Applicants to Class of 1959 Set New High

An all-time high of 3623 prospective freshmen have applied for admission to the Class of 1959, and the Admissions Office expects about 500 more applications, Dean Bender reported yesterday.

Harlan P. Hansen, Director of Advanced Standing, also reported that his office has received 28 applications for admission directly from the eleventh grade, but does not expect any more.

"If past experience holds," Bender said, the final figure should exceed the 4000 mark, a rise of almost 500 over last year's record total of 3546. The present figure does not include early admission candidates or transfer students, but will be subject to last-minute withdrawals, he added.

Rise Unexpected

The sharp rise in numbers is somewhat unexpected, since the Admissions Office had thought that the new process of tentative selection would discourage badly-qualified students from applying, Bender said.

Since the office has not found any noticeable increases in applications from particular areas or secondary schools, the rise is apparently a result of small increases from a large number of schools, Bender said. He also stated that the Board of Admissions has started earlier than usual on preliminary readings of applications in order to cope with the record number.

Processing May Take Two Months

Processing and analyzing the applications will take almost two months, and "It will be some time before we know definitely what this is all about," Bender predicted. "We have numbers; we don't know if we have quality," he added.

The Board has not yet determined the number desired in the Class of 1959. The ideal number for the present freshman class was 1150, but upper class crowding in the Houses as well as available space in the Yard will determine this year's figure, Bender said.