The Army reduced its draft call yesterday to 15,000 men for July, while the Educational Testing Service at Princeton announced at the same time that scoring of more than 175,000 draft deferment tests had begun.
The results of the Selective Service College Qualification exam are expected to be in the hands of the individual draft boards by June 20. Students will probably never know how many answers they get right, however, since the correct number needed to reach the passing grade of 70 will not be released.
Reduced casualties in Korea resulted in the lowest draft call since the new Selective Service System began. The Army drafted 80,000 men in January and the same number in February and March. It took 40,000 a month in April and May, fixed a total of 20,000 for June and 22,000 for August of this year.
Saturday, Harvard played host to 1,461 students who were taking the test. Memorial Hall was designated as the test center, but ten other buildings were used for the unforeseen crowd.
Although other college undergraduates in the Boston area reported that they had difficulty with test, the majority of the Harvard and M.I.T. students stated they finished within two and a half hours without hurrying. Only a few said they failed to finish.
Henry S. Dyer, Director of the Office of Tests, was concerned mainly as to whether the results would be interpreted intelligently. He pointed out that the Draft Boards will probably not understand the "limitations of this sort of test." He also pointed out that a high score "is not necessarily a perfect indication of future academic success."
Fair but Simple
Students generally thought that the test was fair, albeit simple. Charles W. Austin '54 termed it "ridiculously easy--I finished in an hour and a half and then was bored for the next hour and a half."
"Very fair indeed," was the comment of C. Kenneth Orski '53. "It was pretty easy, no trouble to finish--nearly everybody finished early," Edwin M. Cohen '53 asserted. "I almost went to deep," he added.
One of the few that failed to finish was Nathaniel L. Harris, Jr. '52. He said he found the Math easy, but the English was "no snap." He claimed he "was working all the time," but after a while be "get fed up with" the word problems.
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