First-Year Outdoor Program Participant Fee Rises Nearly 60% Due to ‘Increasing Costs’

The price for incoming students to attend the First-Year Outdoor Program, Harvard’s outdoor pre-orientation program, rose nearly 60 percent this year to “offset the increasing costs of the program,” College spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo confirmed.

FOP, Harvard’s oldest and largest pre-orientation program, takes around 300 incoming first-years each year on outdoor trips in the Northeast the week before classes begin. The increase — from $475 to $750 — marks the first time in five years the program has raised its participation fee, according to Palumbo.

Every year, FOP also subsidizes the participation fee for students on financial aid in proportion to their aid level. It provides free rental gear to students receiving any form of College financial aid.

“Going on FOP doesn’t have to cost a fortune,” its website states.

Palumbo wrote in a statement that the Office of Student Engagement works with the Office of Financial Aid to assess participants’ financial need, but declined to comment on whether financial aid for participants had decreased or specify the “increasing costs” driving the general program fee increase.

“As students’ financial information is incredibly sensitive, FOP’s steering committee and leader corps do not have access to this information,” Palumbo wrote.

He added that FOP receives supplemental funding support from multiple external sources and that the participation fee is just one part of its revenue.

Tyler J. Shelton ’26, a former FOP leader, called the decision “very difficult and very unfortunate.”

“It reduces the accessibility that people have to a program like that,” he said. “Those decisions are hard to make, and what I know about the staff that have worked on FOP and the students that have worked on FOP is that accessibility is very important.”

On its website, FOP touts itself as an experience designed for “all levels of experience and fitness” and as an “accessible outdoor experience.”

Shelton said that while the increase was “not ideal,” he did not think staff made the decision lightly.

Still, leaders said the increase reflects longstanding funding struggles as FOP has grown in popularity.

“There have always been funding challenges with FOP, precisely because there’s been such a high demand for what is an awesome program,” Shelton said, “so much so that a number of students couldn’t be accepted into the program because we didn’t have the funding to take those people on.”

Shelton said he worried that the higher price could discourage students from applying at all.

“It’s difficult now because the price has gone up, which might lead some people to self-select before they even get the opportunity in the first place,” he said.

Palumbo, for his part, wrote that he hoped to continue the program’s “success” in future years.

“The First-Year Outdoor Program had a tremendous 2026 program thanks to the work of its professional staff and student leaders,” Palumbo wrote. “We look forward to continuing this success as we start planning for FOP 2027.”

—Staff writer Alma T. Barak can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at almabk.54. Follow her on X @almabk_.

—Staff writer Theresa F. Bartelme can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at theresabartelme.15. Follow her on X @theresabartelme.