FOREIGN SERVICE HAS RIGID REQUIREMENTS

America's Foreign Service was called an "uncomfortable service in an uncomfortable world" by G. Howland Shaw '15, its chief of personnel, at a crowded meeting in the Eliot House Junior Common Room last night.

Shaw, who annually rejects over 90 per cent of the applicants for the service, accepting about 30 after rigorous tests, told of the work of the junior diplomats at a meeting sponsored by the Council of Government Concentrators.

Adaptability, intellectual curiosity and maturity, stamina, and an effective personality, are the most important qualities in the service, he said, along with a "comprehensive Americanism."

Average Around B

According to State Department figures, most of the men who enter the service are between the ages of 22 and 27, their average college record is around B, and many of them specialized in modern history or economics. The Department, however, does not require any specific preparation for the service, not even a college degree.

Harvard has made a poor showing in the latest Foreign Service examinations, Shaw said. Last September out of 32 men who took the tests only 11 got the 70 per cent mark necessary to win an oral interview, and only one was finally accepted. Seven were taken in the 1938 competition, he added. Yale and Princeton have both outstripped Harvard recently, with Dartmouth and Williams well up in the running.