Prefrosh Flood Campus for Visiting Program

The College’s April Visiting Program allowed more than 900 admitted students this weekend to take a jogging tour of campus, trek to an activities fair in the Quad, and “get yo’ jollies” at one of the many parties organized by student groups.

The program, informally referred to as “prefrosh weekend,” gave high school seniors the opportunity to dabble in the Harvard lifestyle, but many felt—especially at night—that their first college experience was not so different from their high school days.

“It felt a lot like high school, seeing lots of kids who didn’t know each other trying to dance,” said Kylie S. Gleason, a Boston high school senior, about a blacklight party in Adams House dining hall on Friday night. “Everyone was so awkward.”

The party, which was hosted by the Latino Men’s Collective and Fuerza Latina, was originally called “Barely Legal” but was stripped of its name when administrators got wind of it.

Despite these uncomfortable encounters, many prefrosh said they felt that the program did a good job of giving them a taste of social life at Harvard—dispelling common myths about the University and ultimately convincing them to matriculate.

In 2006, 91 percent of admitted students who attended prefrosh weekend chose to accept Harvard’s offer, Erin F. Fehn ’04, an admissions officer and the visiting program’s director, said last year. Fehn said she did not have statistics for 2007.

With the many happenings on campus this weekend—the welcome guide featured an 11-page listing of events—a lot of prefrosh said they felt overwhelmed by the opportunities available.

“It can be a little hard to take it all in at once sometimes,” said Kristen J. DuPre of Long Island, N.Y. at the extracurricular fair on Saturday.

But some students said they appreciated the sensory overload.

“It was way better than Dartmouth’s [prefrosh weekend],”

said Alexa I. Stern of Winchester, Mass. “There’s just so much to do—we’ve been having so much fun.”

While many attendees commented on the unstructured nature of the weekend, they said they liked that the program didn’t attempt to change Harvard’s atmosphere for the weekend or shuttle prefrosh from event to event.

“There haven’t been that many organized social events, but I’ve met so many amazing people,” said Kristen L. Cronon, also of Winchester. “Here, it’s not as much trying to make you come, but more just telling you, do what you want.”