Students Advised To Look Beyond Area for College

Students from New England should seriously consider going to colleges in other parts of the country, Dr. Nils Y. Wessell, President of Tufts University, said yesterday.

Wessell said his statement was aimed particularly at those high school students in Boston "who haven't heard of any colleges more than 25 miles from downtown Boston."

In addition to giving the student acquaintance with a different area of the country, schools outside of New England tend to be easier to enter than the so-called "prestige colleges," he claimed.

On the other hand, Wessell continued, "a college should admit the best students who apply. It is bad to apply artificial geographical distribution."

Nothing that Harvard does consider geographical distribution a factor in determining admission, Fred L. Glimp '50, Director of Freshman Scholarships, stated that its influence was usually minor.

B. Alden Thresher, Director of Admissions at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, registered enthusiastic support for Wessell's statements. "Perhaps an able student body is more important than a diversified one," he noted. M.I.T.'s student body is a naturally diversified one, he said.