"I think our hope is our departments will use this as an opportunity to review how they provide support for undergraduates," says Thomas A. Dingman '67, the associate dean for residential housing and a member of the committee.

The committee was moribund when Lewis became Dean of the College in 1995, but he appointed several new members to the committee--which includes three student members and 10 Faculty members and administrators. The committee has discussed both House and concentration advising in the last two years.

The Data

According to the data, some departments have some improvements to make if they plan to meet those minimum levels.

For instance, in the economics department, only 34.5 percent of students said that they had a concentration advisor from whom they should seek advice, the only concentration to dip below half of the surveyed seniors.

Nearly half of the student in the department said they never met with an advisor, and only 48.3 percent of concentrators said they were always able to get the advice they wanted quickly.

In comparison, biology, which had a similar sample size, had only 13.7 percent of students saying they had never met with an advisor, and 91.5 percent of them had a person from whom they would seek advice.

The aurvery also showed that when advisors are not signing the study cards, it's not House tutors, Faculty or other graduate students who are picking up the slack; it's staff.

Nearly 30 percent of students who do not have their study cards signed by advisors reported going to staff, followed by Head Tutors and Assistant Head Tutors.

Overall, students gave their advisers 3.13 on a 5-point scale, but rated the academic advice they received at 2.85 and the personal advice at a 2.42.

While three-quarters of the 41 concentrations received a score of overall satisfaction of more than 3.0 on the survey, the only concentration with more than 50 students to settle in that range was biochemical sciences, which received a 3.65.

The larger concentrations generally received lower ratings including a 2.9 for English, 2.89 for biology, 2.72 for economics and a 2.63 for government.

"I'm a government concentrator and the advising has always been inconsistent at best," says Robert B. Wolinsky '98, a student member of the committee. "It is not surprising that the larger departments, for the most part, are the ones where we see greater dissatisfaction."

Concentration Choice

Committee members split on whether first-years should take into account the result of the survey when making their concentration choice this spring.