How to Get into College

Every high school principal likes to see his graduates go on to college, but a lot of people in New Haven think that Hillhouse High School Principal Robert T. LeVine, 57 -or someone in his office -carried that laudable ambition to excess. In December 1963, Yale University's Admissions Dean Arthur Howe complained that many Hillhouse applications to Yale showed higher grades than those the students actually got. In plain words, somebody seemed to be doctoring the marks to get marginal students into college.

The school board suspended LeVine, contending that the handling of the transcripts might constitute "gross incompetence," and ordered investigators to make an exhaustive comparison of college application transcripts and marks received by Hillhouse seniors from 1959 to 1964. LeVine, who began teaching at Hillhouse 34 years ago and became principal in 1951, demanded a public hearing and got it.

For two weeks New Haven parents jammed the meeting to hear the testimony. Arthur Howe told of his longtime "uneasiness" about Hillhouse transcripts. Smith College President Thomas C. Mendenhall II said that some Hillhouse grads had not measured up to their transcripts. There were "discrepancies in individuals' records, where girls might have outstanding high school grades and have wretched test scores" at Smith. Said he: "It's rather an unusual marking system."

Precisely what the system was, nobody could say for sure. Investigators found about 1,300 "discrepancies" in grading and classed 190 of them as "flagrant." One history student got an F and a C in two marking periods, but averaged a C on his transcript. A pupil with two F marks in French got a passing D on his transcript, while a biology student with a Dplus, a D-minus and a D ended up with a C.

Principal LeVine denied that he had ever ordered such false grading on the transcripts. As best as anyone could make out, the marks were entered by two kindly clerks, Mrs. Ellen Sjogren, 62, and Mrs. Elizabeth Lammlin, 37, who claimed that LeVine merely signed batches of blank forms, which the ladies in turn filled out under a longstanding system. Asked to explain the grading system used on 75 transcripts, Mrs. Sjogren said: "I'm getting old. I can't even remember what I did last week."

The inconclusive hearings ended last week. There was no doubt that a lot of Hillhouse kids got a break they did not deserve, and that others, perhaps, lost out as a result. The New Haven board plans to study the evidence before deciding whether to hold LeVine, or anyone else, responsible for that "unusual marking system."

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