RING IN THE NEW

The announcement by the Committee on Admissions concerning the statistics of the present Freshman Class is of more than passing interest. Unlike announcements of other years, this year's report shows marked change in certain respects from the statistics of a year ago. The most significant change is a rise in the number of men admitted under the New Plan of admission and a corresponding drop in the number admitted under the Old Plan and without examination.

The increase in men admitted under the New Plan is of such great proportions that it cannot be merely a seasonal fluctuation; it signifies a swing away from the older systems of admission to the more recent one termed New Plan. Evidently secondary schools which have long realized the merits of the New Plan of Admission are advising their students to use it in preference to the Old Plan, are making necessary preparation curricula in consequence.

One advantage of the New Plan over the Old is that the new method enables the College to get a much more accurate idea of a candidate's real ability than is possible with the Old Plan. What a student does in school should certainly have mere weight than it does in determining whether or not he is fitted for college. His ability to pass not examinations, chief criterion of the Old Plan, in not enough. The New Plan examinations by their very nature are more comprehensive than those of the Old Plan; accordingly they constitute a much better test of the ability of the candidate.

The greatest direct benefit from the use of the New Plan, however, as has been pointed out at various times in these columns, is certainly to the schools themselves. With students taking examinations only in their Senior year, rather than for two or three years, as is the case with admission under the Old Plan, a school is not forced to devote so much effort to prepare its students for examinations. Rather the school is enabled to devote itself more completely to the development of sound minds, the underlying factor in making the college years a period of productive development and of mature workmanship.