New QRR Will be Tougher

The Quantitative Reasoning Requirement (QRR) will be more difficult for the class of 1992, and may be on its way to becoming an eleventh Core Curriculum topic, some of its administrators said yesterday.

Preceptor for the QRR Bruce E. Moley '75 said the student-faculty subcommittee in charge of the freshman requirement plans to make the data portion of the exam harder, but has not decided exactly how to do so.

The subcommittee acted because of professors' complaints that their students often pass the exam without understanding the material, said Aaron S. Richmond '91, one of two students on the subcommittee, which is part of the Standing Committee on the Core Curriculum. He said the changes in the program would make freshmen work harder to understand the material, but would also give them more help with studying.

Next year's QRR data exam will be similar to the existing test, but will "involve more logical thinking and less formula-plugging," said David R. Golob '89, a test proctor and a member of the Undergraduate Council's Academics Committee.

Members of the QRR subcommittee said the change was not yet official, and Paul D. Baum '90 said he doubted it would happen. Economics Lecturer Jeffrey Walcowitz, a subcommittee member, said he had not heard of the possible change yesterday.

As for the future, Baum said the Core Committee may create a new 'Science C' requirement, covering statistics and mathematics, to replace the QRR.

And Richmond said the QRR subcommittee would ask the Standing Committee on the Core to let members of the class of '92 fulfill both parts of the requirement by passing Statistics 100. By doing so, he said, the University could test the value of requiring a course rather than an exam.

Richmond said it would be difficult to change the requirements so that undergraduates would still take eight Core classes in a program with 11 categories instead of the current 10. He said the subcommittee expected the departments would disagree over which topics should be required for students in various concentrations, if it became necessary to exempt students from three courses apiece instead of two.

In addition, he said the difficulty of creating many new courses at once would cause considerable delay. The freshman committee member speculated that even if Harvard creates a Science C requirement, it might not appear in the course catalog for five to 10 years.