Intense Ivy Rivalry for 'Elite' of Applicants Puts Harvard Eyes on Nation-Wide Promotion

What kind of nationally "balanced" student body does Harvard want? How has competition from other Ivy League schools affected that ideal makeup, and what steps has the University taken in response? How much is the problem linked with football? These are some of the questions raised by Harvard's new promotion program which this report aims to study.

"From the first foundation to the present, four main streams have watered the soil on which the Universities have flourished. These ultimate sources of strength are:... the cultivation of learning for its own sake;...the general educational stream of the liberal arts;...the educational stream that makes possible the professions; and the never falling river of student life... The cultivation of learning alone produces not a university but a research institute. The sole concern with the student life produces an academic country club or merely a football team maneouvering under a collegiate banner. The future of the university tradition in America depends on keeping a proper balance between the four essential ingredients..." PRESIDENT CONANT, TERCENTENARY ADDRESS, 1936.

In New Haven this spring, a record number of men applied for admission to Yale College. In Princeton, the Committee on Admissions found its selection task "the most difficult in history" and lead to turn down 700 whom it judged to be "fully qualified." Meanwhile in Hanover, officials at Dartmouth completed the processing of a total splash of 3,500 applicants for but 650 places in the class.

Harvard, too, has attracted a peak number of applicants; but since the war, it has suddenly become locked in a friendly but dead earnest rivalry with every other top eastern college to recruit the "most outstanding" students in the country. For over the years Harvard has sought a Balance in the College" that includes not only top brains but also leaders in a variety of things other than scholarship. But certain fears have lately been growing that the numbers of men seeking admission to the College do not represent the best possible of all applicants.

Hence, keenest of all has been the competition between the Ivy "Big Four" of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Dartmouth, who all essentially want the same kind of "scholar" especially "scholar-leader" and "scholar-athlete," and who all have developed the same desire to achieve a student body that is geographically representative as well. Provost Buck framed the problem as early as 1946: "What is not obvious to outsiders--and even to many very close to the situation as as it existed in the pre-war years--is the paucity of applicants of the kind we most desire."

And yet if the truth were to be told today, Harvard would probably finish a poor fourth behind Princeton, Dartmouth, and Yale in the aggressiveness and enthusiasm of its schoolboy recruiting program. For one thing, Harvard alumni have long been more loyal with their dollars than with the amount of noise put into any kind of tubehumping and attracting of prospective students.

Far more important has been the earlier start made by Harvard's rivals. Princeton, Dartmouth, and Yale all stepped up Schools and Scholarship Committee activity immediately after the war; but Harvard was much slower to realize that it now usually takes more to attract a boy to a college than merely handing him an application form and the address of the Admissions Office.

1. Delayed Action

Both Provost Buck and Director of Admissions Richard M. Gummere '07 early spotted the changing nature of college admissions programs; Buck was especially vigorous in spelling out Harvard's particular problems in two Alumni Bulletin articles in 1946 and 1947. A number of important organizational improvements in and out of Cambridge have since followed. But only the two most disastrous football seasons in Harvard history succeeded in arousing significant alumni recognition of the Administration's long-expressed desires to improve nation-wide promotion of a higher grade of applicants of all types.

Since 1949, over 50 Harvard Clubs have formed Schools Committees; still others have activated groups that had previously existed only as paper organizations. some of the alumni have doubtless come, complaining loudly about football defeats, and have then gone out recruiting with but one aim in mind. However, interviews with officials and detailed surveys of alumni committees conducted by the writers strongly indicate that the majority of the newly interested alumni view the problem of "Balance in the College" as much bigger than a short-run deficiency of talented football players. Specific observations are noted in the sections following.

The irony about Harvard's current problem of having to keep pace with its Ivy rivals in hunting nationally for applicants is that Harvard in the thirties was probably the first college to initiate such a policy. Admissions programs were then far calmer and more relaxed than they are today. In fact, President Conant's 1934 National Scholarship program was probably the biggest step ever taken up to that time by an eastern school to become a truly "national college." Alumni Scholarship Committees began multiplying in the West, where the early National Scholarships were concentrated.

