Is the Harvard FAS Website Official, and How Do You Contact the Right Office?

Yes. fas.harvard.edu is the official website of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), the academic division that houses Harvard College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the Division of Continuing Education. Because it is the institution's own publishing channel, the information there is authoritative for FAS programs, departments, and administrative policies. The practical question is usually not whether to trust it but how to navigate it to the right office — and that depends on what you need.

Why the site counts as an official source

The site is maintained by FAS itself, not a third party, so it reflects the division's own descriptions of its structure and offerings. That matters in three ways:

• Program and department information originates from the units that run them, rather than from an aggregator.
• Administrative and policy pages are published by the offices responsible for those policies.
• Updates happen when the responsible office changes them, so pages can differ in how recently they were revised.

One caveat worth internalizing: "official" does not mean "uniformly current." A department's research page, a dean's office policy page, and a student-services page are all official, but they are updated on different schedules by different teams. For anything time-sensitive — deadlines, eligibility, fees, required forms — treat the specific office's page as the starting point and confirm directly with that office before acting.

Finding the right department or program

FAS is large, and the fastest route is usually the academic structure rather than site search.

1. Start from the FAS homepage and look for the listing of departments, programs, and academic units.
2. Identify whether your question belongs to a department (a discipline, its faculty, and its courses), a program (an interdisciplinary or degree-granting unit), or a school within FAS (Harvard College, GSAS, SEAS, or Continuing Education).
3. Open that unit's own page. Department and program pages carry their own contact details, faculty listings, and advising information.

If you are unsure which unit owns a topic, the school-level page (for example, Harvard College for undergraduate matters or GSAS for graduate matters) is the better entry point than a specific department.

Contacting an administrative office

Administrative questions — registration, transcripts, financial matters, leaves, research administration — are handled by offices, not departments. To reach the right one:

• Use the site's directory or office listings to locate the office by function rather than by name.
• Prefer the contact method the office publishes for that specific purpose; many offices separate general inquiries from time-sensitive or document-related requests.
• Include enough context in your first message: your affiliation (prospective student, current student, faculty, staff, alum, or external), the program involved, and a clear statement of what you need.

If a page lists both a general address and a named contact for a process, use the named contact for that process.

Support services and further help

Beyond academic departments and central administration, FAS sites point to support services such as advising, libraries, and student support offices. These are typically reached through the school-level pages rather than through a department.

When you cannot identify the right office:

• Check whether the topic is handled at the FAS level or the wider Harvard University level — some services sit outside FAS.
• Use the site's search or A–Z listings if available, and search by the service (for example, "advising" or "registrar") rather than by an individual's name.
• If you reach an office that does not own the question, ask for a referral; staff at one office usually know which unit handles adjacent matters.

A quick way to decide where to start

The site is a reliable map of FAS, but it is a map with many authors. Use it to identify the unit that owns your question, then confirm details with that unit directly — especially for anything with a deadline or a formal requirement.