Harvard Takes A Gamble And, as Usual, Wins Big

About one hundred undergraduates now at Harvard are the winners in a nation-wide talent search, but not one of them knows it.

Representing one of the largest collective risks ever taken by the College's admissions office, they are recipients of so-called "gamble-fund" scholarships--grants that since 1957 have brought at least 200 high school seniors with rock-bottom College Board scores and difficult back-grounds to Harvard. The students have come from urban slums, un-accredited Southern high schools, and migrant camps. Their parents, most likely, never finished high school and may have openly discouraged their going to any college, much less Harvard.

Only a few members of the admissions department know who are actually receiving grants from the gamble-fund. The students are told they have normal scholarships from Harvard. "Obviously you don't write a boy and say 'Congratulations, you're a terrible risk,'" explains Peter Briggs '54, director of Freshman Scholarships.

In 1966, this type of program is becoming almost standard for many of the nation's better colleges. But eight years ago, almost no systematic attempt was being made to reach these kinds of students. It was then that Harvard approached the head of an Eastern foundation who was personally interested in helping disadvantaged students. Harvard had a plan in mind, but had to be tactful in approaching the prospective donor, Briggs recalls.

The man agreed to contribute $50,000 personally for a limited time. He believed other sources of funds could be easily secured once it was proves the students he wanted to bring to Harvard could survive.

He was right. "There are now at least twice as many members of the freshman class who are eligible for this program as are on the actual gamble-fund list," says Briggs. In fact, the original donor has been gradually reducing payments and by 1970 will stop them altogether.

When he provided the original funds, the donor had a specific idea in mind. "He wanted to see if we could discover some quality that all these boys possessed, say at age ten, and thus be able to predict greatness from boys in Harlem at that age," Briggs explains. Only one consistent quality, difficult to predict, was found. "At some point in their boyhoods," says Briggs, "some thoughtful, sensitive adult came in contact with these boys and made a deep impression on them. In some cases, it was a neighbor, in others a priest, or perhaps a YMCA leader."

But picking the gamble-fund students at age 17, as the Harvard admissions committee has had to do, isn't a good deal easier than picking them at age ten. One student out of the first group--20 member of the Class of '61--had grown up in California's Imperial Valley, where his father made $4500 a year icing railroad cars. His mother, a Mexican, spoke little English, and neither parent wanted their son to go to college. The student's Scholastic Aptitude Test verbal score was 415, and his math score was 452. The college guide books caution that scores this low often indicate a serious inability to cope with college work. Yet the boy was first in his class, student body president, and a debater.

The same inconsistency appeared in the record of Negro youth from an unaccredited, segregated Mississippi high school. He was student body president and near the top of his class even while working nightly as a janitor in an office building. Yet his SAT scores scraped the 400 mark, and his father, a $4000 a year laborer, cared little whether his son went to college or not.

Finding students like these two wasn't easy. Naturally, a few promising risks would apply to Harvard on their own. But the admissions department realized that unless a more concerted search were made, most prospective gamble-fund students would be missed. Therefore, alumni were informed of the project and urged to contact as many high schools as possible. Also, certain national organizations such as the Association of American Indian Affairs, the Boys Club of New York, and the Guidance Laboratory of the University of Wisconsin helped in the talent hunt.

The fund couldn't expect high school counselors to be of much help, however. In a low-income school, counselors may have little time for anyone but the few wealthy students who must pick their college and the several poor students who must some-how be kept out of trouble. A poor student who gets good grades and causes no trouble tends to be ignored. Yet, this is only one of many obstacles; another crucial problem is the complete lack of parental encouragement.

"We'd put an application in a boy's hand, but when he got home his father would rip it up and tell him he'd had a nightmare," explains Fred L. Glimp '50, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aids.

Another obstacle is the culture shock that some feel coming to Harvard from homes like the Imperial Valley. To counter this, ten per cent of the fund is spent putting some students through a New England prep school for a year before they begin college. One student liked the small town atmosphere so much that be turned down Harvard and arranged a scholarship for himself to Amherst.

Despite all these handicaps, the students are found and they come--most of them, anyway--to Harvard. Though their grade average here has lagged behind the overall class average, it has been far ahead of what it was predicted to be. The gamble fund students have become student government leaders, HSA executives, debate officers, leading drama figures, and varsity and House athletes. One of them became a Rhodes scholar.

Despite the expense--and the huge initial risk--the Harvard community may have benefited from the gamble-fund as much as the individual students. First, the experiment has focused attention on aid to the student, particularly scholarship students. "Because of programs like this," Briggs says, "Harvard facilities have become geared to help people." He notes that counseling services have especially improved. As a partial result, the percentage of all scholarship students who stay for four years has increased.

Second, the gamble-fund students may have subtly helped alter the whole atmosphere of Harvard admissions. "There was some question several years ago," says Dean Glimp, "whether Harvard was going to become just a 700 SAT score college. But a program like this makes a virtue of weak credentials you can understand on other grounds."

Long before the gamble fund, colleges occasionally found and admitted a student with no money and dubious credentials. But according to Glimp, "what Harvard did officially helped to solidify what other colleges were doing already."

Twenty years ago Harvard brought a "risk" from a small farm in the Midwest. Today he is a well-known Ivy League professor, and if Briggs, Glimp, and the gamble fund's donor have their way, college faculties in the next two decades will be full of the same kinds of risks