It Takes Good Nerves

THE RACE TO COLLEGE In Manhattan last week a purposeful child was asked where he is going to school next year. At once he replied:

"Boarding school and Harvard.'' The boy is four years old, and already papa has him concerned about college. At 17 he may well become what one educator calls the U.S. high school senior--"A bundle of nerves in a rat race." Never before have so many Americans coveted the 700-year-old Artium Bacca-laureus--and never before has the competition been stiffer.

By all the evidence, Americans will soon consider at least two years of college a socioeconomic necessity. As if this pressure were not enough, war babies are now beating at the college gates. This June the nation's high schools will graduate 1,803,000 students. In 1964, according to the U.S. Office of Education, the crop will billow to 2,309,000. The prediction: by 1970, college enrollment will nearly double to roughly 6,400,000, and it may go as high as 9,000,000.

From Berkeley to Cambridge, the wartime baby boom has already hit the country's 100 big-name colleges, and especially those in the East. Last week, as the annual waiting season began, Princeton reported a 20% rise in applications for next fall, "the greatest single jump we've ever had in a year." Yale will cull 1,000 freshmen from 4,800 fee-paid applications, 500 more than last year. Harvard has 5,000 final applicants, a record boost of 900 over last year. Yet freshman classes remain the same size. Harvard will actually try to cut its next class by 50 to 1,150. Says Princeton's President Robert F. Goheen: "Our first concern is to do well with our current number of students. After we've provided for them, we'll think about increasing our enrollment."

NO PAYOLA

To Harvard's Dean of Admissions Wilbur J. Bender, the hold-down headache is "grim, grimmer, grimmest." But he says it with a certain smile. In the past five years, Ivy League colleges have been able to raise their admission standards 50%. Reason: brighter and brighter applicants. Last year two-thirds of Princeton's applicants were deemed perfectly capable of Princeton work. But only one-third could be admitted, and Princeton skimmed the richest cream. Says Director of Admission C. William Edwards: "The bottom one-third of the applicants of ten years ago wouldn't even bother to apply now."

In the process, old Ivy mores have vanished. Harvard still gives early consideration to seniors at 100 top secondary schools, but admission is something else. Not long ago, Andover sent 75% of its boys to Harvard, Yale and Princeton; last year it squeezed in only 43%, and sent the rest to 44 other colleges across the land. Yet Andover offers its brightest students a wider range of college-equivalent courses under the Advanced Placement program.

Equally out of date is the fervent wirepulling that once plagued Ivy admissions men. Princeton's Director Edwards turned down one father's offer of a $500,000 geology building, along with his son. Not even a proffered letter from the President of the U.S. on behalf of one applicant moved M.I.T.'s Director of Admissions B. Alden Thresher ("The thicker the folder, the thicker the student"). He insisted on a letter from a math teacher instead. And the point has sunk in. Says Amherst's Dean of Admission Eugene S. Wilson: "I haven't had any payola offered to me in years--not even a chocolate bar."

In the circumstances, real planning (and saving) for college is essential. Gone are the days when an Ivy League dean could mutter: "If the check is good and the body is warm, he's in." By a process that Yale's President A. Whitney Griswold calls "Calvinistic," today's aspiring freshman is weighed and tested for academic content, percentiled for promise by electronic gadgets, and harried by word that average admission standards will soon rise by one full year. Much worse, his cost for four years at a residential college may soon double to the price of a couple of deluxe Cadillacs--$16,000 or more. Little wonder that in his panic to get into college--and in his wild search for a scholarship--his mind boggles. Result: 60% of those who do become freshmen drop out of college. They choose the wrong school--for them--and have to start over again elsewhere. The cost to everyone is incalculable.

When should college planning begin? Parents may ponder the answer of M.I.T.'s Director Thresher: "At approximately the age of one year." Thresher warns parents who set impossible goals: "There is no surer prescription for failure in college." He means only that a child's innate curiosity should be nurtured sanely from the start. If he grows up wanting to learn, "he does not have to be 'entered' in a college. He enters himself."

GET DEDICATED

Today, formal college preparation should begin by twelve at the latest. If a child has an IQ below 110, his parents may wish to take him out of the race (90% of college students have higher IQs). But a college-capable child, most educators agree, should begin focusing on his goal in the eighth grade. This is none too soon to visit campuses, and none too soon for an instructive glance at application blanks. Typical question: "If you have not studied all of these subjects, how and when are you planning to make up deficiencies?"

