THE LAW OF AVERAGES

With the appearance of the Senior Album and its individual Senior biographies, the collective characteristics and statistical pecularities of another Harvard graduating class are brought to light. The industrious compiler, in avid pursuit of the facts about his fellow students' existence, discovers what professions the members of the present graduating class intend to enter, how old they are, where they were born, and certain unusual conditions of their present lives. In other words he lays before us facts which differentiate this class from all others, and which should point out important tendencies of the present generation of college graduates.

What then do statistics show with regard to the class of 1927. Perhaps the most striking fact is the number of very youthful students who are about to complete their college careers. A full score of them have not yet reached their twentieth birthday while more than a hundred others are as yet shy of the formal attainment of manhood. It is also revealed that five percent of the class are of foreign birth, and that the University draws a greater number of foreign students from Poland than any other country.

Whether it be a statistican, a student, or an outsider who glances through the personal records of the class of 1927, his most lasting impression, however, will inevitably be of the close approximation which his class makes to the ordinary conception of what a present day graduating class would normally be. It may be interesting, even unusual, to have one Senior going into professional stamp collecting, 15 into the army, and only two into agriculture, but the vast majority of the class are following expected tracks into business, law, and medicine, while a thoroughly normal 200 remain undecided. Although an extraordinary number of Seniors are still of a very tender age, the bulk of the class have passed their twenty-first and are waiting for their twenty-third birthday. Thirteen are married--a number which, though connotative to the minds of the superstitious, is far from surprisingly large. Lastly some 36 members of the class were born in foreign lands. The number seems large and the array of countries represented is imposing, but, on the other hand, half the class comes from Massachusetts and the greater part of these from Boston and its immediate vicinity.