Harvard students are taking a little more time off after college these days, and are investigating different career fields before committing themselves to graduate schools, according to a study released in part this week by the Office of Career Services and Off-Campus Learning (OCS-OCL).

The OCS-OCL polled the Class of '77 and found that only 40 per cent of the class--9 per cent less than the previous year's--went on to graduate school immediately after their undergraduate study.

The decline is part of what Robert J. Ginn Jr., director of OCS-OCL, says is a trend toward taking time off from organized study, to travel and to experiment with different career choices before hitting the books again at graduate school.

The study also showed some changes in the types of careers seniors are choosing. Only 15 per cent of last year's graduates listed law as their anticipated vocation--a drop of 5 per cent from the year before.

Ginn said the slack in the popularity of law is being taken up in government and politics. The percentage of seniors choosing this field more than doubled over the previous year's class.

The gap between men's and women's career preferences is apparently narrowing. The percentage of women from Harvard entering law and business schools is now closer to the figures for Harvard men than ever before.

For the first time this year the OCS-OCL has been able to compare its data on the career choices of seniors with the preferences they listed as entering freshmen.

The study showed that a large percentage of students who were undecided about their careers as freshmen found a calling during their years as an undergraduate. Ginn said this refutes the argument that a liberal arts education leads to vocational indecision.

"These figures show that people come to Harvard and actually do find a direction," he said.