LOOKING BACKWARD

The annual meeting of the directors of the College Entrance Examination Board this month was productive of two conclusions that evoke interest in those who are not too busy practising on the high burdles to remember the low ones. For the first time in its career the treasury of the Board shows a deficit, due to the increased cost of examination. The fee remains $10, while the cost per candidate of examination has risen from $7.98 to $11.11. The deficit is to be made up by the sale of the Board's publications, a possible increase in the fee, and most significant of all, an increased membership charge to those colleges which are served by the Board. Although it has been well known that the cost of tuition at Harvard never covers the expenditure of the University on the individual, it is not generally known that the college goes out thus to meet the candidate.

The tendency of the college to thrust itself into the preparatory school life of the undergraduate-to-be is shown in another way: the decision of the commission of psychologisia to have the scholastic aptitude test available for the information of college authorities a year in advance of admission. The scholastic aptitude test assisted in the determination of the classes of 1930 and 1931 at Harvard, and has given reliable and illuminating information concerning the 15,000 candidates who have been examined during its experimental years of 1926 and 1927. Regarded no longer in the light of an experiment, the scholastic aptitude test has become more than an assertion of the university's right to measure the candidate's intelligence as well as his language preparation. It is evidence of increasing selectivity in the college's tastes, together with a development of sensitivity whose end is not yet in view.