Uniform Entrance Examinations

The fourteenth annual convention of the Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Middle States and Maryland was held last Friday and Saturday at the University of Pennsylvania.

The most important business was the report of Professor Nicholas M. Butler of Columbia from the committee on "uniform entrance examinations." The report stated the willingness of the colleges to co-operate in the plan, and further that during the week beginning Monday, June 17, 1901, entrance examinations for all the colleges in the Middle States and Maryland would be the same.

President Eliot in 1896 was probably the first to suggest the plan of having uniform examinations. The subject has been brought up several times since then, but nothing was done about it until December, 1899, when the Association of Colleges of the Middle States elected a committee to draw up regulations, and to ask the co-operation of all colleges in that district. The regulations have been in print for some months, but the attitude of the colleges towards the plan was not published until last Friday.

An entrance examination board of representatives of all the colleges having over fifty members in the Freshman class was finally organized. The following are represented on the board: Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Columbia, Rutgers, Swarthmore, Union, Vassar, and Woman's College, (Baltimore) Cornell, Johns Hopkins, New York and Pennsylvania. The preparatory schools have five representatives. Princeton was willing to accept the certificates of the Board but declined representation on it. Besides the election of the Board, a chief examiner for 1901 was appointed for each subject, every college being represented.

Under the new system papers are to be made out by groups of examiners from the colleges and schools, according to the definitions of requirements laid down by a committee of the National Educational Association on "College Entrance Requirements." The board will appoint readers, and the results will be sent to the colleges in the form of a certificate, giving percentage attained, which the college may accept or not.