Although western enrollment indeed rose during the 'thirties, a glance at the statistics on the next page reveals that Harvard even before was able to attract many a man to Cambridge from great distances.

Those were the days, Provost Buck notes, when Harvard was "living easily on its past prestige." Nobody thought seriously of having to "recruit" top-quality students. Gummere recalls that admissions problems in those days were "open and shut": the committee could do its whole job of picking a class in just four days, and somehow there always seemed just the right supply of outstanding candidates.

During the 'thirties, however, several things began to complicate the picture. First, excellent state universities like Michigan, Illinois, and California, as well as private colleges like Stanford and Oberlin--grew in academic stature and thus gained appeal for men across the country. At first, Harvard, with her tremendously strong reputation could ignore the competition. Armed with National Scholarships, Harvard could continue to push for a national college without any worries of having to step up recruiting appreciably.

But Eastern competitors like Princeton, Dartmouth, and Amherst started following Harvard's lead in looking west. One of the aims of the National Scholarship program, Conant says, was to "present the advantages of Harvard in places where Harvard is not so obvious." Other eastern colleges naturally saw similar advantages in expanding their own clientele. Noting Harvard's success, they responded by sending their alumni on the road both to attract new students and to interview them for admission.

All the eastern colleges--Harvard especially--soon discovered that expanding westward and also increasing scholarships resulted in multiplying by three of four the number of schools contributing applicants. Harvard was no longer dealing with schools like Exeter, Groton, and Boston Latin, whose headmasters and principals knew well which men the College was looking for. As a result, the Admissions Committee could no longer count so heavily on school recommendations, and it began to see the need for much more personal interviewing.

During the war, Harvard's drive for a national college was mothballed. Then, right after the war, the other Ivy colleges greatly intensified their efforts over anything they had ever done, but Harvard, meanwhile, seemed still to be suffering from its war-time stagnation. Conant himself believes that the movement for "Balance in the College," nationally and otherwise, lost some momentum right about that time.

2. Buck Notes Danger

Whatever the reasons, Harvard simply had not geared itself to the surge of alumni activity by other colleges, and it even found itself facing possible loss of its pre-war balance. The Provost 1946-47 Bulletin articles pointed to the fact that many, many applications were "running to type," and he warned:

"... We should take measures to increase the flow of good students who have other qualities that are needed to reach our ideal balance.... I believe there are many boys of the kind we want in the second quarter of classes that now send up only top men.

"... (But) let me make it clear that I do not propose that we should take any action to stop the flow to Harvard of the studious or sensitive type of boys. This should be obvious. What is not obvious ... is the paucity of applicants of the kind we desire.

"... We need at Harvard an extended organization for making contacts with the 500 to 1,000 schools which now send us students, often only occasionally.... And we must more effectively carry our message of what Harvard is and what it offers to the country at large."

Since 1946-47 six things have happened to put Harvard on a virtual par with Princeton. Dartmouth, and Yale in at least its physical capacity to spread its name and admissions data:

(1). The night before the 1949 Princeton football game, University administrators met Harvard Club delegates at the Harvard Club of Boston. Alumni agreed to revitalize and to man Schools Committees. The administrators on their part agreed to take appropriate steps in Cambridge to implement the program. Over 90 such Harvard Club committees are now in operation, although only half of these can currently be classified as truly "active."

(2). In early 1950 John U. Monro '34 was named to head a Financial Aid Center, which now integrates scholarship, employment, and loan aid to the men who have been admitted.

(3). Director of Scholarships F. Skiddy von Stade '38 compiled financial aid information into a 54-page "Alumni Handbook" which he sent out to all interested alumni. The book also lists criteria for selection, suggested interview techniques, and a system for evaluating and reporting data to the Admissions and Scholarships Committees. It is constantly being kept up-to-date.

3. Changes in Cambridge

(4). The Admissions Office added Graham R. Taylor '48 as Gummere's first full-time assistant, and Dana M. Cotton also began helping the office on part-time basis. In addition other officials like Bender, von Stade, Monro, Dean Leighton, and professor Den Leet have aided Gummere by making special trips to admissions "problem areas."

