Making Post-Grad Plans? Look What Happened Last Year

Of the class of '66

* The largest group of those who went to graduate and professional schools stayed at Harvard.

* More Harvard men went to medical school than undergraduates from any other college

* Cliffies preferred medical school to any other professional program.

* Almost half the Harvard men now working have social service jobs.

* Half the Harvard men with Predicted Rank List 6 are now in business school.

Each August, in its efficient way, the Office of Graduate and Career Plans issues a little booklet, neatly printed and bound in red, titled "The Harvard College Class of 19--: Its Composition, Performance, and Plans." It is based on the intentions expressed by seniors before graduation, and includes a large number of charts as well as such chapter headings as "relationship of immediate plans to certain variables."

Radcliffe, by comparison, surveys its graduated seniors the following fall and each December comes out with a dozen or so mimeographed, hand-stapled pages on which are printed the names of every girl, alphabetically by field of concentration, along with a succinct indication of how she is occupying herself.

Exam period and the application season are a favorite time for browsing through such literature and thinking about The Future. A perusal of the two reports shows that:

* Three-quarters of Harvard '66 and half of Radcliffe '66 are now in graduate school. This is an increase of between three and four per cent over the class of '65 for both groups.

* Fifteen per cent of Harvard and 37 per cent of Radcliffe '66 are now working (as opposed to studying, job hunting, travelling or being in the armed forces). This is a two per cent decline for Radcliffe, no change for Harvard.

Graduate School

The largest number of those doing advanced study are in graduate schools of arts and sciences, and the largest number of those are (as with every kind of grad school) at Harvard. The 310 Harvard '66 graduates who are in arts and sciences are enrolled in 52 different schools. The class sent 56 students to Harvard GSAS, up 14 over '65. For Radcliffe, 15 of the 64 arts and sciences grad students (who attend 21 different school) are at Harvard. The second most popular school for Harvard graduates is Berkeley; for Cliffies, Columbia. Sixty-two per cent of those Harvard students who applied to Harvard GSAS were accepted, ranging from 100 per cent acceptance of the summa applicants to 27 per cent C.L.G.S. to nine per cent non-honors.

Law School

Law School is the most popular professional school for Harvard graduates, although for Cliffies it is outranked by medical school and ed school. A full 17 per cent of Harvard '66 went on to law school, the largest proportion of any class in history. Fourteen members of Radcliffe '66 are in law schools, just over five per cent of the class but exactly double the '65 figure.

Harvard Law School, like Harvard everything else, is the favorite. Of the Harvard '66 graduates in law schools, 44, or 23 per cent, are at Harvard. This is a drastic decline from '65, which sent 71 students to Harvard Law School. Six of the Cliffies are at Harvard. The University of Pennsylvania Law School ranked second with 20 Harvard '66 students and one Cliffie. Eighty-four per cent of the Harvard graduates who applied to law school were admitted to at least one, and acceptances were almost twice as frequent for magna graduates as for non-honors.

Medical School

Harvard sends more students to medical school than any other undergraduate institution in the country. Last year, the number was 158 (14 per cent). Thirty-one went to Harvard Med School, up three over '65. At Radcliffe, the number of graduates going to medical school almost doubled in one year, from 11 to 21, which is a surprising 16 per cent of the total number of Cliffies going on to grad school. Seven of those 21 are at Harvard Med.

Eighty-nine per cent of the Harvard graduates applying to medical schools were accepted by at least one. This represnts the highest rate of acceptance for any kind of graduate school except theology. However, the rate of acceptance of Harvard '66 by Harvard Med School was only 12.8 per cent, the lowest for any Harvard graduate school.

The second favorite medical school for Harvard was Columbia; for Radcliffe. Western Reserve.

Business and Education

Business schools ranked next for Harvard '66, with 65 students in 11 different schools (no Cliffies went on to business school). Almost half of those students, 31, went to Harvard, an increase of 10 over last year.

The number of Harvard graduates going on to schools of education almost doubled over the past year, from 16 to 31. Fifteen of these went to Harvard. Fifteen Cliffies are in ed school, eight of them at Harvard.

Marriage and the Military

Radcliffe, which does not keep records on the number of graduates in the army, reports that 27 per cent of the class of '66 is now married, the same proportion as the class of '65 at this time last year.

Harvard, which does not record marriage, reports that 83 men are in the military (seven per cent of the class, down from eight in '65). Of those, the largest proportion, 43 per cent, are in the Navy. Thirty-nine ROTC commissions were granted to '66 seniors, down 18 from 1965.

Work

Fewer Harvard graduates enter the job market than go to law school. Last year's senior class sent 167 to work. The proportion is standard for Harvard, but the distribution of jobs was a striking change. Almost half of those who are working are in social service: Peace Corps, Vista, ACCION, etc., most of which, of course, qualify for draft deferments. This is a 25 per cent increase over '65. The big shifts the other way occurred in the category of "general management," down from 16 per cent to a minute two per cent, and in engineering, down by half from 14 per cent to seven. Teaching claimed 20 per cent of the Harvard work force.

Radcliffe, which sent 101 girls into the job market (more than a third of the class), also concentrated on service jobs. The Peace Corps, Volunteer Teachers for Africa, National Teachers' Corps, and non-profit businesses attracted almost 20 per cent of those who are working. Non-scientific research was the second most popular field (18 percent), followed by teaching and communications (mostly publishing), with 14 per cent each.

The Radcliffe report, which breaks down current occupation by undergraduate field of concentration, shows that the highest consistency seems to be among science majors. All the biochemistry, chemistry, and biology students are now either teaching, studying, or working in science except one, who is studying classical Chinese in Paris. The field of concentration which seems to have the least relation to a concentrator's future is English, Radcliffe's favorite. Former English concentrators listed such occupations as "part time sales girl in Truc," "job hunting in Vienna," and writing labels for the Boston Museum of Science.

You can almost predict what you will be doing after graduation from your degree of honors. At Radcliffe, all of last year's summa and magna highest graduates are in grad school, as well as 60 per cent of the magnas, 42 per cent of the cums, and only 33 per cent of the non-honors graduates. At Harvard, 92 per cent of the summas go to grad school, along with 87 per cent of the magnas, 82 per cent of the C.L.G.S. graduates, 81 per cent of the cums, and 52 per cent of the non-honors.

The Harvard study found a direct correlation between graduation honors and attendance at a graduate school of arts and sciences: the higher the honors, the more likely that kind of grad school. On the other hand, the law school distribution for the class of '66 was quite even throughout the different degrees of honors. Elsewhere, one-third of those going to medical school graduated C.L.G.S. and 48 per cent of those going to business school graduated without honors.

Harvard considers its Predicted Rank List (PRL), which it uses as a factor in admissions, the "best single predictor yet devised of how well a man will do at Harvard." The PRL, which is derived from a secret formula of college board scores and high school rank in class, is also an excellent predictor of post-graduate performance. Of the 88 members of the class of '66 with PRL's between 2.0 and 2.4, 54 are in graduate schools of arts and sciences. Only 17 of the 153 graduates who entered Harvard with PRL's between 4.5 and 6.5 are in such schools now. Military service is a good example of the reliability of the PRL. Seven per cent of the class of '66 entered the military; of those with a PRL between 5.5 and 5.9, the proportion was 34 per cent. Half of those with PRL 6 went to business school; no one in the PRL 1 group went into either business or the military.

Radcliffe does not use a Predicted Rank List. But then, Harvard doesn't have three '66 graduates in secretarlia school