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THE PRESS

The New Yale Requirements

The new Entrance Regulations, which we published last week, end the September final examinations to the Freshman Class, do away with entrance conditions, and propose a continuation of the study in the field of scholastic aptitude which is now being experimented with generally among the colleges and which was tried out last year at Yale. The whole tendency of these new regulations, appears to be towards a more up-to-date method of ascertaining whether a boy is able to got on at Yale, and away from old cut-and-dried methods, which as older graduates will recall, were a bone of contention between the University and its Western alumni a decade or more ago. We do not believe that any rule of thumb test, whatever it is called, will be of much use in discovering a boy's aptitude for college work. But the Scholastic Aptitude tests that are now being experimented with avoid that error; if they are not given too great weight, they can be of some use without doubt. The danger in that sort of thing always lies in its too-theoretical use. The ending of the old entrance "conditions" simply means that the University is now considering its Freshman applicants on a broader basis than the often accidental "marks" a boy may get on his entrance papers. School records tell more that final examinations, valuable as the latter are to determine whether a boy is capable of meeting a test when the occasion arises. This will work out so that an applicant with a good school record will not fail of entrance to Yale simply because he may "flunk" a single subject in his finals. The ending of the September "finals" has come largely because the University does not expect particularly good results form a school-boy who has wasted his time during the school year and hurries through a summer school to make up for it . . . We can look on these changes as long steps forward to the day when entrance examinations will be of loss importance even than they are now, a boy's record and proved ability count even more than they do now. --Yale Alumni Weekly

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