A BOLD EXPERIMENT

President Conant's first specific proposal for attracting outstanding students to Harvard has emerged with unusual promptness as an accomplished fact. The six "experimental" Freshman scholarships, carrying an initial stipend of $1,000 with the promise of more to come, will have the direct effect of enabling a small number of men of exceptional talents to attend Harvard completely free from financial worries. More important than this, they will serve notice to the country that the College is actively and aggressively interested in attracting the cream of preparatory school graduates. Inaugurated with the proper publicity, an experiment as novel to American education as this one cannot fail to force Harvard upon the attention of preparatory schools all over the country and to hold out a valuable prize as a lure to prospective Freshmen.

Much of the success of the plan will hinge upon the ability of the Committee on Scholarships to single out while they are still in preparatory school the applicants most deserving of heavy backing by the College. The method of selection, stressing school records, the Scholastic Aptitude Test, and, so far as possible, personal interviews, reflects the results of recent surveys which show a much higher correlation between these indicators and college records than between college records and grades on entrance examinations. Especially interesting is the emphasis on brilliance in one particular subject as well as in the general school record.

But the real issue in the scholarship plan, as in other parts of the President's program, is the financial one. The first statement of the plan gave rise to fears that the money would come out of what Mr. Conant has correctly described as the "woefully inadequate" scholarship funds. The advantages of a few large fellowships would have to be shown to be very great to justify a reduction in the total number of scholarships awarded. But there is apparently no immediate danger of this. University Hall has let it be known that for the first two years the money will be available from "other sources." The strategy of the move is clear. The plan is being started on a shoostring with no assurance of where the money is coming from to continue it and to expand it eventually to provide some forty such large fellowships for every class. The President is relying upon some unknown Harkness to come forward with the necessary funds to insure the success of a hold and original experiment.