THIS STAGE of the process, in which masters will freely choose among applicants, resembles the master's choice system used by the College several years ago to assign students to Houses after freshman year. Under master's choice, a fraction of the Houses' population was filled by the master. This system drew criticism by some as tending to homogenize the residents of individual Houses and even excluding certain students from some Houses. Critics find similar faults with the new transfer process. "It means a kind of battle to please the master. I don't imagine this change will make it any easier to make the transfer process fair." John W. Hastings, master of North House, said Monday. Possibly to avoid this type of competition, some masters have decided to choose randomly among applicants similar to one another under Spence's criteria. To make selection easier. Spence will provide each transfer applicant with a random number.

The crux of the system consists of Spence's proclamation that the resident population of a House may not fall below 87 per cent of the number of students assigned to it during the housing lottery. Spence may change this figure slightly when final data on the number of students who take leaves of absence become available. But regardless of the number she eventually chooses, in effect the floor or House populations will provide a limit on the number of people who can leave the Quad.

The 87 per cent floor assumes the average College-wide attrition rate--the fraction of students who do not return this year--will be eight per cent. For the average House, the 13 per cent transfer limit means that only five per cent of those living in the Houses at the start of the semester may leave without being replaced by incoming transfers. Individual houses vary widely around the eight per cent attrition average, however; Kirkland has had only a four per cent attrition rate, leaving it with serious overcrowding.

On the flip side, Spence will require a House to accept transfers only when the current House population falls below the 87 per cent floor. Thus Mather, with its ten per cent attrition rate, need not accept any one-way transfers this fall. A master might decide to accept transfers beyond the required minimum, possibly to alter the class balance within the House, to help out an overcrowded House or for other reasons.

ACCURATE FORECASTS of how many students will be able to leave the Quad are as rare as an uncrowded River suite. But the outlines of the situation suggest that leaving the Quad will be harder to do this year than in the past. As part of the Fox plan's conscious effort to make the Quad more desirable, the Housing Office switched 45 upperclass Quad residents to the River--five to each House. In doing so. University Hall aimed to reduce Quad density to the point where no Quad rooms would be doubles, as some had been in past years. Because Quad Houses are close to their 13 per cent transfer limit, and since many River Houses already suffer from over-crowding, transfers out of the Quad may well be very few and far between.

Nor will the transfer limit prevent extremes in under- and over-crowding. Mather House lost ten per cent of its assigned population to attrition--more than the eight per cent level Spence assumed it would lose. Yet 31 suites in Mather remain overcrowded.

The new transfer process should reduce the confusion that surrounded last year's system. The process will be much more mechanical, yet strategizing will still be possible. Since a transfer applicant stands a better chance of getting into a given House if he or she ranked that House at the top of the preference list, a student could improve his or her chances by finding out which Houses are less crowded and ranking them first.

But the process almost certainly will not involve strategizing of the type transfer applicants used last year. An incident typical of that strategizing occurred when one South House sophomore became desperate and took extreme measures. He sent Marshall a bunch of roses, accompanied by a card inscribed: "The roses, like we South House students, will wilt if placed far "from water." The student transferred to the River shortly thereafter.