NEXT YEAR'S BRIGHT FRESHMEN

Too Good for Ordinary Colleges, Too Numerous for the Best

UNTIL lately, the favorite complaint of U.S. colleges was that high schools sent them immature and unscholarly freshmen. Now the tables are about to be turned. Ill-prepared for doubled enrollment in the 1960s, colleges also face a sharp rise in ability--the nation's better high schools are improving so fast that their top graduates are too good for ordinary colleges, and too numerous for the best ones to handle. The favored campuses in particular are hotly debating everything from admissions to curriculum, and a new shape for colleges seems to be in the making.

In sharp contrast to the many colleges that still keep students "in a state of perpetual puerility," says President Edward D. Eddy Jr. of Pittsburgh's Chatham College, are such citadels of learning as New Trier Township High School in Winnetka, Ill. There, he points out, students "may study four years of the Russian language. After two years, they can begin on Chinese, which is then taught in Russian." At Florida's Melbourne High School, one lad recently gave a sample, in a scholarship essay, of the levels that high school research can reach: "Subjection of the eyed river fish Astyanex Mexicanus to total darkness produces hyperplasia and reduction in the relative number of pituitary basophiles." Caltech's awed President Lee A. DuBridge reports that most of his 1952 freshmen "would have flunked dismally in competition with our freshmen of today--except, of course, if the freshman of ten years ago could have gone to the high school of today."

More of a Guy. Last week the impact was clear at the top Eastern colleges, which ended another admissions sweepstakes with the best winners ever. Reflecting better high school guidance, the colleges got fewer applicants than last year: 36,000 boys for 8,630 places in the eight-campus Ivy League; 9,800 girls for 2,800 places at the "Big Seven" women's colleges. By the same token, rejections were more heartbreaking than ever. Columbia and Radcliffe reported that 85%-90% of all applicants were perfectly qualified; there was simply no more room. Except for Columbia College, which aims to raise enrollment by 60% to 4,000, the top colleges are loath to expand.

What to do next is the great Ivy League headache. Should colleges that now skim the top i% of U.S. high school seniors go on to make it the top i%? Harvard's former Dean of Admissions Wilbur J. Bender recently warned that strictly academic standards, neglecting "passion, fire, warmth, goodness, feeling, color, humanity, eccentric individuality," may well produce "bloodless" Harvard students. Other admissions men are trying hard to discount test scores, which because they are so universally high are less useful for making distinctions. Now they assay "nonintellectual" (or nonrational) qualities, earnestly searching for "selflessness" or "sterling character" or signs that "he's more of a guy."

Eskimos & Ecology. To Frank Bowles, president of the College Entrance Examination Board, the only "logical" solution is even higher standards. To help prestige campuses, he recently suggested, the maximum College Board score of 800 might be raised to 1,200. Applicants might also be limited to those learned enough to enter as sophomores. Harvard's former President James B. Conant has suggested that Harvard-Yale-Princeton be reserved for preprofessional students headed for graduate school.

Yale moved a step in that direction last month when a faculty committee recommended junking the tender-care treatment for freshmen that was aimed at soothing first-year trauma, and urged early research opportunities for gifted students. To increase "learned men in our society," the faculty wants qualified students to earn M.A.s along with B.A.s at the end of four years. As it is, Yale abounds with enterprising young scholars. Not untypical is Senior Nicholas J. Gubser, 23, founder of the Anthropology Club, who recently spent a 15-month leave living with an Eskimo family in Arctic Alaska. Last week he finished a paper on "the intellectual ecology of the Nunamiut Eskimos." Dean of Admissions Arthur Howe Jr. does not think such scholarship comes at a cost to other interests, and calms blue Old Blues with word that "the present Yale football team would beat any Yale team of any previous generation."

Little Lost Soul. All this clearly leads to more specialization, upsetting those who cherish the values of general education--and four years of it in a liberal arts atmosphere. They see colleges becoming mere cram schools for graduate study, and at some prestige campuses, 90% of all B.A.s do go on studying (national rate: 33%). The generalists are also unhappy about speedup advanced-standing schemes in which students skip entire years. (They approve the extra-credit Advanced Placement Program.) At Harvard, Classicist John Finley argues that even ultrabrights need time to grow up. "A student can fly from the West Coast to Harvard in a few hours," says Finley, "but the soul is like a little dog that has to run all the way across the continent, and gets to Cambridge about a year and a half later."

Harvard has in fact been talking undergraduates out of acceleration, persuading them to stay a full four years (a tough job at $3,000 yearly costs), while taking graduate courses if they wish to. Columbia permits almost a year of graduate study credit within the four-year span. At the same time, Columbia is revamping its pioneering (1919) two-year general education program, Contemporary Civilization. The required sophomore part used to consist of smatterings from the works of 50 or so great thinkers; now it offers solid courses from anthropology to economics, a shrewd compromise between specialization and generalization.

Well-Rounded Colleges. None of this solves another complaint: the purported similarity of test-wise students at prestige colleges. Decrying the admissions system, one disgruntled professor asks: "How do you know that the well-organized adolescent will be the strong thinker of the future?" Similarly, Amherst's President Calvin Plimpton wants "a good mixture of city boys and country boys, rich boys and poor boys, bright boys and average boys, athletes and physically handicapped boys, Americans and foreigners, boys of all races, of all faiths and even no faith."

Echoing Plimpton's cry for melting-pot diversity, Williams' President John E. Sawyer last month got a Ford grant for a ten-year experiment of harboring academic risks. Up to 10% of Williams' freshmen will now be "individuals with a flair, a forte, a strength of character," but such poor grades that normally Williams might reject them. Going further, Dartmouth Mathematician John Kemeny favors "well-rounded colleges" that welcome halfbacks, musicians and millionaires, with "a small quota reserved for screwballs." And Harvard Psychologist David McClelland envisions a full-scale quota system--the 100 most scholarly boys, the 100 most curious, the 100 most ambitious, the 100 most imaginative or politically able "and so on down the line." Whether or not this would unearth a single Lincoln or Churchill--both obvious rejects at contemporary Harvard --such ideas are a healthy sign. Good colleges are in fact pondering all sorts of innovations: streamlined courses, more independent study, better teaching by men, machines and TV. The colleges are anticipating criticism, and if unlikely to escape it, they are still bound to produce as many welcome surprises as the high schools.

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