CORRESPONDENCE.

TO THE EDITORS OF THE CRIMSON:-

THE recently proposed changes in the mid-year examinations are objectionable on many grounds. It seems to us that an examination lasting three hours is the most perfect test of the student's proficiency: any shorter time would give too much advantage to the merely rapid writer; and the necessarily smaller number of questions on each paper would make success more a matter of chance than it now is, and would obviously be a less fair and thorough test of a half-year's work. These faults appear in their most exaggerated form in one-hour examinations; and, if the proposed changes would make such examinations more prominent (as was suggested in an editorial article in the last Advocate, inserted, as we hear, without the assent of the majority of the board), we regard this fact not only as no recommendation, but as a great objection.

The purpose of this new plan is to shorten the period when recitations are suspended, a period devoted to special preparation for these semiannual examinations. At present this time is none too much for a thorough review of four months' work in half a dozen difficult courses, such as History 5 and Philosophy 2. It is evident that it will require just as much time to prepare for a one or two-hour as for a three-hour examination, because in each case the same amount of work must be reviewed with the same amount of carefulness. Hence it follows that, if the time of preparation be shortened, we shall either have to sit up all night while the examinations last, or else neglect our recitations for a fortnight beforehand.

Another object of the new plan is, to make room for two examinations on the same day. It is hardly necessary to picture the mental and physical exhaustion with which we should enter the examination-room for a second time, after having spent all the morning there.

We do not think that the mid-year examinations have "gained undue importance in determining our marks"; for, with voluntary recitations, no great prominence should be attached to marks for recitations, and, if we are marked chiefly by examinations, it is unfair to make our rank depend mainly on the annuals.

The number of students and electives have, for the present, practically attained their maximum, and, for some time to come, no great extension of the term of the semi-annuals need be feared.

P. & R.