BEFORE AND AFTER

The relation between high marks in college and success in later life remains an interesting, and for lack of trustworthy evidence, a puzzling problem. It is complicated by the fact that such success is so various that it is impossible to lay down a universal standard by which men's relative attainments can be measured. Wealth, eminence in public affairs, social usefulness and historical fame are all legitimate objects of human endeavor, and none can be set above the rest or even expressed in terms of any other.

President Lowell's investigation into the records of students in the professional schools of Law and Medicine show an amazingly close correspondence between distinctions gained in college and those later attained in the professional schools. Professor Hollingsworth's recent book on "Vocational Psychology" summarizes some interesting data obtained by other investigators. One of these, Nicholson, took the records of 1,667 graduates of Wesleyan University and arranged them in three groups as follows: 140 men who were valedictorians or salutatorians of their classes, 461 men who were members of Phi Beta Kappa and the remaining 1,066 who had attained no distinctions. In later life those who gained sufficient prominence to have their names included in "Who's Who in America" were distributed among the classes in the following order: first group, 50; second group, 31; third group, 9. In order to show that the same rule holds true in industrial as well as intellectual activities, Dr. Rice conducted a similar investigation into the salaries of members of the Pratt Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering from four to six years after graduation. The average salary was found to vary in the same way as the grades given by the Institute. The men were divided into four groups based on their college marks, the average salary of those who had received the highest marks being $1,664 a year, that of the two middle groups $1,462 and $1,418, and of the lowest $1,279.

Professor Hollingsworth closes his chapter on the "Curriculum a Vocational Test" with the following significant remarks. "On the whole, then, all these studies point in a consistent direction; those who are destined to achieve distinction do so at an early age. Whether measured by achievement in academic courses, honors in professional and technical courses, salary earned after graduation, or inclusion among lists and directories of eminent men, success in later life is suggested by the early work of the school curriculum. In spite of frequent comments to the contrary, the school curriculum would seem to constitute a most useful test in prognosticating at least the most probable quality of the individual's later work."