ENTRANCE TO COLLEGE.

Revision of the entrance requirements is a frequent necessity, arising from the changing demands of the schools and of the colleges themselves. Usually the changes have been in the direction of greater latitude and greater uniformity.

The desirable elements in setting admission examinations are to secure an equitable adjustment of College requirements to school work, to make the College requirements uniform, and to get the best means of testing fitness for admission. With respect to the first, Harvard has recently made much progress by transferring to the College all work for the S.B. degree, and by adding to the list of admission subjects a number related to work for this degree. Such changes have made entrance from technical schools easier, and have allowed students who wish to make a specialty of scientific subjects to begin their training in school if they wish.

In regard to making the requirements uniform with the preparation which most schools offer, the most important step has been the acceptance of all credits given by the College Entrance Examination Board on the same basis with credits given by Harvard examiners. Many schools are obliged to give preparation for a dozen or more colleges in the same classes, but so long as the Board examinations offer a common avenue from the many schools to the many colleges the difficulty of the transition is reduced to a minimum. Except in a limited number of schools which send nearly all their boys to Harvard the Board examinations will probably tend more and more to displace the Harvard examinations.

As to the last point, the testing of fitness for admission, the desideratum doubtless is that all schools men should be admitted who by their ability to keep up to Harvard requirements show that they can profit by Harvard instruction. That the entrance examinations, whether given by Harvard or by the Board, sometimes fail to test this fitness properly, is as evident as that a course examinations may sometimes fail to measure accurately the work done by a student. The Harvard committee on admission, through its own examinations and those of the College Board, is adjusting as equitably as it can the difficult relations between preparatory schools and the College.