"I personally think that Harvard is a residential university, and you don't live in. It makes a big difference. The impact of being locked out of housing is to make it damn near impossible to meet people, unless you make just a tremendous effort to do it."

Watson shared the sentiments, of other transfer students that he was not fully prepared for the difficulties he would have off campus.

"My initial sense was that it wouldn't be such a big deal," he says. "While I intellectually appreciated the House-centricity. I didn't have any idea what a difference it makes day to day. Them again, none of the problems are worth not coming."

Every Attempt Made

I aura G. Fisher, director of says that every attempt is made to make transfer applicant fully aware of the fact that housing guaranteed, and even of the fact that Harvard is fundamentally a residential college.

But, as she says. Even when you spell everything out and try to discourage somebody from coming, coming to Harvard is an overriding consideration. That consideration, of being at Harvard, can obscure the importance of other consideration." "Students also heat what to hear," she adds. "I'm not sure that they're willing consider some of the things that they're told about the situation. Of course, in many they really didn't have any idea, even it it was described to them. It's hard to know just from a description what an impact the residential House will have if in fact they've never had my experience like that."

"It's very complicated," Fisher admits. "The transfer students we do bring are very strong as a group, and very interesting as a group."

"I think we all feel very badly that the circumstances are such that we can't admit them with housing," she says. "But the alternative I don't think would be very satisfactory to other constituencies--there would be a smaller freshman class. We in the admissions office have a hard enough time giving places to the small number we can, given the applicant pool. It's a question of using resources."

Why, then, transfer to Harvard it fitting in is so difficult? The overriding reason, Fisher and many transfer students agree: academics.

"There are lots of reasons why students come to a place like Harvard after having spend a year or two at another school. The great majority of those reasons are academic--that they haven't been able to get what they want because of a change in field, or they're looking for depth in a particular field which Harvard offers and their other school doesn't," says Fisher. "We tend to put more weight on those reasons in our admissions process than any others."

"Of course, we don't expect students only to come for academic reasons--we're looking for other ways for them to find niches in the community so that it's an easier transition," she added. "But it they don't have academic strength and academic interests, it becomes even more difficult and can be very frustrating."