Graduate Study Outlook

The recent demise of Geography as a going concern was explained away briefly with the statement that "Harvard cannot hope to have a strong department in everything." Although this excuse hardly justifies the virtual liquidation of Geography, it is an uncontested fact that no university is "strong in everything," and no one knows this better than the prospective graduate student. He has tried to find it out the hard way, however, by thumbing through piles of catalogues--many of them outdated and otherwise far from adequate-- by pounding out reams of letters to various universities, and Ly depending too heavily on the personal preferences of his local instructors.

This paperkrieg is for the most part unnecessary. An aspiring grad student should not have to fight a wearing and isolated battle for mere information. He should have some simple means at hand with which to pick out a few schools that stress his particular field. A senior at California, for instance, might easily waste valuable time discovering that Harvard was no place to go for graduate training in Geography, or some other "weak" area. But from a booklet compilation containing a factual comparison of the scope of graduate programs offered by universities all over the country in a specific field, he could quickly narrow his search to two or three schools, if not choose outright. The information--not evaluation--could be gathered by such organizations as the Rockefeller Foundation or the American Association of University Professors.