Wilcox Terms Gen Ed Exemption 'Bizarre Feature' of Soph Standing

The requirement of only one lower-level General Education course is "a bizarre feature" of the Advanced Standing Program, Edward T. Wilcox, Director of the Office of Advanced Standing, said last night.

"I would like to se some sensible and effective way to equate the General Education requirement for Advanced Standing students and other students," Wilcox declared. "Advanced Standing should not be a way to get out of something, but a way to get into something." Wilcox added that there is a "loophole in the motivational rationale" when partial exemption from the Gen Ed requirement is one of the attractions of Sophomore Standing.

About four out of five first-year Sophomores responding to a poll by the CRIMSON and the Student Council Committee on Educational Policy said they would have objected to the normal requirement of three courses.

Wilcox admitted that there was "a certain amount of truth" in students' charges of inadequate guidance. "It is true that there are special problems in Advanced Standing, with the large number of options," he said.

At one time, serious thought was given to the establishment of an "in-between" board of advisers for new Sophomores, but "we don't want to proliferate another advisory system around here." Wilcox explained.

The low percentage of those polled who were planning to go to graduate schools was "surprising," Wilcox conceded, but he observed, "It is not necessarily the aim of the program to have everyone go on to professional school."

Almost all Sophomore Standing students who have graduated have actually gone into graduate study, Wilcox said. The poll asked student intentions, and was not sent to anyone who had left the College.