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Harvard has traditionally avoided It is one thing to be a liberal arts It has never undertaken to a trade. But, at least in the Yet in the entire Class of 1961, only 145 men, 15 per cent of the total, took a full-time job after graduation. At that, this percentage was the largest in recent years. There is every reason to assume it will not rise again this year, especially since only 71 members of the Class of '62, just seven per cent of the total, contemplated working for a living at registration time last fall. Even the figure of 15 per cent gives an exaggerated picture of the working ambitions of the Class of '61. Of the 145 prospective members of the labor force, fully 81 (or 56 per cent) definitely planned to go on to graduate school in the future. For them and most of the other 34 (23 per cent of the group) who were considering the possibility of further study, work was a means to an end, and seemingly not something to be enjoyed for itself. In all, nearly four out of every five men who went to work after graduation hoped to return to school at some future time. On the other hand, 616 members of the Class of '61 (64 per cent of the total) planned immediate graduate study. Of the 144 entering military service after graduation, 85 (59 per cent of the group) were definitely going to graduate school later, and another 24 (17 per cent) were wavering. Of the 28 men who planned to travel, 10 were expected to wind up in a graduate school eventually. Thus 792 members of the Class definitely were bound for graduate schools, either immediately or as soon as practicable. This puts the grad school figure at 82 per cent, and the inclusion of those who were still just considering further study moves it near 88. Indications are that in the Class of 1962, nearly 70 per cent will proceed immediately to graduate school, and that the proportion of the Class either planning further study at some time or toying with the idea will be greater than 90 per cent. NOW of course, there is nothing evil about graduate study per se; certainly, for some people it is a meaningful addition to undergraduate education. But when 90 per cent of the Senior Class entertains thoughts of attending graduate school, something is terribly, disturbingly wrong. Either the College is admitting too many academically oriented students, or it is encouraging scholarly pretensions in too many men, or it is doing both of these things and most probably making other errors as well. If Harvard cannot instill in its students any values other than academic ones, it fails as a liberal arts college. The 1961 statistics on post-graduate plans included other disturbing figures. Far and away the largest number of grad students were remaining in the Arts and Sciences, the most undirected and purposeless of all the paths of study. A total of 218 members of the Class of '61, 35 per cent of those planning graduate study, continued in Arts and Sciences. Another bad sign was that for the first time in many years, Law pushed past Medicine into second place on the list of graduate fields. One hundred forty-eight seniors (24 per cent of the immediate grad students) planned to enter law schools, while only 141 (23 per cent) intended to study Medicine. This may be an unhappy turn of events, because of the motivations involved. Generally speaking, the decision to study Medicine is thought out well before senior year. The difficulties of becoming a doctor are so great that only the truly dedicated make the attempt; and those who do usually have prepared themselves for the task during college. A recent article in Time may THE correlation between undergraduate grades and immediate It is a frequent claim that those who were Group IV or Group V students at Harvard are the ones who go on to great things in the world of It is important not to be Time's recent article sees the graduate study binge mainly as Clearly, something is out of In the report on the Class of '61, perhaps the most significant observation was this: "Every senior registrant in the fall received the following questionnaire card in his registration envelope, but not every senior questionnaire card in his registration envelope, but not every senior questionnaire found its way back to this office; in fact, we were missing cards from 15 per cent of our sample for the fall survey. Evidently, 15 per cent of the class didn't think it was worth the time to fill out a short questionnaire at registration, so they didn't bother. Harvard students just do not concern themselves with matters in which they have no interest. They study and go to class only when they want to. They get up at whatever hour of the morning or afternoon suits them, and they devote an amazingly large percentage of each day to doing exactly what they feel like doing. And the way Harvard men learn to think, in their violent sort of existentialism, the order of the day, be it studying or working on the CRIMSON or sleeping with someone, becomes the most important thing in the world. Harvard students go days without shaving or bathing, and then they dress to the nines for no reason at all. They act the way they please, and they say precisely what they think. Living like this, among many others of equal brilliance and similar aberrations, is hardly preparation for the world to come. And further, the Harvard man has an immense scorn for the desires and pursuits for others. He laughs at grinds, jocks, music wonks, and professors. He thinks business is boring and a waste of time, and he feels that all politicians are crooked and misled. There is an iconoclasm that slashes through pretension and everything that looks to the undergraduate like pretension, which means practically all organized activity. THE freedom at Harvard, the excitement of the present moment, is not matched anywhere else, not at any other college and certainly not in the world outside. This spontaneity is a wonderful thing; and it often can't last long after graduation. But it is also destructive, because it offers no real alternative to the regulated life that must come. Many Harvard graduates go through life feeling vaguely dissatisfied and not knowing why. They still seek the freedom of undergraduate Harvard, but it no longer has anything to offer them. A sometimes cruel Harvard tradition is the 25th Reunion report, which