A last-minute effort to get Harvard student leaders to attend an Ivy League leadership conference had the event's organizers sending hundreds of e-mails to students this week asking them to apply before the deadline tonight.

The three-day Ivy Leaders Summit, the first of its kind, will join 10 students from each school with professors and professional leaders in a conference at Yale University beginning Feb. 18.

The Ivy Council, a body of representatives from each school's student government, is sponsoring the event, which is entitled "Integrity and Responsibility in Leadership."

Summit co-chair Amar Dhand, a Dartmouth junior, said that, as of yesterday evening, less than 15 Harvard students had applied. He said Harvard has had fewer applicants than most other schools, some of which have had more than 35 applicants.

Dhand said extensive efforts to increase publicity about the summit did not begin until recently.

"We didn't do a good job of spreading the word," said Matthew C. Ebbel '01, one of two summit organizers at Harvard and president of the Ivy Council. "So we've been doing as much as possible in the last few days."

Fentrice D. Driskell '01, the other summit organizer at Harvard, said many of the names of the recipients of the e-mails came from a list of 270 student leaders given out by University Hall. She said that not everyone on the list--which is publicly available--was e-mailed, although some people not on the list were e-mailed.

Driskell said organizers did make efforts to publicize the summit before this week. Applications were available in Lamont and Cabot libraries, posters were placed around campus and an announcement was made before a Social Analysis 10 lecture, she said.