Married students also laud the stability the relationship provides. "Having a wife, obviously it's hard work, but being married is actually the cornerstone of that stability. You've got someone with whom you can talk about absolutely anything, any frustration, any worry, any fear of failure. There's always someone there for help," DeGraw says.

The married students also say that sometimes they have to choose between Harvard and their spouse. "To me, my wife [and] my family [are] more important to me than school," DeGraw says. "If I have to choose between a review session for a class and having to stay home to fix dinner because my wife is sick. I'll stay home."

Wheeler, who worked with the Boston Ballet for six years before transferring to Harvard as a sophomore, says. "I owe [my husband] time, and I want to give him time, so I have to balance both things and find time for both. John has joined the Dudley House Wine Tasting Society, so he comes to Harvard too."

Because of their different lifestyle, married students need special advising, and they receive it from Dudley House Senior Tutor John R. Marquand. Marquand, who advises all Dudley affiliates, says. "I'm not really qualified to be a marriage counselor, but I've been asked to advise on those matters. It is not really so different from talking about your boyfriend or girlfriend."

Harvard requires married students to move off campus if they want to live with their spouses, and transfer students also are not given the opportunity to live in Harvard dormitories. Because of overcrowding in the residential houses, the University does not guarantee on-campus housing to students who come to Harvard after freshman year.

Instead, the College subsidizes housing costs for transfer students who chose to live in several Harvard-owned buildings, including Peabody Terrace, 18 Banks Street and the Botanical Gardens Apartments. These students can also purchase partial board contracts with Harvard Dining Services. The total cost of room and board to transfer students who select this "annex housing" option is usually a little higher than the fees paid by students who live in the residential houses.

All transfer students are automatically affiliated with Dudley House, but, for the first time this year, they can switch their affiliations to residential houses--without receiving a housing guarantee--after one full semester. If space opens up within their new houses, the transfer affiliates are offered the opportunity to move in.

Harvard currently accepts more than 50 new transfers each fall, and this year the College also accepted a small group of transfers for the spring semester. Most of these students say they would prefer to live on campus throughout their Harvard careers.

"Living in Peabody Terrace, where do you meet other students?" asks Allen Adler '89, who transfered from Stanford last year. "You must go out of your way to meet people," he says, adding, "Friends do not fall out of the sky."

Yang Wang, the Dudley resident tutor at Peabody Terrace, says most transfer students "don't like Peabody Terrace. People are kind of separated. It's very hard for students to have a feeling of community." Of the 19 new transfers who were housed in Peabody Terrace this fall, 11 have switched their affiliations to residential houses, Wang says. He adds that eight of the 19 students have moved out--into their new residential houses or to other off-campus housing.

Freshmen commuters from another off-campus group, although admissions officers estimate that only one to five freshmen are currently accepted each year as commuters.

"Dudley House used to admit dozens of freshmen who commuted from home, but now that number has dwindled down to almost none," says Anne H. Goldgar, Dudley House assistant senior tutor. This year Harvard has two commuting freshmen, and last year there were also two freshman commuters.

"I don't think we actively discourage people from living off campus," says Robin M. Worth, freshman senior adviser for the South Yard and a former admissions officer. "But we raise a lot of issues and make sure that they realize all the drawbacks."

Freshman commuters are assigned a freshman adviser and are included in study breaks and gatherings, according to Worth. "There's always a pizza party to bring all of the commuting students together," she says, and "de facto, they're usually affiliated with Pennypacker."

As one of the two commuting freshmen, DeGraw must face not only the schizophrenic commuter life and the problems of being a married student, but he also must cope with an unusual freshman experience. Freshman orientation was "weird because I felt so old," he says. Expository Writing was somewhat different for him as well because his wife typed and proofread his papers. He also does not eat in the Freshman Union because he prefers to have a full meal with his wife. DeGraw's freshman year has certainly been different from that of the average Harvard freshman, but his experience combines elements from the most of the varied lifestyles of non-resident students.