Section Men Criticize New Admission System

Several head section men expressed strong dissatisfaction yesterday with the new admissions procedure used in 12 lower-level General Education courses. Some reported receiving two and three times as many applications as there were places available.

Under a new policy adopted this year, certain limited-enrollment courses considered applications irrespective of the order in which they were filed. Criteria for selections were left up to the individual course heads.

"The system as it was used this year ended up in a great deal of griping and confusion," Robert Verlin, head section man of Soc Sci 2, declared. Verlin, who supervised the selection of 300 out of more than 900 applicants, noted that "only half of those accepted even bothered to show up at the sectioning meeting' yesterday.

"It seems crazy that they should have to stand outside at two in the morning but this is not the answer," he said.

Speaking for another Soc Sci course, an instructor who wished to remain anonymous said, "As far as the course is concerned, the 'first-come-first-served' basis is better."

In Hum 2, where over 1000 students applied for 500 places, section men agreed that the new procedure offered "some basis for judgement" on the qualifications of students but called it "far from ideal."

Return Unlikely

There seemed to be little possibility, however, that courses where the new procedure did not work would be allowed to return to the old wait-in-line system. Sargent Kennedy '28, registrar of the College, said it was unlikely that such independent action would win the approval of the Committee on Educational Policy.

Since students who applied to more than one course accounted for most of the oversubscription, some courses found that they actually had far fewer students than they thought. Hum 1, for example, admitted everyone who applied to it, including 114 students who were also accepted by Hum 2. Even so, it fell short of its 500-man limit.