A Rolling Stone . . .

"Running hard to stand still" is President Conant's description of the current admissions program. For the past two years, the College and its more active alumni have been trying to keep pace with other Ivy League members in the race for exceptional students--a race where two years ago the over-confident Harvard was running a poor fourth. This weekend one hundred and thirty Schools Committees and Scholarships Committees representatives are meeting for the second time to consider ways of running a little harder.

Many of the schools committees--formed by Harvard clubs all across the nation to scout out highly-qualified students, interview them, and persuade them to enroll here--date back to the thirties, but until two years ago most of them existed on paper only. Because of this, the College lost many scholars, "scholar athletes," and "scholar-leaders" to the more active Ivy League colleges like Princeton and Yale.

Probably as a result of two disastrous football seasons, many alumni in 1949 became far more active participants in the admissions program than they ever had been before. At least fifty Harvard clubs have set up new schools committees since then, and many existing committees have been revitalized. The alumni's healthy recognition of the existence of heavy competition has developed into the increased aggressiveness that the College needs to keep up with its rivals. Particularly gratifying is the fact that this program has not degenerated into a mere scramble for athletes.

For, while the football problem was what originally aroused most of the alumni, it is essentially a short-run issue; it should not be considered as anything more vital than that. The most important problem is the long-range one of staving off the inroads made by other Ivy League colleges on the yearly number of Harvard applicants. The Admissions Office can no longer assume that a Harvard application blank is enough to attract outstanding school boys.

Solving this long-range problem will undoubtedly solve the football issue as well; Princeton will illustrate this afternoon what a well-run schools committee system can achieve in this field.

Although the Schools and Scholarships Committees have done much since 1949, they have yet to approach the ideal of a student body combining academic excellence, outstanding ability in specialized fields, and the widest possible geographical distribution. As far back as 1946, Provost Paul Buck said "what is not obvious... is the paucity of applicants of the type we desire." Unfortunately, this still holds true. Moreover, the number of applicants per space to be filled is still far lower than at either Princeton or Dartmouth.

The Schools Committees cannot be expected to show dramatic results immediately; Princeton has just begun to reap the benefits of its committees system, and it had a head start of several years. But so long as the Harvard alumni avoid bogging down in the football problem, they and the Admissions Office will not be standing still for long.