Latvian Accepted at Harvard Under New Soviet Reforms...

One of the newest additions to Harvard's Class of 1991 is a transfer student from LSU.

Latvia State University, that is.

For the first time in at least 40 years, a student from the Soviet Union has entered Harvard's regular undergraduate program. Natalya Tsarkova, a 19-year-old native of Riga, USSR, was accepted to Harvard last spring and arrived here in August.

Although she plans to continue her studies in computer science, she stresses her desire to broaden her academic horizons.

"At home I'm getting an education that is very professional, very narrow," she says. "That's why I'm very unsatisfied, because computer science is only one of the things I wanted to study."

Tsarkova joins a select group of Soviet citizens who are permitted to study in the U.S. In the academic year 1987-88, only 77 Soviet citizens enrolled in American universities, as compared with some 29,000 students from the People's Rebublic of China.

However, that figure may well be increasing under the reform policies of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. This year, another Soviet woman entered the first-year class at Emory College in Atlanta, marking the first time a citizen of the USSR has entered a four-year program at an American college.