Hopper said he wanted to take six courses at the beginning of this fall to challenge himself and find room for additional courses in a schedule packed with required courses.

But when he met with his resident dean, she refused to sign his study card, saying she wanted him to focus on improving his grades in the two premed courses he would be taking that semester instead of attempting to take a sixth class.

Hopper said he was disappointed for the “first two minutes” after his meeting with his resident dean, but chose not to contest her decision, and enrolled in five courses.

With the time he would have spent on a sixth class, Hopper decided to “reinvent” himself by joining a new extracurricular activity. This fall, he rushed the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternity.

Hopper says he still plans to enroll in six courses his senior fall, when he will be finished with his premed requirements.

Like Hopper, Walleck faced an uphill battle trying to convince his advisors to allow him to take six courses. Walleck said his academic advisor and resident dean initially discouraged him from taking six courses, particularly because three of his proposed courses were electives.

Eventually, however, Walleck’s advisor and resident dean consented because he was so adamant to go through with his plan.

He recalls, “They said, ‘you can take 6 classes only if you must,’ and I said, ‘I must.’”

FRESHMAN ADVISING

Unlike upperclassmen, freshmen must take exactly four academic courses in the fall. They can, however, petition their resident dean to take a fifth course only if it is a music performance class.

“We’re really protecting students from themselves here,” Dean of Freshman Thomas A. Dingman ’67 explains. “We want people ... to end up feeling like their feet are on the ground solidly at the end of the semester.”

Every spring, however, Dingman says that an average of one or two freshmen seek to take six or more courses in their second term at Harvard.

Applied math: economics concentrator Sun, now a sophomore, was one such freshman. Last spring, he enrolled in six classes, including two applied math courses, a statistics course, Expository Writing 20, Economics 10b—an introductory macroeconomics course, and Chemistry 20—an honors-level chemistry course.

He said while his freshman resident dean was wary that he would be spreading himself too thin, he said he thinks his request was ultimately approved, in part, because he had earned a 4.0 in the fall.

‘DOABLE’