When the undergraduate careers of the Class of 2001 end in two weeks, a landmark study on collegiate writing will conclude with them.

The study, which begun in the fall of 1997 when the Class of 2001 first enrolled at Harvard, tracked the writing experiences of more than 400 members of the class throughout their four years at Harvard.

Nancy Sommers, the Sosland director of the expository writing program and director of the study, says the study was the first of its kind in the nation.

Two previous studies at the UMass-Amherst and the City University of New York had followed the writing experiences of three or four students, but no study had followed such a large group of students.

Study participant James P. McFadden ’01 says while the study may not have provided direct feedback on his writing, the opportunity for reflection it provided was useful.

“The study helped me to improve my writing by making me ask myself questions,” McFadden says. “It’s not something that students often do otherwise.”

While the study has not yet come to a conclusion, Sommers has made several preliminary findings.

The study found that on average students write fewer papers as they progress through their academic career, but that the papers in later years grow much longer.

On average, first-year students write 13 papers of at least five pages as well as 14 response papers of one to three pages.

“It was surprising to me during freshman year how much writing Harvard students do,” Sommers says.

The study also found a significant difference in the writing experiences of humanities and social science concentrators versus science concentrators beginning in sophomore year.

During sophomore year, a typical humanities or social science concentrator wrote 14 papers, while a science concentrator wrote only six.

Additionally, while the writing of humanities and social science concentrators significantly improved during sophomore year, that of science concentrators remained virtually the same.

This represents a marked change from first-year writing—science concentrators were more likely to receive A’s in their expository writing class than their humanities or social science peers.

Sommers attributes this result to the presence of writing-intensive sophomore tutorials in many of the humanities and social science concentrations. She also says the study demonstrates that a year-long sophomore tutorial is more beneficial to writing than a semester-long tutorial.