In addition to these advisers, incoming Stanford first-years are also paired with upperclass peer advisers who can relate more closely to student concerns.

Students at Brown, on the other hand, participate in a curricular advising program, in which faculty members offer courses to first-years whom they will also advise, says Brown Associate Dean of the College Joyce Reed. Additionally, each student is assigned an upperclass "Meickeljohn" adviser who can provide more up-to-date academic advice.

A Key to the Ivory Tower

The Stanford and Brown systems attempt to address what many Harvard first-years say is their main complaint about the system: lack of Faculty involvement.

Only those first-years assigned non-resident advisers are likely to find they share an academic interest with their adviser, and even among non-resident advisers, the majority are not faculty members.

Incoming first-years arrive on campus with the specter of choosing a concentration in seven months already beginning to haunt them.

"I guess at this point in our lives we're supposed to make decisions on our own," says Michael L. Blomquist '03, a prospective Environmental Science and Public Policy concentrator. "When I needed advice on courses I asked upperclassmen or teammates who I felt could give better advice and were more similar to me than my adviser. I know of one of my friends who has a non-resident adviser who has nothing to do with academia, which I find kind of amusing."

Shamy suggests that one potential solution to the dearth of faculty advising for first-years might be "having a [graduate] student adviser who's in a concentration that you're interested in."