No makeup is needed if an eighth-grader starts at once on the "solids" (English, history, math, science, foreign language), and especially on English composition. English is the key to college work; by 1970 an estimated one-fourth of applicants may be rejected because they get so little of it. This is why the most important college board exam today is the verbal aptitude test (scored from 200 to 800). Falling much below 500 is bad news--"infant damnation," cracks one educator.

If there is any sure formula for college preparation, suggests President Frank Bowles of the College Entrance Examination Board, it is four years of English, three of math and a foreign language, two of science and history--and good grades. This agenda is impossible in many U.S. schools. Even so, there is no reason for panic. Admissions men give as much weight to motivation ("force, direction, character") as to solid achievement. Says Amherst's Dean Wilson: "Stop worrying about whether you can get into this college or that, and start showing the kind of dedication to learning that will make colleges want you."

IMPROVE OR PERISH

The fact is that there is still room at many inns--at least until 1964. No one should assume that there will be no room after that. New dormitories are rising, new forms of education are on the way. Actually, the country's 1,900 colleges and universities had room last fall for perhaps 10% more freshmen than the 820,000 they took. What the Ivy League pile-up means is that there are simply not enough big-name colleges to go around--for those who seek big-name colleges. To colleges just below the big-name level, this fact brings joy. They get the good students that favored campuses cannot handle, and so raise their standards. In turn, lesser colleges must improve or perish. None of this is likely to hurt U.S. higher education--or students who really want some.

"You can educate yourself almost anywhere," says M.I.T.'s Director Thresher. As Poet Robert Frost once put it: "College is mainly a second chance to read the books you should have read in high school." But good teachers help, and quality colleges get them.

What is a quality college? One that selects quality students. The method may be that of Harvard, which picks so carefully that it has only a 2% to 3% freshman drop-out rate, and graduates 75%-80% of its students. It may be that of a "lenient" state school, which is obliged by law to accept poor students and then flunks 50% of them in June (a tragedy to those who thought that easy-in meant staying-in). Examples: highly competitive Columbia had a 1%-2% freshman drop-out rate last year, graduated at least 75% of its students; the University of Georgia accepted any high-school graduate in the top half of his class, dropped 35% of its freshmen. Whatever the method, highly select colleges span the nation--at least 50 are close to par with the 100 big-name schools, and more are moving up every year.

Choosing the right one goes beyond making sure that a department is topnotch, and that the school's diploma is welcome in graduate school. At today's prices, the best college is bad if a freshman feels miserable and drops out. Every prospective campus should be visited, even if it takes a cross-country plane trip. Are the professors alive and well paid? Are the students beer drinkers or book readers? Is the intellectual climate exciting? No college catalogue answers these questions.

Actually, choosing a college is as educational as anything a high school student is likely to undergo. To make the right decision, he has to analyze his own abilities, temperament and aims. He has to find a campus that makes him feel at home, socially as well as academically.

There is the case of a bright small-town boy, son of a construction foreman in northern Wisconsin. He has straight A's in math and science, B's in English, and he wants to be an electrical engineer. The state university fits his pocketbook, but his dream is M.I.T. He should try M.I.T. (though his only-average college board score in English is a hazard), and he should also try Wisconsin's Ripon College (enrollment: 600). He may feel happier at Ripon because it is smaller and less expensive. And it is one of the 17 colleges currently in M.I.T.'s "two-degree plan." After three years at Ripon, he can go on to M.I.T. for two years, emerge with a B.A. from Ripon and a B.S. from M.I.T.--an impressive record.

LOOK HARD, TRAVEL FAR

Or there is the case of a pretty, sophisticated girl in suburban Scarsdale, N.Y., whose adman father ($30,000 a year) can afford to send her anywhere. He already has--to Britain, France, Italy--but she has never been west of Ohio. She writes well and hopes to be a magazine editor, but her math and science marks hover at C. Against stiff competition, she might barely get into an Eastern woman's college. But why not Northwestern, California's Mills College, or even the University of Hawaii? For her, each would offer much.

By his junior high school year, a student should have picked three colleges. If all are equally tough to enter, disaster is possible. One prospect should be tough, one medium, one a shoo-in--and all worth the price. The odds are still unpredictable. Objective as they try to be, admissions men are still partly subjective. One may like redheaded girls, another tall boys from Texas. Many will gamble on a youngster with poor marks but some special flair that can liven a college. But willingness to look hard, and travel far, usually pays off in acceptance by at least one college of the student's choice.

