"It would have been a little odd because the tutorial for chemistry is an introduction to research," Swami says. "I didn't want to get into a lab this academic year."

The Social Studies department, in fact, discourages potential concentrators from accepting Advanced Standing because of the difficulty of the material in the sophomore tutorial, Foster says.

"They feel it is much better for a student to have had a certain amount of college course work under their belt," Foster says.

In the biological sciences, accepting advanced standing forces students to conduct laboratory research during their second year at Harvard, sometimes before they have taken all of the appropriate courses, Gelbart says.

"A lot of our best students conduct research for three years," Gelbert says. "Advanced standing puts so many constraints on the [undergraduate] program that some of the things that are the most fulfilling aspects, at best, they would really have to rush through."

For a similar reason, Chen says he is considering dropping advanced standing because he fears he may not be able to take enough courses to prepare him to write a thesis in economics.

"I've been given one year to take all the classes I need to write a thesis and to take the LSAT," he says. "That's impossible."

But Markham Professor of Government H. Douglas Price, who is advising Buford's thesis on American political parties, says advanced standing juniors are frequently as capable as seniors of writing a stellar thesis.

"Those people who are getting there after two years have exceptional ability and exceptional grades," Price says. "But being around Harvard having six semesters gives you some average over four."

But Price says the quality and motivation of an individual student, not necessarily the amount of time this student has spent in colleges, will determine the quality of a student's thesis.

"If they're of exceptional caliber to begin with, I think they're going to do as well after four semesters as after six," he says. "A bright person is going to figure out where a library is."