Collegians' Baedeker

Choosing a college is like choosing a mate: it covers a lot of ground, it is tinged with sentiment and nobody knows exactly how it is done. Last week a professional old grad, Columbia University's Alumni Secretary Clarence E. Lovejoy, tried to reduce the guesswork in college-choosing by publishing a collegiate Baedeker titled So You're Going to College (Simon & Schuster; $2.50).

The U. S. has some 1,700 colleges (one per 74,000 inhabitants), from jerkwater Siwashes to some of the world's greatest universities. To separate the sheep from the goats, Mr. Lovejoy devised the "Lovejoy College Rating Guide." At the top he ranked the 289 institutions accredited by the Association of American Universities, below them listed 606 others, "some good, some mediocre, some not amounting to much." For each institution, Mr. Lovejoy supplied practical information: cost, endowment per student, size of the library, number of scholarships, proportion of self-supporting students, how many alumni in Who's Who.

Mr. Lovejoy believes that it is good for a student to work his way through college, points out as exemplars Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herbert Hoover, Nicholas Murray Butler, Paul V. McNutt, Dartmouth's President Ernest Martin Hopkins, U. S. Senator Claude Pepper, Minnesota's Governor Harold Stassen, Atlas Corp.'s Floyd B. Odium, Cinemactor Fredric March, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, Pollster George Gallup. Self-supporting U. S. college students (about half of all undergraduates), he reports, earn $32,500,000 a year, get some $90,000,000 a year in scholarships or loans. Most of his book is devoted to tips on how a poor boy can go to college. It also relates many another interesting fact. Samples:

> A boy may get a special scholarship at Harvard if his name is Murphy or Baxendale; if he was descended from Lady Ann Mowlson, Greek parents or certain gentlemen named Reed, Holyoke, Hudson, Borden, Anderson, Bright, Downer, Haven and Pennoyer; if he lives along the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R. R. in Iowa; or if he was once a newsboy. He may get a scholarship at Princeton or University of Pennsylvania if his father worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad, at Tulane if his grandfather fought in the Confederate Army, at Dartmouth if he is "a religious man from Missouri."

> More than 100,000 students in 160 colleges cut living expenses to 75-c- a day or less by living in co-op houses, developed since 1932.

> Many a student gets through college on less than $250 a year.

> Four out of five students attend coeducational colleges.

> Biggest libraries are those at Harvard (over 4,000,000 volumes), Yale, Columbia, University of Illinois.

> 243 colleges owe $77,000,000 in debts.

> Most Ph.D.s: Columbia.

> Most alumni in Who's Who: Harvard (1,409).

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