"IT WAS LIKE conducting a battle campaign--you find the grunts, the students in the front lines...then you talk with the sergeants (grad students), then the junior officers (academic advisors). Finally, when I had my basic research in hand, I would go to the general, the president, and ask for an interview."

Shell-shocked, Lansing Lamont slogged through the battlefields of the nation's most prestigious universities, fending off grade frenzy, resisting sexual anarchy, getting the material for the folks back home. Why top-ranked schools? "Hell, I didn't want to go out somewhere to some Animal House, where there are no serious academics really, but to those places that provide material for the leadership posts," Lamont explained in a recent interview.

Luckily, Lamont didn't have to go it alone. The academic brass led him by the hand, providing him with "typical" students--a couple of pre-meds, a pre-law student, a few women, not to forget a smattering of minorities--all chosen by the front office, the University administrators. Lamont explains, "I could waste time randomly interviewing, but I wanted to make it as scientific as I could."

Though the battle rages in the pages of Campus Shock, Lamont reports that Harvard's defenses are still basically sound. "The thing that struck me most about Harvard was that it wasn't knocked askew by one single problem...Harvard seems to have all the problems, but for some reason they deal with them better. I don't know whether they spend more time, or they're smarter, or whether it's the fact that they're simply Harvard."