A STEP FORWARD

The vote of the University Faculty modifying the college entrance requirements is another progressive step in education. The futility of the attempt to judge intellectual capacity by the conventional form of written examination has been recognized for some time and has resulted, first, in the establishment of the "New Plan," and now in its extension.

Ordinary entrance examinations have been particularly inadequate in the East, because many preparatory schools have paid more attention to "getting pupils by" in their examinations than to preparing them for college in the broader sense. The result of this has been that it is common for a student to be admitted who has no power to apply his mind in independent thought.

Worse than the result of the examination system in the East has been its effect on Harvard in the West, where it has prevented many able scholars from entering the College, Rather than risk the outcome of examinations for which he has had no special training the student has given up the idea of college or turned to some institution where entrance is "by certificate." This has resulted to a certain extent in limiting the personnel of the College to Easterners and only those men from the West who have sufficient wealth to permit of boarding school education. This has deprived the College of an important and very desirable representation.

The new requirements will mend this condition somewhat, but a system which is an adequate judge of intellect, rather than of specialized cramming, has not been devised, in spite of experiments such as Harvard's "New Plan" and Columbia's "Psychological Examinations." These groupings, however, show that there is a greater realization of the need for new education standards. This realization is certain to bring more important results in the next few years.