In addition, the schedule of the dance student differs from that of the regular Summer School student. Dance classes take up most of the student's day, leaving the nights free. Students enrolled in academic classes, however, must spend many of their evenings studying and this can cause problems, particularly for the students enrolled in the secondary school program.

"We have more to do before dinner, but then they [her entrymates not enrolled in the dance program] have more homework," explains Dewitt. "Everybody's got all this work to do and we don't have any." She adds that sometimes when she and her friends in the dance program want to go out, their friends in academic classes can't join them.

However, the older students say that when they return home, all they want to do is rest and talk to their housemates who come from all over the world. Although many undergraduate dancers live in Eliot, they are not housed exclusively with other dancers and therefore meet students enrolled in academic programs in the dining halls and in their entryways.

Many dancers cite the high number of foreign students at the Summer School when they discuss what makes the program such a beneficial experience. Bull says that he has spoken to "more people in the past two weeks than I have spoken to in my entire life."

And some of the high school age students say that just having the college experience is as rewarding as the dance classes. "It's a taste of independence," says Amy Landau, a high school senior from Scarsdale, N.Y. "You're thrown into a situation where you have to totally depend on yourself to get where you're going."

"Even in classes," adds Dewitt, "you get out of them what you put into them. If you really work at it, you can improve or you can slouch through your classes and not get any better."