THE ULTIMATE GOAL

In today's issue of the CRIMSON will be found the fifth annual fall confidential guide to undergraduate courses. It necessarily leaves much to be desired in the line of appreciative criticism. But that it is a help to bewildered Freshmen in choosing their schedules is a fact so generally recognized that the CRIMSON feels thoroughly justified in practing it despite its shortcomings and injustices. The history of the guide leaves but little doubt that in the field of instruction the student is more inclined to accept the judgement of his confreres than of his elders.

It is therefore with a feeling of optimism that a bit of advice which might sound trite and worthless if coming from an advisor may be offered to the incoming class by some of its more experienced undergraduate colleagues.

All to often does the Harvard student realize too late the full importance of his Freshman record on the ultimate complexion of his college career. The truth of this statement will bcome more and more apparent to the student as he progresses through the various stages of his assimilation to the Harvard educational methods. The system of divisional examinations with its unlimited opportunities for individual effort and interest is not as a rule appreciated until the Junior or even the Senior year. And then it is often found that the student lacks the prerequisite requirements for the attainmnt of his newly appointed goal, which is more and more taking the shape of the honors degree.

This must necessarily appear more or less vague to the Freshman who is being introduced to the parlance as well as the substance of what is known, and properly so, as Harvard's educational system. He owes it to himself as well as to the college and the success of the present progressive regime, to find out as much as he can from the very start about the course of four years, rather than the course of one.