Review Applications

FIRST-YEAR SEMINAR APPLICATION FACULTY REVIEW
 

HOW TO REVIEW APPLICATIONS

Please contact us if you have any questions.
firstyearseminarprogram@fas.harvard.edu
Toni Trainor, Department Administrator: atrainor@fas.harvard.edu, 617-496‐3993
Nina Duncan, Program Coordinator: nlduncan@fas.harvard.edu, 617-495‐1523

How to Review and Rank Applications

We recommend that you use the browser, Firefox.
Some instructors have had difficulty using Google Chrome and Safari.

When the system opens for reviewing, click on the button above to enter the application system. You will be prompted to enter your HUID and PIN. Once the page opens, click on your seminar to begin the process of reviewing applications.

Accepting Additional Students

After the application period ends, we will post the list of seminars with open seats on our website and encourage first-year students to contact instructors for approval to enroll. Please let us know if you’d like us not to post your seminar on the list.
 

Adding Students and My.Harvard Registration

Please download your preliminary class list from our application site. Students on this preliminary list were already accepted by you and will be enrolled by the registrar's office and no further action by you or the student is required. We regret that we cannot keep track of the students who add or drop your seminar. Enrollment lists will be viewable in My.Harvard.

Please remember that students will not be able to enroll in your first-year seminar until you go online to give your approvalto their petitions in the My.Harvard.edu website. Please log into the Teaching Portal in My.Harvard Teaching/Advising Portal. Student petitions are with the courses listed at the bottom of the page. Please click here for instructions about the petitions process. Your official class list will be found here on the portal.

Course Registration Deadline

Adding any students to your seminar by email: instructors must "approve" a student's online petition from My.Harvard to allow them to enroll officially in a seminar.

About the Algorithm

Our matching algorithm is the creation of Alvin E. Roth, Nobel Laureate and George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration, Emeritus. He specializes in game theory and market models, and he created the matching algorithm for the Harvard College Housing Lottery (random match) and the New England Program for Kidney Exchange (paired match). His algorithm for the First-Year Seminar Program matches the student’s top choices in seminars against the instructor’s top offers in a random sequence to find the best mutually‐agreeable assignment for each applicant. We run the algorithm once each term and it matches students to seats until each applicant gets a seat or runs out of applications.