Earlier Concentration Meetings To Help Freshmen Pick Major

Department representatives will meet with freshmen earlier this spring than in the past to make it easier for students to decide on a major.

Yesterday's decision by the student-faculty Committee on Undergraduate Education to hold meetings in February comes in response to complaints by Undergraduate Council members that freshmen were poorly advised Departments have usually held concentration meetings shortly before the April decision date.

Sidney Verba 53 associate dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, questioned the specific purpose of the poll, saying that the council's Academics Committee should determine how it expects to use the results.

Dean of Freshmen Henry C. Moses said he was concerned that a poll of freshmen might exaggerate the extent of any academic advisor problems.

"There's no question that individual advisors last individual students in individual cases," he said. "But for every one there are untold cases of students who could not be dissuaded from doing something by an advisor and blew it.

Undergraduate Council member Vanessa A. Davila '84 expressed the concerns of Freshman Council members that advisors do not provide an adequate source of information on the structure and offerings of various departments.

"We would believe in the use of poor counseling, and department orientation during freshman week," she said, adding that advice is not helpful "a month before determining a concentration."

Moses conceded that advisors were often not sufficiently familiar with departments to properly counsel students but said the attitude of the Freshman Dean's Office "is to encourage exploration and delay with respect to that choice [for concentration]."

He added that the most successful peer counseling occurs through the Student to Student and Radcliffe Big Sister Programs and various minority organizations where, he said. "People come naturally together with shared common interests. I'm pessimistic about the possibility of a vast peer advisory system."

Undergraduate Council member Thomas C Cronin '86 was more skeptical about the help that freshmen receive. "It remains that the first two semesters are the most valuable to determine which fields you're interested in," he said.

The advisor problem was the only issue discussed at CUE's first meeting this year.