FRESHMAN YEAR PREPARES SCHOOLBOY FOR UNIVERSITY LIFE SAYS WHITNEY

The following are excerpts from a speech on the "Freshman Year at Harvard," recently delivered by Professor E. A. Whitney '17 Dean of the Freshman Class, at the Harvard Club.

The freshman year must prepare men to get the most out of the three years which follow it, which are really what we mean by the college education proper. The freshman year is frankly the year of training, and we try to jam the transition from school to college into one year in order that each student may have three years of college work of a university character.

"I want to say a word about the requirements for promotion to the sophomore class, that is, the standard of work which a freshman is obliged to maintain throughout his freshman year. You have heard that this is pretty severe and that the standard is high. I will take the case of a boy who came down from a large preparatory school last year. He was a real athlete and he gave most of the fall season to athletics; he also gave all the spring to it, and he did a certain amount of out-of-season practice as well. In addition, he was a class officer and generally a prominent member of the freshman class last year. At midyear he had a straight 'C' record. I called him in and said, 'Would you mind telling me something? How much work did it cost you to get a record such as you got?' He said:

"'Outside of the time I spent in class rooms I suppose I worked about five hours a week.' That does not seem an excessive requirement for any freshman in college. This boy is the salt of the earth but not a brilliant student and I do not believe he ever worked more than four or five hours a week throughout the year, and yet his record was perfectly satisfactory. He did, however, keep himself in good condition.

"If a freshman fails at the November hour examinations or at the midyear examinations, to have passed in four courses, with satisfactory grades in at least three of them, he will, failing some good excuse, be placed on probation, and if at the next examination period he has failed to attain the minimum requirements he may possibly have his connection with the College severed.

"Just a word in regard to sending boys away from Harvard. Take the really good boy who simply does not know what a day's work consists of. After keeping him on for half-year with an unsatisfactory record, we often say to him and his family that he ought to be taken out and given a good, stiff job. That happens generally at midyears. Sometimes it does not happen until the end of the freshman year. If it happens at midyears, the man can start in again in the autumn if he has made a good record for himself outside.

"Of those men who are sent away and later readmitted on the basis of good work done some 72 per cent, ultimately make good: that is, their records are satisfactory from the time of their readmission. These figures are from the year before last. Of the men who had unsatisfactory records at midyears two years ago and in whose cases leniency was shown, that is, men who were not sent away but whose records entitled them to be--those men were supposedly considerably better than those who were actually 'fired'; their records were better, because those who were fired were the worst of the lot--yet of those who were kept on, only 61 per cent, ultimately made good.