With this reputation, however, also comes the image of being an intolerant haven of the white-dominated establishment--an image Harvard and many other elite institutions find it hard to shirk.

For two Black applicants to the Class of 1997, Harvard's image as an intolerant and racist institution was based only on hearsay until they made their first visit to Cambridge. Within the period of their brief stays, however, both experienced their first personal encounters with racism, incidents that tainted their first impressions of Harvard.

Demian A. Hare, who was accepted to nine colleges, including all the Ivy League institutions, says that racist attitudes he confronted at Harvard Summer School discouraged him from going to Harvard.

"I did enjoy [summer school]," says Hare, a Long Island native who is an Outstanding Achievement Award for Negroes scholar, and plans attend Stanford University in the fall. "But I knew of some problems over the summer. Every Black guy who was dressed nicely and was carrying a briefcase was accused of being Jean Baptiste." Baptiste, who is Black, was convicted in 1991 of rapidly two male Harvard summer school students.

Amillah Pinnock '97, who went to predominantly. Black school in Jacksonville, Fla., says her visit to Harvard over pre-frosh weekend included a shocking encounter with facism.

"I was in the [Mass. Army-Navy Store] looking at shoes with a friend," says Pinnock. "A salesman asked a white girl if she needed help but she said, No, but you need to help those niggers over there.'"

Pinnock says she tried not to let the experience play into her decision too much, but for others like Hare, an incident was damaging enough to make them opt for another school.

This troubled reputation has even penetrated into Harvard's backyard, elite preparatory schools, which have extensive affirmative action programs. Bad experiences at such schools, often perceived to be microcosms of Harvard, often prevent some of the best educated Black students from applying to Harvard, some students say.

"People at Exeter who go to Harvard tend to be very conservative," says J. Dmitrii Bloodworth '97, a Brooklyn native who will graduate from Phillips Exeter Academy. "Harvard has an image problem. No one would ask me why I'd go to Yale. But they do ask me why I'm going to Harvard. They say, 'Why would you go to Harvard. It's another four years of Exeter.'"

Bloodworth says Harvard was not on his preliminary list of 50 possible colleges a year ago because he thought the climate on campus is too conservative. It was not until Harvard sent him a brochure on minority student life--part of its new minority recruiting effort--that Bloodworth decided to include Harvard as his seventh-choice college on his short-list of 17 schools.

Bloodworth, who is president of the Afro-Latino Exonian Society at Exeter, says many Blacks do not apply to Harvard because of its "image problem." Bloodworth says only one Black student at Exeter has expressed interest so far in applying for admission next year.

If Exeter's Black students, privy to an insider's knowledge of the goings-on of the campus, are concerned about the atmosphere, the glare of the national spotlight has done little to enhance Harvard's image.

Highly publicized racial incidents, protests against the dearth of minority faculty at many of Harvard's schools, and the hanging of a Confederate flag outside a student's window paint a picture of a volatile Harvard campus.

In the past year alone, Black students at Harvard say they have undergone a grilling by campus conservatives who have scrutinized their academic qualifications. Thomson Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. '53 sparked controversy when he made statements in Harvard Magazine and The Crimson linking grade inflation with the institution of affirmative action.

And articles in a number of publications have also challenged the legitimacy of Black students' place on campus, often disputing Harvard's affirmative action program, designed to up the enrollment of Blacks in the late 1960s.