The Types of Hosts You'll Meet at Visitas

The All-Star host might proudly don this t-shirt. By Francheska M. Loza

Visitas hosts are responsible for caring for sweet, naive prefrosh and immersing them in the Harvard experience any way they can. But you might not always get what you bargained for. Here are the types of hosts you might meet this weekend...

The Neglector

They’ll probably send one of their friends to pick you up, or maybe just text that they’ll be busy for the day and leave you to find your way to the Quad on your own (good luck). If you didn’t bring a sleeping bag, don’t be hopeful: there’s going to be a hardwood floor waiting for you. If you’re lucky, they’ll tape their door so that even if they’re not there for you, their room is. If not, have fun exploring the halls as their locked door stares you down.

The Overbooker

They’ve got good intentions, but at the cost of living space. At night, you’ll arrive to see three other prefrosh huddled around the futon or scattered around the common room. However, this kind of host tends to be very friendly and eager to talk about anything; after all, they did sign up to take in a bunch of prefrosh. Plus, while sleeping arrangements may be cozy, you’ll have friends to navigate Annenberg with the next morning.

The Advantageous Humorer

The worst type. They’ll feed you plain wrong information about Harvard, send you on pointless errands, and make fun of you with their weird Harvard humor. They’ll use words like comp, Q guide, and more acronyms than any sane human should be expected to keep track of, reveling in the fact that you’ll have no idea what they’re talking about. Don’t despair: your true Harvard experience will be much better than the one this clown prepared for you.

The Reminiscer

From the moment you show up, they won’t stop telling you about their own Visitas experience. They may only be a sophomore, but things were so different when they were just discovering Harvard. On the upside, it will be super easy to get them to talk about their Harvard experience. On the downside, they might be sneakily trailing you to events just to experience the ~thrill~ all over again. You thought it was weird to have your parents following you around? Now try a random college student you barely even know.

The All-Star

Through every stressful essay, late night p-set session, and frantic midterm prep sesh, one thing has kept this type of host going: Visitas is coming. There is truly nothing they are more excited to do than welcome you into their cramped dorm room where there’s a comfy futon waiting for you. Your schedule will be packed, but they’ll still insist on grabbing brunch with you or running to Zinneken's for a late night waffle together. If you get this host, consider yourself lucky—it’s always nice to have an upperclassman friend when you get on campus this fall.

No matter which host you get, your schedule will be so packed with free food events, *highly recommended* talks from faculty, and trying to meet as many people as possible that you probably won’t end up spending much time with your host at all. Overall, the best piece of advice we can offer is: Whoever your host may be, keep track of their spare key.