THE AWARDING OF SCHOLARSHIPS

Here at Harvard a scholarship has become a prize to be obtained usually by a man who does not need it badly. A student who comes here and has his way paid by thrifty parents to the extent that he need not work at all outside of school is able to make the Dean's List and live in the highest of bourgeois comfort. But what of the man who must earn his way without the aid from home? He carries one or sometimes two jobs on the side, rushes from his work to his books, and from his books to his exams. He never has an opportunity to allow his studies to ripen in his mind. For four years he is subjected to a grind which little by little disheartens him and he never gets his head above water to enjoy the broader contacts College should give him. Let him approach ever so near the Dean's List--three "B's" and a "C" plus, say, at finals. His bourgeois friend whose ease and mental tranquility has allowed him to make four "B" minuses gets a fat scholarship, but he gets as little consideration from the scholarship committee as does the man on probation.

Should scholarships be such a gamble? Is it just that the man who works outside a thousand hours a year and misses the Dean's List by the difference between a "C" plus and a "B" minus should receive nothing more than a form letter of regret, especially when his numerical average may be actually higher than that of a man on the Dean's List?

Translate four "B" minuses into a percentage average and beside them three "B" pluses and a "C" plus. The man who failed to make the grade has a higher general average than the actual Dean's List by five per cent. The present "System" is a false standard and should be changed or else the basis for financial awards should be changed, for at present:

"To him who hath shall be given . . "