One thing is for sure: Harvard is not alone. Advising problems seem to be a general trend among selective schools. Groups that compare data from these schools, such as the Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE), confirm that academic advising needs work.

Exploring this trend, The Crimson examined the advising structures of two other prominent schools in a search for the perfect system.

Bulldog, Bulldog, Bow Wow Wow

Yale students say advising is a luck-of-the-draw system. Highly dependent on student initiative, Yale's system seems to lack a reliable advising structure in the first and second years, according to both students and administrators.

After two years of spotty, hit-or-miss advising, however, juniors at Yale say they find solace in a strong concentration advising system.

Yale first-year students, much like Harvard's, are immediately assigned "freshmen counselors," two undergraduate resident advisers.

"Our basic responsibility is to be aware of what's going on with freshmen," Tobin M. Abraham, a freshmen counselor in Yale's Calhoun College said. "We're also here to make sure things are okay with them, day-to-day roommate issues and such."

Like in Harvard's prefect program, these counselors are not technically academic advisers, but, also like Harvard's prefect program, freshmen counselors are exactly where many first-years get their academic advising.