Chelsey J. Forbess ’07 is a pre-med student at Harvard College, but, unlike many of her classmates, she won’t be spending her Friday and Saturday nights during the academic year cooped up in the library, cramming for two of the College’s most grueling courses, the Organic Chemistry sequence of Chem 20 and 30.

Instead, Forbess is spending the summer months focusing her attention on Chemistry S-20ab (and only Chemistry S-20ab), a course offered by Harvard Summer School that compresses the year-long organic chemistry sequence into an intense eight-week regimen.

“With a class that’s as time-consuming as this one...I think it’s easier when you’re only taking one class,” Forbess says.

Each year, hundreds of high-school and college students from across the nation and around the world descend on Harvard’s grassy campus in Cambridge to attend the Summer School, forking over more than $4,000—the equivalent of an entire semester’s tuition at some state schools—to take a course in Harvard’s hallowed halls.

The remainder of the Summer School students are composed of Harvard College undergraduates, who, during term time, could take equivalent courses for no extra charge, but still opt to pay thousands over the summer to sit in the same classrooms—although often with less distinguished professors at the lectern and non-Harvard students sitting in adjacent desks.

The Summer School’s offerings—which range from introductory humanities courses on Bob Dylan to Forbess’ 26-hours-per-week chemistry class—attract students, according to Summer School Dean of Students Christopher Queen, for reasons “quite personal and varied.”

Many, like Forbess, attend the Summer School so that they can devote the entirety of their days to one, sometimes two, difficult courses that, if taken during term-time, would eat away large chunks of their time, stunting their academic, extracurricular, and social lives (not to mention sleep schedules).

Other students are looking to play catch-up—perhaps they decided to take pre-med classes too late in their college careers, or changed their concentration at the last minute.

And then there are students who attend the Summer School with hopes of raising their GPAs, because they believe both that they can devote more time to their coursework than during the school year and that they find themselves competing against high-school and non-Harvard College students.

The Summer School provides College students with an opportunity to achieve their Ivy-League goals in what is often seen as a more relaxed-than-Ivy setting.

As assistant dean at the Summer School Robert Neugeboren puts it, College students “have a better chance of doing better” in Summer School classes than they do in courses offered during the year.

WORK ALL DAY

Brandon J. Chiu ’06 is the captain of Harvard’s tennis team. He also plans to apply to medical school after college—which means he has an intense diet of math and science on top of his Core classes and the courses required by his concentration in economics.

Chiu, who decided to become pre-med as a junior in college, says the summer provides him with a fertile opportunity to achieve his academic goals without completely sacrificing his athletic ambitions.

“I want to spend more time with the team during the year,” he says, explaining why he decided to enroll in Chem S-20ab this summer. “I think in general, Summer School is a bit easier because you’re only taking one class.”