Freshmen are excluded from the Houses because of the intimate connection existing between the House Plan and the tutorial system. The real division in the four-year course comes at the end of the Freshman year at Harvard instead of a year later as in many other colleges. By the beginning of his Sophomore year the student is expected to be ready to do work of university grade and to work under a tutor.
At this time, therefore, he applies for admission to one of the Houses. Each House is designed to be a cross-section of the College, and to further this aim Freshmen are distributed among the seven units by a central board. A man having a special reason for entering a certain House is usually allowed to do so, and students are encouraged to apply in groups in order to insure their being with some of their intimate friends.
Each Sophomore is assigned to a tutor in the field of concentration he has elected, usually to a tutor attached to his own House. Of the tutorial staff of each House, about 10 are resident in the House and the rest have studies there. The student meets his tutor about once a week, eats with him occasionally, and is expected, in one way or another, to absorb a good deal of learning and to benefit by the intimate intellectual contacts. At the same time every upperclassman carries a regular schedule of courses, except that men out for honors can secure a reduction in the number during their Senior year.
Each House is a unit unto itself, with dining hall, library, common rooms, and squash courts. The three new Houses, Eliot, Lowell, and Dunster, are built in truly luxurious style, Eliot being reputed to have cost $3,000,000. The other Houses, made over from what used to be the Freshman Halls, are not quite so well appointed but many have added advantages, such as the swimming pool of Adams House or a particularly good tutorial staff, which make them equally attractive.
The Student Council
Aside from the class officers, the only elected representatives of the students are the members of the Student Council. This body, composed of Juniors and Seniors, exercises none of the functions of the "student government associations" which exist in some institutions. Not a particularly active organization, it attends to routine functions, considers matters of student interest with the officers of the University, and submits an annual report on some important phase of College life