Senior tutors serve as transfers' guidance counselors, meeting with them individually to sign study cards and to help choose concentrations and classes.

Kirkland House Senior Tutor Mark P. Risinger says: "I'm sure some of them do feel rushed. But that's simply a fact of trying to get caught up. Transfers are ready for that challenge--I'm sure they didn't apply to Harvard on a whim."

All first-year orientation programs are open to transfers, and an outdoor program is sponsored specifically for them each year, McAfee says.

'An Easy Transfer'

Transfer Link is another informal program whereby upperclass transfers meet with incoming ones to offer advice and support in the hopes of assimilating students.

Derek M. Glanz '96, the program's director, says Link leads parties, runs and extracurricular advising panel, hands out maps, sponsors trips into Boston and throws an ice cream bash. Each house has at least one Link representative, he says.

"Transferring can be a difficult adjustment," he says. "Harvard is not a typical university. The social life is a little skewed compared to other schools."

Glanz says his dedication to the Link program stems from his own experiences as a new transfer.

"On the eve of classes my first year, my Link helped me pick the right courses," he said. "The jargon for fields of concentration is confusing as hell, but my Link sorted it all out for me. Life at Harvard would have been miserable had the program not existed for me. Without the Transfer Link, I don't know what I would have done."

David H. Goldbrenner '97 transferred from Cornell University midway through his sophomore year. Because of a bureaucratic snafu, he spent his first 10 days here living on the floor of a Quincy House common room.

But Goldbrenner, a Crimson editor, says that the mishap hasn't soured his overall college experience.

"People here already have a skewed view," he says. "They think every school is like this. Transfers bring a unique perspective. Sometimes students will complain to me...and I think, 'You should've been at Cornell.'"

Daniel I. Freeman '97, who transferred from the University of Pennsylvania because of Harvard's excellent humanities program and musical opportunities, says he's had an easy transition.

Freeman is from the Boston area, and his father attended Harvard. Freeman took off the first semester of his sophomore year before matriculating, and he used that time to work as a Sunday school teacher, bus boy, musician and guide at the Museum of Comparative Zoology.

Before he ever attended a class, Freeman had played bass guitar for the annual Hasty Pudding show. "I had a whole term to come here and be around. For me, it was an easy transfer."