(5). Francis P. Kinnicutt '30 became the first full-time secretary to the president of the Associated Harvard Clubs. His was to be a roving liasion between Cambridge and the Schools and Scholarships Committee.

(6). Other groups joined the program, too. A reorganized and more compact Overseers' Visiting Committee on Athletics and the Varsity Club, both eyeing the "athlete" problem, pledged their aid. Even the Crimson Key formed a group of 85 undergraduates, who have already begun acting as contact men for the alumni Schools Committees. Classes of 1954 at a Glance   HARVARD  YALE  PRINCETON  DARTMOUTH Number of applicants  3000  3000  3200  3500 Number in class  1150  1049  763  650 Number interviews* (approximate)  2000  2000  1800  3300 Geographical Distribution: New England  44.4%  28.4%  7.1%  33.2% Middle Atlantic  26.3  35.9  57.1  39.8 Middle West  14.0  18.9  22.5  16.0 Far West  6.0  6.8  4.8  5.9 South  6.0  8.1  6.4  2.9 Foreign & Others  3.3  1.9  2.1  2.2 Private Schools  50  63  60  39.5 Public Schools  50  37  40  60.5 Scholarship Students @  24  28  30-40  23 Non-scholarship  76  72  70  77 Number Alumni Committees#  90  300-400  87  300-400

(* Princeton interviews are completed reports filed with Admissions office: Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth figures include unfilled interviews)

(# Princeton and Harvard figures are in terms of active committees, whereas Yale and Dartmouth figures include individuals as well as groups)

(@ Princeton scholarship figure includes loans)

"... There is an aristocracy to which the sons of Harvard have belonged, and let us hope will ever aspire to belong--the aristocracy which excels in many sports, carries off honors and prizes in learned professions and bears itself with distinction in all fields of Intellectual labor and combat..." PRESIDENT ELIOT, INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 1869.

These six steps have at last provided most of the necessary machinery to match similar Princeton, Dartmouth, and Yale programs. Yet they represent no guarantee of successfully "balancing the College" without alert, aggressive alumni to fill committee ranks.

At the same time, however, the project carries certain grave dangers. Unleashed alumni who track down only football players could do the College much greater harm than those who overlook the athletes and other schoolboy leaders and hunt solely for scholars. Probably the basic questions to be faced are whether everyone has the same definition of "Balance in the college" and whether everything about Harvard's new program is helping to meet this goal.

4.What Does 'Balance' Mean?

"Balance in the College" does not mean a student body of "all-around boys." As Dean Bender points out, it is not the mission of Harvard College to educate a vast horde of C-"good citizens." Bender and others realize that Harvard is too important an institution to tamper with. "Superior academic intelligence is still our primary concern," Bender emphasizes.

But beyond this common student base of top intelligence, the College is seeking a variety of skills and tastes in its undergraduate body. It seeks scholars. But it also wants top writers, athletes, politicians, musicians, debaters, and even some men who don't seem to be doing much of anything right now.

"Balance" is a crucial factor in education itself, Harvard has always felt. For a national student body possessing many and varied talents offers the most perfect cosmopolitan environment for teaching and for learning. Samuel Eliot Morrison '08 says in his "The Founding of Harvard College":

"As long as Harvard remains true to her early traditions, rich men's sons and poor, serious scholars and frivolous wasters, saints and sinners ... will meet in her Houses, her Yard, and her athletic fields, rubbing off each others angularities, and learning from contact what cannot be learned from books."

Much of this balance is achieved almost automatically. Harvard still holds undisputed first place as the nation's top University, a reputation which will always attract a solid group of fine scholars. Anyway, for better or worse, the College's inevitable reputation as a "brain factory" will probably keep shunting to Harvard "the best boy we've had in years." But only about ten percent of the College form this absolute "scholar class"; it is below this top ten percent "balancing" qualities (like character, extra-curricular interests, and of intent) enter into the picture.

With such time-tested mechanical devices as College Board scores, the Admissions Committee can easily eliminate the academic dregs. But the large middle ground of applicants presents critical problems of evaluation.

