"I feel like I have many acquaintances," not close friends at Harvard, Shuman said.
The same is true for Victor Huang '03 who knows students from his high school and from a summer program at Johns Hopkins University, but says, "I still feel kind of lost."
Moreover, those chatting groups of friends aren't always the close-knit bunch they seem.
Kristin N. Williams '00 met many of the people she spent those first days with doing fall cleanup for dorm crew.
"We all got really tight, and we went around during freshman week. The appearance was that we had a clique," Williams said.
Because he was from a town near Cambridge, Alex S. Leary '01 knew several students before moving into the dorms. But he contends that it didn't make much of a difference.
Even if some students have met before, he says, the truth is that "no one really knows anybody here."
"If you have the right attitude, it doesn't matter," he says. "Half the reason I got to know other groups is that I left my door open."
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