Advanced Standing Report

(Following are excerpts from a report to the Faculty on the Program of Advanced Standing, 1955-61, presented March 6 by Edward T. Wilcox, director. The report is accompanied by tables on growth of AP at Harvard; performance of AP students who entered sequent middle-group courses in their first year of residence; comparison of per cent of sophomore-standing students and others in each rank list group; and a list of graduated advanced standing students.

The report states that in September 1961 Harvard received AP. candidates from over 200 different schools, and that these 540 persons composed about 45 per cent of the incoming class. Of these, 134 received AP in three or more subjects and were eligible for sophomore standing.)

... Another prediction [in addition to shift in balance from private to public schools sending AP students to Harvard] seems to be working out. The number of advanced placement candidates at Harvard has begun to level off; the rate of increase has slowed down. Last year there were only ten more candidates than the year before--540 against 530--the number of examinations was substantially the same. This stabilization is, in my view, closely related to the nature of our applicant group and our admissions policy, and suggests that we may be reaching an upper limit in the number of advanced candidates who will apply or will be accepted in an incoming class.

At the same time, within this group, the quality of performance on the examinations, reflected in the number of actual advanced placement awards at Harvard, reveals an increasing competence on the part of the students who have taken college-level work in secondary school. This in turn is reflected in an unabating increase in the number of students eligible for sophomore standing.

Let me put this as starkly as possible. If one conjectures on the growth of advanced placement during the next ten years, it seems probable that an upper limit in the number of entering students who have been afforded the opportunity to attend a school (usually suburban or private) that offers advanced placement work is probably five or six hundred--about half of the class But as this favored group becomes increasingly well trained and as our selection of students within these schools becomes increasingly rigorous the number of advanced placement candidates who become eligible for sophomore standing could approach 100 per cent: that is, five or six hundred--about half of the class.

Slowly Emerging Criticism

It is against a background of slowly emerging criticism of the program--some valid, some clearly spurious--that a discussion of growth or curtailment must be undertaken. I would like to as rapidly as possible with a central criticism, one that strikes at the very concept of advanced placement. Overtly it is expressed when an adviser points to a failing grade in a middle-group course and generalizes about a program that presses innocent children into studies for which they are not prepared; when a tutor reports on a sophomore standing student whose performance on general examinations has fallen short of the summa he presumably would have had without the insidious pressures of advanced standing. Covertly the criticism gains strength when AP students are cautioned about intellectual arrogance and reminded that any Harvard course, even repeated work, has unique merit.

Tragedy Called Myth

The remaining tables . . .are meant to demonstrate that AP students in middle-level courses are doing well and that the tragedy of sophomore standing--at least on the single dimension of academic performance--is a myth.

The figures on sophomore standing in the third table compare the rank list groups of all advanced standing students since 1955 with those of all other students in the college. They are compared by year of residence rather than class. The sophomore standing students' performance in the first year, while it argues for a capacity to undertake advanced work, has been denigrated by some who argue that this is a foregone conclusion: freshman courses are graded more rigorously than middle-group offerings. But this would not account for the later years when the advanced standing students appear to maintain and improve the margin of their superior performance. And it would certainly not account for the fact that, of those who have graduated, almost half have received degrees of magna or better.

More could be adduced from these figures. For example, they call into question assumptions I know to be current--that advanced standing students falter badly in their first traumatic year, or that they fade badly in a premature year of thesis or generals. In many ways the tables tend to provoke discussion on a false premise, since theoretically we hoped these students would do as well as other undergraduates, and have no particular basis for expecting to do better.

I have two final comments on the tables. They would, of course, become less meaningful if one could give redence to anther popular assumption: they should be doing well; they're the best students in the class; why aren't they doing better? . . . By the quantitative measures we have, advanced standing students can be identified not by the level of their measured intelligence, their test scores and the like, but by the schools they were lucky enough to attend. They are in fact better prepared, perhaps a little more sophisticated, and they come from our best secondary schools; they are not necessarily, however, the brightest students in the class.

Finally, I am aware that all these figures relate to only one dimension, that of measured academic performance. Nothing has been said about whether these students--sunmma or not--have had the kind of education we wish to offer, or whether they are "tragic cases" for reasons not reflected in this somewhat pedestrian review of their grade record.

