About half of these students have simply dropped from five courses to four—effectively “extending shopping period beyond one week to three or four weeks”—he says.

But for advisees who are adding a new course near the add/drop deadline, Berry says he recommends that they play to their academic strengths.

“If they’re adding a course that they already have a strong background in, the first few weeks are probably not too vital,” he says.

Students who have been sitting in on class lectures before completing the official paperwork—essentially auditing the course—usually have less trouble catching up to speed, he adds.

ADDING AT THE DEADLINE

Bowe says that in a previous semester, she added a Literature C course near the deadline to fulfill a Core requirement.

She says that although her teaching fellow tried to help her make up the work, Bowe says she never truly caught up with the workload.

“In a class I didn’t know much about, I thought I got off on the wrong foot,” she says. “I felt like I was really at a disadvantage the rest of the semester.”

A freshman—who asked to remain anonymous in order to avoid jeopardizing her chance of getting into courses—says she must now find two new classes by Tuesday’s deadline, after dropping an intensive language course that was moving too fast for her.

The freshman says she is worried about succeeding in the courses she chooses, after missing the first four weeks of lecture.

“It’s intimidating starting a class and not knowing what to expect and if you’ll catch up on time,” she says. “I feel like I’m in so much trouble.”

Shelby M. MacLeod ’12 says she is so concerned about making up missed work that she has never added or dropped a course at Harvard.

Even though she is taking a Visual and Environmental Studies course that she says she is dissatisfied with, she does not plan to drop it because she thinks it would be too difficult to make up four weeks of missed work.

“I feel like it would be more effort to catch up in another class than to just stick with this one,” she says.

FINDING THE COURSE