Harvard Prize Money Draws Few Students

This year only three students entered the competition for the Susan A. Potter Prize in Comparative Literature which awards $260 as first prize and $130 as second prize.

Last year there was one competitor and there were none two years ago. This is not uncommon for many of the competitive prizes at Harvard.

Each year more than $17,000 may be awarded to Harvard and Radcliffe students as endowed prizes for original writing, yet there are few competitors. There are at least 56 endowed prizes at Harvard, 12 of them open to Radcliffe students, with awards averaging about $200 and ranging up to $2275.

Honors Theses

Most of the prizes are awarded for original compositions in fields specified by the particular prize. Sometimes senior honors theses are automatically considered for an award but usually

students themselves must submit essays for a specific competition.

Although many prizes have had few or no competitors in the last few years, the coveted Bowdoin Prize in English is an exception, attracting 27 undergraduate competitors this year and 23 last year. However, the Bowdoin Prizes in Latin and Greek have attracted at most one or two candidates a year.

Among the famous recipients of the Bowdoin Prize are Ralth Waldo Emerson, Class of 1821, Richard Henry Dana, Class of 1851, and Nathan M. Pusey '28.

The low number of candidates for these iterative prizes probably indicates that few students know of their existence. A booklet giving all necessary information is available from Harvard Information, but this year's deadlines for all but five prizes have already passed.