Poll Finds Gen. Ed. Ahf Rates Divided Opinions

One third of last year's freshman class was seriously dissatisfied with General Education Ahf, a survey of student, opinion made by Samuel A. Stouffer, Director of the Laboratory of Social Relations, reveals.

But the study shows that, in general, Harvard and Radcliffe students have not found duplication of work done previously in secondary school and major source of annoyance.

Only Academic

The study was limited to problems of academic transition and did not explore social and emotional adjustment, which, students report, is more difficult in many cases than academic adjustment. A representative samples of 203 seniors and 214 sophomores filled out the questionnaires.

A surprising result of the survey was the apparent superiority shown by Andover and Exeter in their preparation of students for college over other prep schools, most of which did little better than high schools.

Only ten percent of Andover and Exeter graduates regarded at least one of the following three problems as serious change in the length and spacing of assignments, change in the quality of work expected, and difficulties involved in knowing what and how to study. But 33 percent of those coming from other prep schools and 46 percent of high school students questioned had trouble.

Duplications Net Serious

The main purpose of the survey was to discover if duplication was a serious problem. Only Andover and Exeter students found major duplication, with 17 percent of them reporting "serious annoyance." Only four percent of other prep school students were annoyed by duplication, while a mere two percent of high schools students reported annoyance.

Although so few students considered duplication a "serious annoyance," many have had particular courses which they think unnecessarily repeat prep or high school work. Forty percent of the seniors and 54 percent of the sophomore questioned named at least one such course.

The reason for the higher percentage of sophomore's was last year's institution of General Education Ahf, which drew strong complaints from one-third of the class. English A, the composition course offered before the start of Gen. Ed. Ahf, was not criticized nearly as much by seniors.

French Criticized

Next on the complaint list were the intermediate French courses, especially French C, which accounted, for one fourth of all criticisms. Other courses were far down the list--the next most frequently mentioned being Mathematics C with 4 percent and Natural Science 3 and History 61 with 3 percent each.

Andover and Exeter still led the survey in the number of single instances of duplication, with 68 percent complaining.