CHANGE IN ADMISSION REQUIREMENTS.

In recognition of the fact that the requirements for admission to Yale College and Sheffield Scientific School put a premium on special training and cramming, a joint committee of the two undergraduate faculties has recommended drastic modification of the present system. This is another phase of that movement that began here at Harvard to bring the college into closer relations with preparatory and public schools throughout the country and to set the entrance examinations so that a general knowledge of certain broad fields of study would suffice to pass them. The successful working of the new plan at Harvard was shown the other day when President Lowell's report stated that four-fifths of the men admitted under the new plan were from public schools from all parts of the country. Yale's move in this direction comes as a result of the demands of secondary schools and is the frank admission that a college, if it is to be national, must maintain an elastic and general system of entrance requirements.

The elasticity sought in the new Yale plan is to be secured by three innovations. First, examinations are to be fewer in number and more general, while strength in one subject will offset weakness in another; second, the school record of a candidate will be received and allowed a certain amount of consideration; and thirdly, in cases of unusual ability, the recommendation of a school principal will count for those candidates whose subjects of study may have differed from those prescribed for admission. It is to be noted that those changes secure essentially the same advantages as have been introduced under Harvard's now plan. Examinations are to be fewer in number and more general, while work done in preparatory school will be a factor in determining the candidate's qualifications for admission. That two of the great colleges in the country have widened their requirements and made them applicable to all preparatory schools is a much desired change in the relations of higher to secondary education, and means that the higher institutions of learning are striving to be national.