than the larger departments, they have attracted students repelled by the impersonality of the educational bureaucracy and by arbitrary concentration requirements.

Because the concentrations have decided to remain small and to restrict admission, earning a place in one of them has become a mark of prestige--and prestige seekers abound at Harvard.

Most of all, these six concentrations offer the sort of education many students came to Harvard to get and feel they cannot obtain within the established disciplines.

Despite the pressure of increasing applications, these fields have grown slowly in the past few years. One reason commonly cited is economics--because the honors majors give more individual and small group tutorials to their students than most departments, the cost in teaching fellow salaries is high, at a time when the overall supply of teaching fellows is dwindling. But economics, departmental heads admit, is not the prime factor.

A stronger pressure for limiting the interdisciplinary majors comes from entrenched faculty in the departments, whose first loyalty is to the departmental structure. Not only do they seem to feel threatened by the growth of fields outside the province of departmental control, but they also fear that if opened up, the honors majors would siphon off many more of their best students.