As ever, the Committee on Admissions weights grades highest, but it also emphasizes geographical location by starting the selection process in the west and then working east. When it comes to appraising things like general seriousness of purpose or kinds of extra-curricular activity, the admissions process becomes a "highly individualized a proposition," Gummere points out. This year saw a record number of personal interview reports come in. So big are today's problems that a quorum of the Committee on Admissions holds session almost daily from April through June.

Although National Scholarships and recent alumni activity have already reached many new areas, the feeling still persists that Harvard is not getting its full quota of the men who are outstanding "leaders" as well as scholars.

President Conant describes the College's latest moves of promotion as a case of "running hard to stand still." The program of "running hard" involves sending officials and alumni into various schools where they contact possible applicants. A combination selling and information campaign follows in areas where Harvard feels it may have been cut off from its normal flow by the recruiting programs of rivals.

"Selling" a college, though, can become a performance approaching a Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza. In fact DeMille himself could probably take a few pointers from the annual "College Day" held at many large mid-western high schools. The schools, many of them no doubt irked at the unending parade of college admissions men, have in many cases had over 400 college officers assemble in the same place on one day to talk shop.

John Monro, who has been playing the Illinois circuit for Harvard during the past several years, says that "the travelling circus of admissions counselors descends on a high school like locusts." Monro explains that he takes a table, plunks down some pamphlets, hangs up a Harvard banner, sees a few harried students and parents, and then pulls up stakes for the next town's "College Day."

Monro feels that this type of selling and interviewing "doesn't do too much harm," but it isn't exactly his idea of how to conduct the program. He much prefers to deal with each school individually, and by virtue of his coming from the East, he usually does manage to conduct his business more calmly outside the arena.

Dean Bender does not want to see this high pressure selling get out of hand either. "We can certainly benefit from good salesmanship and the added evidence from interviews," he says, but the problem "must be approached with perspective and humility." Bender insists that any College of "real integrity" will inevitably be out of tune with some powerful currents in American life. As a result, "Harvard cannot hope to appeal to all the leaders of schools and expect to maintain this basic integrity."

One other problem which must be solved is whether to accept Western students while rejecting better qualified Eastern students. Educational standards might carelessly be sacrificed in order to gain better national distribution.

5. What About Athletes?

To many both inside and outside the Harvard family it may seem that the College and all its Ivy rivals have gone on gigantic athlete-purchasing sprees. Some skeptics maintain that Harvard is abandoning its traditional policy of having students play football in favor of having football players attend colleges.

No Harvard administrator will flatly deny that the college is conducting an intensive search for scholar-athletes; but at the same time, the College will point out that it is not at all changing its amateur athletic policy. A "Balanced College," administrator say, requires an intercollegiate athletic program.

Since, the war, however, rival Ivy League recruiting has unquestionably attracted many fine scholar-athletes who might normally have come to Cambridge. In striking back, Harvard may expect unpleasant consequences no matter what it does. Even then Crimson alumni try to convince a good scholar-athlete to come here, the boy will often construe such talk, as the same old bribery they have heard from Big Time recruitors, albeit done up in a dignified package. Some Harvard alumni may even have made empty, irresponsible promises, but Dean Bender feels that any "disillusioned" football players here today are more likely victims of the current national mania that seem to say a college owes the athelete something special.

"Respectable" sales programs are often mere facades for many colleges that pretend they are "selling" the college when they are really buying the player. Princeton however, and several other Ivy Leaguers seem to have made the program work so far without deliberately entering the professional circuit. Princeton seems intentionally to foster the reputation of being a place for the "all-around boy"--a reputation that automatically attracts a large number of student-athletes.

But the traditionally vociferous Nassau alumni also have a recruiting machine which, according to one Harvard official, "is simply beautiful to watch." Well-organized Schools and Scholarship Committees scour the nation for scholar-athletes, and when they get one they feel can meet Princeton's high standards, they apply continuous pressure. They seldom lose the boy to another college. Princeton encourages trips to Nassau's campus, shows athletic films around the country, and sends the affable Charley Caldwell on the chicken saled circuit.

