THE QUALIFYING ROUND

Beginning next fall, the Columbia University Law School has announced that its rules governing admission will be so administered as to limit admission to a carefully selected group of men who are fully qualified to comply with the standards of the school. Two reasons are advanced by the Law Faculty for the important change in educational policy, first, the increase in number of law students, and second, the ineffectiveness of the present admission requirements which have not proved wholly effective in excluding men not suited to the type of work done in the better schools.

It appears that the Columbia Law Faculty has been studying this problem since 1921 and believes that it has discovered a means of detecting in advance men who are incapable of complying with required standards. Experiment by means of a "capacity test" has consistently revealed that over ninety percent of the men who scored below a certain grade did poor work in law school. Consequently it is felt that the "capacity test" is a reliable means of presaging a man's capability for law school work and-it will go into effect at Columbia next fall.

Both at Harvard and Columbia large numbers of men with college degrees are excluded annually at the end of the first year because of unsatisfactory work. To permit these men to waste a year of their lives is not only unfortunate for them but their presence in the school seriously interferes with the work of the more capable students. If the "capacity test" can reduce the enormous percentage of failures at Columbia it will have solved a major problem of the leading law schools. Besides, the providing of better educational opportunities for the good men is an outstanding movement in academic institutions throughout the country. The "capacity test" of the Columbia Law School, in this respect, is just an extension of the "psychological test" administered by Columbia University to entrants and the "scholastic aptitude test", a regular part of undergraduate entrance machinery at Princeton and Yale, but employed only perfunctorily at Harvard. For many the advisibility of the "capacity test" will, however, have to be proven. At present it may be pointed out that, although its advantages are evident, time alone will prove its efficiacy in weeding out the undesired element.