So the family just gave you a brand new little sports car for your birthday, and you're just dying to bring it up to school and zip around Boston. No more trips home on Amtrack, no more mad dashes for the last subway out of Park St. You're a free spirit now, a real independent individual.

Wait a minute, though, Ignore the fact that Boston's streets are notoriously the worst in the nation, filled with potholes that could disable a German tank. Never mind that Massachusetts drivers don't pay attention to little things like stop signs, street lights, and pedestrians. Disregard the local police's intense, burning desire to spend the major portion of each day ticketing every vehicle in sight.

Take all those factors, banish them forever, and there's still one major consideration before bringing a car to Harvard: parking. Parking at Harvard is no simple matter. It is neither inexpensive nor convenient. In fact, it can often be a harrowing experience.

Getting a car into an on-campus space is a fairly simple, but somewhat annoying procedure. It means filling out forms--forms to register your car free of charge with Harvard and forms to obtain a non-resident student permit to drive in Massachusetts. The permit is also issued for free, the only requirement being that you carry the proper insurance coverage to drive in Massachusetts. But, if you want an actual parking space, it means money. Lots of money.

The University has more than 50 different parking areas covering the entire campus. From Western Ave. north to Observatory Hill and from Concord Ave, east to 61 Kirkland St., Harvard has created lots and garages for the more than 450 University affiliated motorists who have contracted for on-campus parking space this year.

Other these 4500, 1838 are students; but only 94 of those students are undergraduates. Just slightly more than one per cent of the undergraduate population here spends $220 a year for 24-hour a day, 7-day a week, on-campus space. And with only a few minor exceptions, all of these undergraduates must park their cars at the Business School lot.

Robert J. Burns, acting director of the University parking office, says the requirement that all undergraduates park their cars at the Business School is a rule set "long ago" by the Council of Deans. Like many other Harvard institutions, the rule has continued through the yeas; and Jesse Garner, a staff assistant in the parking office, says, "we (the parking office) can't really change policy although it;s obvious that something needs to be done. I guess no student has shaken the tree hard enough yet."

The Business School requirement for undergraduates causes the most problems for residents of the Radcliffe Quad. Students at the River Houses face a reasonable five or ten minute walk to their cars; but Quad students, dealing with irregular shuttle bus service to the Business School, have a considerably longer journey to their cars.

Prior to this year, students at the Quad parked their cars on the streets around Radcliffe, despite a University regulation that "undergraduates living in a dormitory and residents of any University housing, may not park motor vehicles on any Cambridge street between the hours of 2 a.m. to 6 a.m."

This year, however, Cambridge has made most of the streets by Radcliffe "residents only" parking areas, requiring people who park on those streets to obtain a Cambridge residency permit. This residency permit is not available to students unless they declare their residency in Cambridge which would jeopardize their voting rights, scholarship eligibility and other benefits from their home states.

Burns and other University officials have acknowledged the parking problem at the Quad, but there is no immediate solution in sight.

Officials in the University Planning Office have said there are "no-long-range major plans to speak of" now which would alleviate the inconvenience for student motorists living at the Quad. They say any changes would have to come from a policy shift originating with the eight-member Parking Advisory Committee, chaired by Joe B. Wyatt, vice president for administration.

Burns, who is a member of that committee, says that committee makes recommendations to the Council of Deans which must then approve these recommendations. He adds that there are no plans currently under discussion that deal with the Quad parking problem. "What we have started to think about it where people will park for the new Kennedy School when it opens," he says.

The space problem exists because besides the 4500 cars with parking permits, there are another 600 drivers who register their cars with the University but do not purchase parking space, and then an additional group of car owners who, despite University regulations, do not bother to register their cars at all. That leaves somewhere near 6000 cars running (or driving) around Harvard. (The University regulation states that failure to register a car with the University leaves a student open to a $25 fine.)

Aside from all those cars competing for the limited Harvard space, Burns says that there are "plenty of people coming into the Square who just pull into a spot, not realizing it's a Harvard space." He adds, however, that signs are posted near all spaces identifying them as "parking by permit only."