Yale follows a similar program, but Bob Kupath takes his swimming team to a Massachusetts prep school for an exhibition meet, and Bob Hall takes Yale movies along when he drops in at Connecticut schoolboy team banquets. Recently Harvard has not felt itself above this sort of salesmanship. The number of coaches' tours is up and it is now quite common to join Yale and the others at the school boy banquets; and the New York Harvard Club this year brought 20 athletes to Cambridge to tour around the College.

Harvard salesmanship may be something new but the basic admissions policies are unchanged. The committee on Admissions still emphatically insists that every candidate meet College Board certificate grades, and the Faculty here still flunks football players. Many a former Yardling star has yet to set foot on Stadium turf.

Yet administrators also fervently trust that the breed of true scholar athletes is not yet extinct and that there are plenty of football players who can still want and deserve a Harvard education. But then again, it may be that the rest of the nation's colleges have already turned intercollegiate football into a permanent morass.

Officials are a little skeptical of just how useful interviews can be. Even experienced admissions office personnel cannot always learn much about a boy in half an hour. And Alumni are less competent. Some of them tend to give a poor rating to a shy, sensitive boy; others think every athlete is a tramp. These personal value judgments cannot help but be reflected in alumni interviewing reports but the feeling in the Admissions office is that some news is better than no news.

Until the past several years, only the Scholarship Committees have been doing much recruiting and interviewing. Set up as early as the twenties there are over 45 very active Scholarship Committees operating throughout the country. Many of these groups are giving out Harvard Club scholarships, and hence are particularly concerned about recipients full background. Von Stade, however, has already succeeded in getting the committees to interview men for Harvard College scholarships as well as for their own, a big help to both ron stade and the Admissions Committee.

Von Stade's immediate problem is to cut down the number of scholarships applicants; in 1950 46 percent of all admissions candidates applied for aid. So the hopes that the new Schools Committee with attract more paying guests to the college and take some of the burden off Harvard's tightening budget.

Of course, the practices in each Scholarship of Schools Committee vary enormously. Minneapolis6

Harvard National Distribution Over the YearsArea  '26  '37  '42  '45  '52  '54New England  56.5%  58%  44.4%  49.5%  46%  44.4%Middle Atlantic  24.8%  28  29.5  25.6  27  26.3Middle West  12.9  9.6  18.5  16.4  15.4  14Far West  2.7  1.7  3.9  3.6  5.8  6South  3  2.5  2.9  3.7  4.3  6Foreign & Others  .1  .2  .8  1.2  1.5  3.

(* Princeton interviews are completed reports filed with Admissions office: Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth figures include unfilled interviews)

(# Princeton and Harvard figures are in terms of active committees, whereas Yale and Dartmouth figures include individuals as well as groups)

(@ Princeton scholarship figure includes loans)

"... There is an aristocracy to which the sons of Harvard have belonged, and let us hope will ever aspire to belong--the aristocracy which excels in many sports, carries off honors and prizes in learned professions and bears itself with distinction in all fields of Intellectual labor and combat..." PRESIDENT ELIOT, INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 1869.

These six steps have at last provided most of the necessary machinery to match similar Princeton, Dartmouth, and Yale programs. Yet they represent no guarantee of successfully "balancing the College" without alert, aggressive alumni to fill committee ranks.

At the same time, however, the project carries certain grave dangers. Unleashed alumni who track down only football players could do the College much greater harm than those who overlook the athletes and other schoolboy leaders and hunt solely for scholars. Probably the basic questions to be faced are whether everyone has the same definition of "Balance in the college" and whether everything about Harvard's new program is helping to meet this goal.

4.What Does 'Balance' Mean?

"Balance in the College" does not mean a student body of "all-around boys." As Dean Bender points out, it is not the mission of Harvard College to educate a vast horde of C-"good citizens." Bender and others realize that Harvard is too important an institution to tamper with. "Superior academic intelligence is still our primary concern," Bender emphasizes.

But beyond this common student base of top intelligence, the College is seeking a variety of skills and tastes in its undergraduate body. It seeks scholars. But it also wants top writers, athletes, politicians, musicians, debaters, and even some men who don't seem to be doing much of anything right now.

