The Structural Flaws in Harvard’s House Advising System

At Harvard, all Houses are equal. But some are more equal than others.

This isn’t just about the dorm facilities, the dining hall food, or the community culture — all things that incoming sophomores hear about on housing day. The real inequality is in something more consequential, but often overlooked: the post-graduate advising system.

At Harvard, house advising networks — which consist of resident and non-resident tutors, pre-concentration advisors, and faculty deans — can significantly shape students’ post-graduate prospects. Advisors are often responsible for writing students’ letters for graduate school, and they play a significant role in selecting scholarship nominees.

Some Houses boast robust advising networks — strong tutors, organized timelines, and continuous support — while others have fewer resources and inconsistent processes. This isn’t a minor flaw in the system. It’s a structural inequity that directly affects students’ futures.

Take the pre-med tutoring system, for example. Despite the fact that Leverett House (as of 2020) housed over 35 percent more students than Kirkland House, both Houses have five pre-med tutors, privileging pre-med students who are randomly sorted into Kirkland.

Some Houses also have a history of producing scholarship winners. From 2009 to 2019, 19 out of the 60 Harvard College graduates who received Rhodes and Marshall scholarships lived in Quincy House.

Coincidence? Probably not. Different House fellowship committees have different processes for advising students. Some Houses actively reach out to encourage their students to apply. Some help prepare students with multiple mock interviews; others conduct only a single one. Some Houses have larger fellowship teams than others.

In addition, the House-based advising system doesn’t just create disparities between houses — it fundamentally alters the residential experience and erodes the separation between students’ personal and professional lives. Although House advisors give students easy access to advising, house advisors don’t just advise students — they evaluate them too. For medical school applicants, for example, House advisors are tasked with writing committee letters, supposedly objective assessments of students’ qualifications, which involves comparing students against their peers.

Students should not live in the same House as their evaluators. The same people who bust us for partying too loudly at night should not, the next day, be asked to judge the strength of our candidacy for professional school. For the same reason that it would be inappropriate to live with your boss or professor, it is inappropriate to live with your future letter-writers.

The advising system also fractures House community by pitting students with similar interests against each other. All of sudden, students don’t live with their friends, they live with their competitors — competitors who might be vying for the same fellowships, letters, and endorsements.

Students already face significant mental health challenges — the advising system should not add to that burden. Houses are places to see friends, relax, and enjoy meals. They should not be the battlefields on which we fight to get into graduate school.

So, what should Harvard do?

At the very least, advising should be standardized across Houses, ensuring that no student is disadvantaged by their randomly assigned living situation. Houses should have the same advising timelines and the same ratio of advisors to students.

Better yet, the advising system could be centrally managed, not tied to the housing system at all. Yale’s model, for example, provides a centralized support network, entirely separate from the residential colleges.

Advisors play a crucial role in shaping students’ futures, and Harvard has a responsibility to make sure that role is fair, equitable, and stress-minimizing. The housing system brings joy to so many students, tutors, and staff who cherish the community and shared identity they find in these spaces.

But just because we have convenient infrastructure in place doesn’t mean that Harvard should use it for everything. Preserving the integrity of the Houses as living communities, rather than post-graduate administrative blocs, would make our house communities stronger.

Mukta R. Dharmapurikar ’26, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a double concentrator in Environmental Science and Engineering and Economics in Lowell House.