THE CONFIDENTIAL GUIDE

The publication of the Confidential Guide to Courses in pamphlet form is a new departure, which, it is believed, will greatly increase its utility to the class of 1938.

The principle of the Guide itself needs little justification at this late date. When first published in the regular columns of the CRIMSON in 1925, it caused widespread favorable comment, both in the daily press and in publications of other colleges. Prior to its appearance, the student's sources of information concerning his prospective courses were limited and haphazard. There was the bloodless and formal description in the catalogue which described the course but which in the nature of things could tell nothing of its practical soundness, of its enjoyability, or of the comparative capability of the instructor. And there was the vague body of opinion--a roommate's a roommate's friend's and so forth.

The editor's of the CRIMSON undertook to record as exactly as possible what this student opinion of each course was. The CRIMSON board itself represents a fairly large cross-section of undergraduates, but in every possible case additional of opinion on courses was optioned team other students, and the judgments in the Guide are a distillation of representative student opinion. As such, they have the limitations of any "representative" opinion. There are numbers of men, in and out of college, whose likes and dislikes do not conform to the general or representative judgement. There may, for example, be more than one man in each class who finds that French 2 is a thoroughly enjoyable course. The Guide can only say to the inquiring student that the great majority of men whom the editors of the CRIMSON have been able to reach find it exceedingly dull.

The Guide, then, is not an infallible pronouncement ex cathedra, but a guide merely. We believe it is a good one. Its practical value to the new man depends upon that man's confidence in the general student opinion. If the editors of the CRIMSON were not convinced that the overwhelming majority of men in choosing courses lean heavily upon the opinion of experienced follow students, however the opinion is obtained, the Confidential Guide would never have been published.

The student's decisions and the responsibility for his decisions must be entirely his own. The Guide offers no secret or magic formula to a happy choice of courses: it simply rationalizes and canalizes information which was always available but, so far as the individual's sources were concerned, was haphazard and unrepresentative. If the user of the Guide understands this principle, and the further one that his choice of courses must be conditioned by his own idiosyncrasies, we believe that the Guide will have more than justified its existence.