"Balance" is a crucial factor in education itself, Harvard has always felt. For a national student body possessing many and varied talents offers the most perfect cosmopolitan environment for teaching and for learning. Samuel Eliot Morrison '08 says in his "The Founding of Harvard College":

"As long as Harvard remains true to her early traditions, rich men's sons and poor, serious scholars and frivolous wasters, saints and sinners ... will meet in her Houses, her Yard, and her athletic fields, rubbing off each others angularities, and learning from contact what cannot be learned from books."

Much of this balance is achieved almost automatically. Harvard still holds undisputed first place as the nation's top University, a reputation which will always attract a solid group of fine scholars. Anyway, for better or worse, the College's inevitable reputation as a "brain factory" will probably keep shunting to Harvard "the best boy we've had in years." But only about ten percent of the College form this absolute "scholar class"; it is below this top ten percent "balancing" qualities (like character, extra-curricular interests, and of intent) enter into the picture.

With such time-tested mechanical devices as College Board scores, the Admissions Committee can easily eliminate the academic dregs. But the large middle ground of applicants presents critical problems of evaluation.

As ever, the Committee on Admissions weights grades highest, but it also emphasizes geographical location by starting the selection process in the west and then working east. When it comes to appraising things like general seriousness of purpose or kinds of extra-curricular activity, the admissions process becomes a "highly individualized a proposition," Gummere points out. This year saw a record number of personal interview reports come in. So big are today's problems that a quorum of the Committee on Admissions holds session almost daily from April through June.

Although National Scholarships and recent alumni activity have already reached many new areas, the feeling still persists that Harvard is not getting its full quota of the men who are outstanding "leaders" as well as scholars.

President Conant describes the College's latest moves of promotion as a case of "running hard to stand still." The program of "running hard" involves sending officials and alumni into various schools where they contact possible applicants. A combination selling and information campaign follows in areas where Harvard feels it may have been cut off from its normal flow by the recruiting programs of rivals.

"Selling" a college, though, can become a performance approaching a Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza. In fact DeMille himself could probably take a few pointers from the annual "College Day" held at many large mid-western high schools. The schools, many of them no doubt irked at the unending parade of college admissions men, have in many cases had over 400 college officers assemble in the same place on one day to talk shop.

John Monro, who has been playing the Illinois circuit for Harvard during the past several years, says that "the travelling circus of admissions counselors descends on a high school like locusts." Monro explains that he takes a table, plunks down some pamphlets, hangs up a Harvard banner, sees a few harried students and parents, and then pulls up stakes for the next town's "College Day."

Monro feels that this type of selling and interviewing "doesn't do too much harm," but it isn't exactly his idea of how to conduct the program. He much prefers to deal with each school individually, and by virtue of his coming from the East, he usually does manage to conduct his business more calmly outside the arena.

Dean Bender does not want to see this high pressure selling get out of hand either. "We can certainly benefit from good salesmanship and the added evidence from interviews," he says, but the problem "must be approached with perspective and humility." Bender insists that any College of "real integrity" will inevitably be out of tune with some powerful currents in American life. As a result, "Harvard cannot hope to appeal to all the leaders of schools and expect to maintain this basic integrity."

One other problem which must be solved is whether to accept Western students while rejecting better qualified Eastern students. Educational standards might carelessly be sacrificed in order to gain better national distribution.

5. What About Athletes?

To many both inside and outside the Harvard family it may seem that the College and all its Ivy rivals have gone on gigantic athlete-purchasing sprees. Some skeptics maintain that Harvard is abandoning its traditional policy of having students play football in favor of having football players attend colleges.

No Harvard administrator will flatly deny that the college is conducting an intensive search for scholar-athletes; but at the same time, the College will point out that it is not at all changing its amateur athletic policy. A "Balanced College," administrator say, requires an intercollegiate athletic program.

