3289 GSAS Students To Register Today

More than 600 first-years will gather near Wigglesworth Hall today, but don't expect them to be discussing home towns and SAT scores.

These incoming students will be registering for the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) today between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. This is the first time that new students will be separated from GSAS veterans, who will register in air-conditioned Lehman Hall.

The Registrar's office expects 3289 students in 49 departments to register today. Medical Science has the most graduate students, Forestry Science the fewest. About one-third of the students will find the much-dreaded red dot on their registration packets, indicating an unpaid bill, that common phenomenon of graduate student life.

Students who have paid their bills will receive an array of bureau cratic materials, including registration forms, study cards, identification cards and catalog supplements.

Students who have not complied with Harvard's immunization requirements will also receive a letter directing them to do so.

Latecomers will have to trek to the Registrar new 20 Garden St. location and pay a $50 fee. Study cards for GSAS students must be turned in by Friday, September 25.

This year's incoming class once again boasts the highest yield of any graduate school in the country, with 56 percent of those accepted choosing to attend. Sixty-one percent of the 601 first-years are male, 39 percent female.

The incoming class has the highest absolute number of minority students, at 81, in the history of GSAS, according to Drusilla Blackman, dean of GSAS admissions and financial aid.

Fifty-one of those are what the office calls "underrepresented" minority groups: Black, Chicano, Native American or Puerto Rican.