The record, however, is an important place to begin--if only to make it clear that the products of this program are doing well at Harvard by the only measurable standards we have with which to identify a successful undergraduate career. And I for one am inescapably drawn to the conclusion that they are doing well because of the program and the thrust toward excellent that it engenders--not in spite of it.

Harvard's Vexing Problem

I have always been surprised that those colleges with a two-year rather than a three-year concentration have not developed more effective programs of advanced standing. At Harvard this is our most vexing problem. There is a sharp division between our upper-class years and our freshman year, which is by and large a year of general education, a year to explore unknown fields, a year to gain insight into the nature of undergraduate concentration here.

It could well be argued that we have given away the wrong year--because in fact the high-school AP course is generally a first course in concentration, and none can be regarded as comparable to our lower-level offerings in general education. But it is equally true that a Harvard undergraduate concentration, particularly since we introduced a required program of sophomore tutorial, is a linked three-year program and not easily broken.

Advanced standing students, then, must enter a field in their first year of residence, and some of them probably enter the wrong filed, perhaps for wrong reasons. But, of course, so do many other undergraduates.

The facts about field of concentration among advanced standing students are surprising. In my last report I postulated that we would probably not see a very wide distribution of fields among the advanced standing students--they would have too little experience to be

Tragedy Called Myth

The remaining tables . . .are meant to demonstrate that AP students in middle-level courses are doing well and that the tragedy of sophomore standing--at least on the single dimension of academic performance--is a myth.

The figures on sophomore standing in the third table compare the rank list groups of all advanced standing students since 1955 with those of all other students in the college. They are compared by year of residence rather than class. The sophomore standing students' performance in the first year, while it argues for a capacity to undertake advanced work, has been denigrated by some who argue that this is a foregone conclusion: freshman courses are graded more rigorously than middle-group offerings. But this would not account for the later years when the advanced standing students appear to maintain and improve the margin of their superior performance. And it would certainly not account for the fact that, of those who have graduated, almost half have received degrees of magna or better.

More could be adduced from these figures. For example, they call into question assumptions I know to be current--that advanced standing students falter badly in their first traumatic year, or that they fade badly in a premature year of thesis or generals. In many ways the tables tend to provoke discussion on a false premise, since theoretically we hoped these students would do as well as other undergraduates, and have no particular basis for expecting to do better.

I have two final comments on the tables. They would, of course, become less meaningful if one could give redence to anther popular assumption: they should be doing well; they're the best students in the class; why aren't they doing better? . . . By the quantitative measures we have, advanced standing students can be identified not by the level of their measured intelligence, their test scores and the like, but by the schools they were lucky enough to attend. They are in fact better prepared, perhaps a little more sophisticated, and they come from our best secondary schools; they are not necessarily, however, the brightest students in the class.

Finally, I am aware that all these figures relate to only one dimension, that of measured academic performance. Nothing has been said about whether these students--sunmma or not--have had the kind of education we wish to offer, or whether they are "tragic cases" for reasons not reflected in this somewhat pedestrian review of their grade record.

The record, however, is an important place to begin--if only to make it clear that the products of this program are doing well at Harvard by the only measurable standards we have with which to identify a successful undergraduate career. And I for one am inescapably drawn to the conclusion that they are doing well because of the program and the thrust toward excellent that it engenders--not in spite of it.

Harvard's Vexing Problem

I have always been surprised that those colleges with a two-year rather than a three-year concentration have not developed more effective programs of advanced standing. At Harvard this is our most vexing problem. There is a sharp division between our upper-class years and our freshman year, which is by and large a year of general education, a year to explore unknown fields, a year to gain insight into the nature of undergraduate concentration here.

It could well be argued that we have given away the wrong year--because in fact the high-school AP course is generally a first course in concentration, and none can be regarded as comparable to our lower-level offerings in general education. But it is equally true that a Harvard undergraduate concentration, particularly since we introduced a required program of sophomore tutorial, is a linked three-year program and not easily broken.

Advanced standing students, then, must enter a field in their first year of residence, and some of them probably enter the wrong filed, perhaps for wrong reasons. But, of course, so do many other undergraduates.

The facts about field of concentration among advanced standing students are surprising. In my last report I postulated that we would probably not see a very wide distribution of fields among the advanced standing students--they would have too little experience to be