Since, the war, however, rival Ivy League recruiting has unquestionably attracted many fine scholar-athletes who might normally have come to Cambridge. In striking back, Harvard may expect unpleasant consequences no matter what it does. Even then Crimson alumni try to convince a good scholar-athlete to come here, the boy will often construe such talk, as the same old bribery they have heard from Big Time recruitors, albeit done up in a dignified package. Some Harvard alumni may even have made empty, irresponsible promises, but Dean Bender feels that any "disillusioned" football players here today are more likely victims of the current national mania that seem to say a college owes the athelete something special.

"Respectable" sales programs are often mere facades for many colleges that pretend they are "selling" the college when they are really buying the player. Princeton however, and several other Ivy Leaguers seem to have made the program work so far without deliberately entering the professional circuit. Princeton seems intentionally to foster the reputation of being a place for the "all-around boy"--a reputation that automatically attracts a large number of student-athletes.

But the traditionally vociferous Nassau alumni also have a recruiting machine which, according to one Harvard official, "is simply beautiful to watch." Well-organized Schools and Scholarship Committees scour the nation for scholar-athletes, and when they get one they feel can meet Princeton's high standards, they apply continuous pressure. They seldom lose the boy to another college. Princeton encourages trips to Nassau's campus, shows athletic films around the country, and sends the affable Charley Caldwell on the chicken saled circuit.

Yale follows a similar program, but Bob Kupath takes his swimming team to a Massachusetts prep school for an exhibition meet, and Bob Hall takes Yale movies along when he drops in at Connecticut schoolboy team banquets. Recently Harvard has not felt itself above this sort of salesmanship. The number of coaches' tours is up and it is now quite common to join Yale and the others at the school boy banquets; and the New York Harvard Club this year brought 20 athletes to Cambridge to tour around the College.

Harvard salesmanship may be something new but the basic admissions policies are unchanged. The committee on Admissions still emphatically insists that every candidate meet College Board certificate grades, and the Faculty here still flunks football players. Many a former Yardling star has yet to set foot on Stadium turf.

Yet administrators also fervently trust that the breed of true scholar athletes is not yet extinct and that there are plenty of football players who can still want and deserve a Harvard education. But then again, it may be that the rest of the nation's colleges have already turned intercollegiate football into a permanent morass.

Officials are a little skeptical of just how useful interviews can be. Even experienced admissions office personnel cannot always learn much about a boy in half an hour. And Alumni are less competent. Some of them tend to give a poor rating to a shy, sensitive boy; others think every athlete is a tramp. These personal value judgments cannot help but be reflected in alumni interviewing reports but the feeling in the Admissions office is that some news is better than no news.

Until the past several years, only the Scholarship Committees have been doing much recruiting and interviewing. Set up as early as the twenties there are over 45 very active Scholarship Committees operating throughout the country. Many of these groups are giving out Harvard Club scholarships, and hence are particularly concerned about recipients full background. Von Stade, however, has already succeeded in getting the committees to interview men for Harvard College scholarships as well as for their own, a big help to both ron stade and the Admissions Committee.

Von Stade's immediate problem is to cut down the number of scholarships applicants; in 1950 46 percent of all admissions candidates applied for aid. So the hopes that the new Schools Committee with attract more paying guests to the college and take some of the burden off Harvard's tightening budget.

Of course, the practices in each Scholarship of Schools Committee vary enormously. Minneapolis6

Harvard National Distribution Over the YearsArea  '26  '37  '42  '45  '52  '54New England  56.5%  58%  44.4%  49.5%  46%  44.4%Middle Atlantic  24.8%  28  29.5  25.6  27  26.3Middle West  12.9  9.6  18.5  16.4  15.4  14Far West  2.7  1.7  3.9  3.6  5.8  6South  3  2.5  2.9  3.7  4.3  6Foreign & Others  .1  .2  .8  1.2  1.5  3.

Harvard National Distribution Over the YearsArea  '26  '37  '42  '45  '52  '54New England  56.5%  58%  44.4%  49.5%  46%  44.4%Middle Atlantic  24.8%  28  29.5  25.6  27  26.3Middle West  12.9  9.6  18.5  16.4  15.4  14Far West  2.7  1.7  3.9  3.6  5.8  6South  3  2.5  2.9  3.7  4.3  6Foreign & Others  .1  .2  .8  1.2  1.5  3.