EDUCATIONAL REVIEW

JANUARY, 1906

I

ARE COLLEGE ENTRANCE REQUIREMENTS TOO GREAT IN QUANTITY?1

Are college entrance requirements too great in quantity? I answer the question unhesitatingly in the affirmative, and believe that I can maintain the position. An appeal to the experience of almost any teacher who is preparing boys or girls for college will meet with an unqualified response, as has been proved by actual trial, but what I should like to do is to go beyond the simple expression of personal judgment, and to rest the case on something stronger than mere cumulative opinion.

In getting at the facts, the first point to be settled is as to what may be considered the standard of college entrance so far as quantity is concerned. Is there any definite standard? On the one hand we have the requirements of such a college as Harvard, for instance. On the other we have the small feeble institution whose requirements on paper amount to only about half as much, and sometimes in reality to less even than that. A certain schoolmaster, advocating the theory that every boy, whose family could afford it, should go to college, said that for the weaklings he knew of a college where practically anyone would be taken, provided he could show that he was a gentleman. Another schoolmaster in the group responded that he knew of one where even that requirement was not in

A paper read before The Schoolmasters' Association of New York and vicinity, November 11, 1905.

sisted on. In the course of the investigation of this subject there came under my observation the catalog of a college bearing a highly honored name, one of the very oldest in the country, and one whose record of achievement entitles it to be regarded with respect. The requirements for admission are interesting. They consist of English, algebra to, not thru. quadratics, three books of geometry, and one other subject, choice being given the candidate between physics, history, Latin, Greek, French, and German. That is all; three subjects only, English, mathematics, and one other. The specifications in Latin are: grammar, composition, three books of Cæsar, four orations of Cicero, and two books of Virgil. In Greek they are: grammar, composition, and the Anabasis. Homer is gravely said to be "undesirable for preparatory work." It is needless to state that this paper is not concerned with entrance requirements of this grade, and yet many of our fathers entered college on just such a basis as this.

What

A boy could enter Washington and Lee two or three years before he would dare apply for admission to Yale or Harvard, and there are all grades between the two extremes. standard shall we take as the basis of our discussion? The answer is simple. Our work is conditioned by the heaviest requirements. Our boys are going to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, and they must be prepared to meet the requirements of those institutions. It is not much relief to a boy preparing to enter Harvard to know that he could get into Cornell or Williams more easily.

In order to make clear the point at which I am aiming it has seemed wise to reduce the requirements of several of the colleges in which we are most interested to a numerical basis, that is, to a system of points such as is employed at Harvard and Columbia. I have adopted the Columbia scale as being the simplest, and also as more likely to be familiar to most of us. On this scale the English required for entrance counts 3 points, Latin 4, Greek 3, elementary German and French 2 each, algebra and plane geometry together 3, history 2, physics 1, and so on. Fifteen points are required to enter

Columbia.