No one in search of quality need regard as second choice such vigorous institutions as Antioch, Carleton, Grinnell, Hamilton, Haverford, Kenyon, Mills, Oberlin, Reed, and California's Oxford-inspired Associated Colleges (Claremont Men's, Harvey Mudd, Pomona, Scripps). All are tough to get into, and worth it. The California group's freshmen come almost entirely from the top 5% of their high school graduating classes. Pennsylvania's Haverford has long been a sort of pocket Harvard, has an impressive faculty-student ratio of 1 to 7. Iowa's Grinnell is known as "the Harvard of the Midwest," and Oregon's Reed boasts one Rhodes scholarship for every 70 male graduates--the highest percentage in the nation.

Dozens of lesser-known names are just as worthy of investigation. North Carolina's Davidson College has twelve Rhodes scholarships to its credit, and plenty of new money (TIME, Dec. 21). Ohio's Marietta ranks eleventh (with Antioch) in the U.S. in production of prominent men scientists. Ohio's College of Wooster produced the famed scientist brothers Compton (Wilson, Karl, Arthur). And Lawrence College in northern Wisconsin is a hatchery of university presidents. One former teacher, Victor L. Butterfield, heads Connecticut's topnotch Wesleyan. One former president, Henry M. Wriston, later took over Brown. A successor, Nathan M. Pusey, went on to Harvard.

Good schools come in all sizes. Occidental College (1,400 students), a tranquil oasis in hurly-burly Los Angeles, grabbed two of the Southwest's four Rhodes scholarships last year. One of the country's best creative-writing departments, headed by Novelist Walter Van Tilburg Clark (The Oxbow Incident), is run by giant (11,000 students) San Francisco State College. And what about Virginia's tiny (400 men) Hampden-Sydney College? It tops all U.S. colleges in percentage of graduates with doctorates in physics, and is tenth in percentage of graduates listed in Who's Who.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES

Few schools of such caliber are really hungry for freshmen--but they do want more good ones. "We can always make room for the gifted student," says President Frederick Bolman Jr. of Pennsylvania's Franklin and Marshall College. The problem is the country's severe scholarship shortage (available: only $100 million for 690,000 needy students). And rich schools have the cash. President Fred 0. Pinkham of Wisconsin's Ripon College says bitterly: "We have lost any number of good students after offering them $800 scholarships. Harvard and Yale offered $2,500--they just bought 'em up."

If this means students who do no more than demolish aptitude tests, Harvard is not certain that it "bought" the right commodity. "Skill in taking such tests may be emerging as a national attribute," complained a Harvard faculty committee on college admission policy last week. The scores rise year by year: Harvard's current freshman class's median score was 691 on the math aptitude test, almost 100 points higher than the class of 1956. But real "intellectual promise" may be something else, suggested the committee. And all the emphasis on numbers has an ominous effect: "Who can say how many gifted youngsters are frightened away from Harvard?"

Each year 150,000 able students are frightened away from higher education, mostly for lack of money. But opportunity for them is emerging, notably through an extraordinary proliferation of public community colleges (total U.S. enrollment: 900,000). California leads the way with 63 such institutions (400,000 students). They provide both a terminal course for technicians, and a two-year course for academic students who can transfer to the state's highly selective university system. This pattern is emerging across the country, taking the heat off state universities, which stand to enroll 65% of all college students by 1970. It is bound to improve many big schools, even in the face of soaring enrollment.

A GOAL TO WORK TOWARD

One glittering example of how the universities may develop is Michigan State's remarkable new liberal arts branch at Oakland (TIME, Sept. 28). Completely reversing the "tech and ag" image of its parent institution, Oakland is an avowedly intellectual school limited to such rigorous matters as rhetoric, Russian, philosophy of science. Last month Oakland's first 570 freshmen got the shock of their lives: 43% flunked in chemistry, calculus and economics. Nothing like this ever happened at old M.S.U. Says 18-year-old Mike Deller: "It's rough, really rough. But I'm glad. Some day it's going to mean something to say you graduated from here."

For thousands of other youngsters, this is precisely the goal to work toward. College should mean much, and one that does can be found. What it takes is early preparation, steady saving, wise choosing, and resolution not to be stampeded in the rat race.

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