“The minute that you declare, you become a member of the department officially, and this means that you can access all of the resources that are available to a member of the department,” Felts says.

She names the ability to easily approach professors and, in particular, the appointment of her academic adviser as the major advantages of declaring as soon as she was sure.

“As a freshman, your adviser is anyone,” Felts says. “Often they have very little knowledge about subjects that you’re interested in or even just Harvard College in general.”

Professor Sarah T. Stewart-Mukhopadhyay, the co-director of undergraduate studies of the EPS department, agrees that this could be a key advantage of declaring early.

“To me, the one-on-one advising with someone in your area is the most important thing you gain,” Stewart-Mukhopadhyay said. “There are all sorts of events geared towards exploration and pre-concentration advising, and those can all still happen, but you do that in conjunction with advising about optimal course selection.”

Such benefits have attracted the attention of Dylan S. Freedman ’15. Freedman took Computer Science 61: “Systems Programming and Machine Organization” in the fall and says he plans to declare a concentration in computer science before the end of the year.

“I heard that the instant you declare, you’re assigned an academic adviser,” Freedman said. “Since I’m pretty set, it makes sense to declare as early as possible.”

BUSY BEES

In addition to the personal attention, students may be tempted to declare early in order to better take advantage of the structures of their chosen department.

For example, Felts’ chosen concentration of EPS is notable for offering several features that make it especially appealing to freshmen looking to declare early. According to Stewart-Mukhopadhyay, the concentration features a rotating sequence of field trips that any primary or secondary concentrator is eligible to go on.

“Because we do our trips at the end of summer, if you aren’t declared until the middle of your first semester sophomore year, you’re not going to be eligible to go,” Stewart-Mukhopadhyay said.

According to Stewart-Mukhopadhyay, the scheduling of these trips was decided before the date to declare was pushed back to sophomore fall. It is not expressly designed to encourage freshman to declare early, though it does attract some signups.

“Our concentration is modest in size. We have single digits that sign up at the end of freshman year knowing that this is part of our concentration offerings,” Stewart-Mukhopadhyay said.

Six current sophomores declared an EPS concentration during their freshman years, a significant portion of the 41 current department affiliates—including primary, secondary, and joint concentrators—according to EPS co-director of undergraduate studies Chenoweth Moffatt.

In addition, students in math and science fields, where upper-level classes have multiple prerequisites, may find that entering a department as soon as possible opens up academic opportunities later on.