To the Board of Overseers:

The President has the honor to submit the following Report for the academic year 1910-11.

Losses in Teaching Staff.

At the close of this academic year Dr. Thomas Dwight died, having borne a prolonged illness with conspicuous courage. With the exception of a single year he had been on the instructing staff of the Medical School continuously since 1872, and since 1883 as Parkman Professor of Anatomy. Following Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who had held this position for thirty-five years, he held it for twenty-eight, and during that time he rendered great service to the School as instructor and investigator. The University has also lost by death Dr. Walter Remsen Brinckerhoff, who had recently been appointed Assistant Professor of Pathology after a devoted mission as Director of the Leper Colony at Molokai; Mr. Thomas Hall, who kept us his teaching in spite of growing blindness; and Dr. Ray Madding McConnell, who had been doing excellent work as Instructor in Social Ethics. It has lost by retirement Professor Silas Marcus Macvane, who began as Instructor in Political Economy in 1875, became Instructor in History in 1878, Assistant Professor of the same subject in 1883, Professor in 1886, and finally, in 1887, McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History; Dr. John Templeton Bowen, who to the regret of his colleagues in the Medical School was constrained by his health to resign his professorship of Dermatology; and Frederick Caesar de Sumichrast, who retired from his associate professorship of French after teaching thirty-four years.

New Requirement for Admission.

Some of the recent changes in the regulations of the College that went into operation for the first time during the past academic year, have begun to show their effects. The one with which a student is brought earliest into contact is the new requirement for admission. The reasons for a change in this matter were set forth in the last annual report; but since those reasons were based not so much on dissatisfaction with the old examinations in the cases of those boys who were prepared for them, as on the barrier they erected against boys from good schools over the country which do not direct their chief attention to preparation for these examinations, the new requirement has been set up only as an alternative to the old one. The two stand, and probably will long stand, side by side. Nevertheless, the new requirement differs essentially from the other in character and in aim. The old examinations are designed to test all the secondary school work done, and can be taken a few at a time, an examination being passed on each piece of work when completed. The system is one of checking off studies and accumulating credits. The new requirement is an attempt to measure, not the quantity of work done, but the intellectual state of the boy; a certificate being accepted for the quantity of his school work, and examinations being held on sample subjects to test the quality of his scholarship. The regulations in full will be found in an appendix to this report, but the main outlines of the system may be briefly pointed out. To be admitted to examination the boy must present a statement from his school of the studies he has pursued, and these must be the content of a good secondary school course devoted mainly to academic subjects. Four subjects must then be offered for examination, and must be offered at the same time. One of them must be English; another must be Latin or Greek, if the student is to be a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts, but may be a modern language in the case of a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Science; the third must be Mathematics, or Physics or Chemistry (the reason for the option being the difficulty that some intelligent boys find in doing themselves justice in an examination in Mathematics); and the fourth is any subject of an academic character, not already offered, that the boy may select. As these are sample examinations covering subjects which are of primary importance or in which the candidate feels most confidence, they must be passed well. But it must be borne in mind that the object is to discover whether the boy is fit for college work, not to measure his proficiency in particular studies.

Result of New Plan.

Information about the new requirement was sent out freely; yet the plan was new, untried, and formulated only a few months before the June examinations, and under such conditions the number and geographical distribution of the applicants was highly encouraging. Of these there were in all, in June and September, 185, of whom 46 were discarded by reason of defective school records,--for the most part because they had pursued no subject consecutively. The remaining 139 were allowed to take the examinations; and of these 83 were admitted and 56, or 40.2 per cent., were rejected; while of the boys who presented themselves for final examination under the old plan 17.1 per cent were rejected, and 8.1 per cent of the June candidates did not reappear to complete their examinations in September. It had been supposed by some unconnected with the University that the new plan would be virtually a form of admission by certificate, in which examination would play a subordinate part, and hence would mean a letting down of the bars; but the result of the first experiment has dispelled that impression. In fact, four of the candidates who failed under the new system in June tried the old one with success in September; while only one succeeded in a second assault upon the new examinations. The masters of the regular preparatory schools seem now inclined to offer only their best pupils under the new plan. A boy, indeed, whose capacity to enter is doubtful would be wise in trying the old plan, for he has thus a larger chance of being admitted, although with conditions; whereas a boy who is sure to get in will do better to adopt the new plan and come in without conditions, which are always a handicap in college.

Wider Representation Secured.

One of the chief objects of the new plan, as already observed, was to open the road to Harvard College to the pupils from good public schools, and more particularly from good public schools, throughout the nation. In this respect, also, the figures are gratifying. Of the students entering under the old plan in June and September, 1911, 72 per cent were prepared in Massachusetts, 85 per cent in schools in New England, only 8.5 per cent in schools in the other Atlantic states, and only 4.5 per cent in schools west of the Alleghanies; whereas of those admitted at the same time under the new plan only 41 per cent came from schools in Massachusetts, 47 per cent from schools in New England, while over 31 per cent came from schools in the other Atlantic states and 21 per cent from those west of the Alleghanies; there being represented twelve states from whose schools no boy was admitted under the old plan.

Public and Private Schools.

The comparison of public with private or endowed schools (including therein private tutors) is not less striking. Under the old plan the private schools sent 46 per cent of the candidates admitted. Under the new plan they sent 34 per cent. With such conditions in regard to the situation and character of the schools from which they come, it might be supposed that the greater part of the boys admitted under the new plan would offer a modern language in place of Latin. But although the boys who do so form a larger proportion under the new plan than under the old one, they are still a small minority. They were 6 1-2 per cent under the old plan and 20 1-2 per cent under the new.

No Lowering of Standard.

As yet the new plan has not been in operation long enough to forecast its final effects. That it is perfect no one would assert, but that on the first trial it gives evidence of fulfilling the objects for which it was designed can hardly be denied. The difficulty in its application comes in the preparation of examination papers that will test the quality of scholarship acquired rather than the quantity of ground covered. The art of examining demands experience, and adjustment to a change of aim requires time, but continued improvement will certainly come with practice. That the new plan brings within reach of Harvard College boys from schools which had hitherto not sent them seems certain, and it is not less clear that this result has been attained without lowering the standard of admission. Whether in scholarly qualities the students entering by the new method will be better or not so good as those admitted under the old plan remains to be seen; but that they are far from indolent, or handicapped at the outset, is proved by the fact that not a single one of the eighty-three was put on probation for low marks at the examinations in November, 1911.

Choice of Electives.