The comparison of the records of prep school men and high school men at Harvard, Dartmouth and Princeton, quoted in today's "Princetonian" from the May issue of the "Harvard Advocate," presents some very interesting material. The figures show that at Harvard, where there is an approximately equal number of prep school and high school men, and at Princeton, where prep school men overwhelmingly predominate, the latter win the larger share of social and athletic honors. At Dartmouth, on the other hand, where public school graduates predominate, they suffer no inferiority in college activities. Scholastically, at all three colleges, public school men excel, a situation explained by the fact that most graduates of private schools go to college, but usually only the more intelligent public school men do so.

This report sheds valuable light on the position of public school men in the colleges. It is evident that the high school graduate has less chance to attain distinction so far as social and extra-curricular activities are concerned, it he goes to a college where prep school men have even a slight numerical majority. On the other hand, where he predominates, the public school man seems to have every change for preferment socially and in campus activities. Indeed, the experience at Dartmouth indicates that where the prep school man is in the ascendant, it is not from any inherent superiority but simply by virtue of the fact that he is one of a prep school group.

The comparison with the situation at Dartmouth seems to prove, unfortunately, that Princeton is not a democratic institution. The problem, which goes right to the heart of the American educational system, is whether the public school graduate, generally at a financial and social disadvantage, can fit into the private university that is composed in large part of prep school men. The answer is not that the private college should adept a more rigid policy of exclusion which would thus tend to make it over more undemocratic and snobbish, but that it should make an effect to preserve an intelligently worked out proportion between the two groups of entreats a preparation which, other considerations aside, would not put the high school man in such a minority that he would feel hopelessly overwhelmed. The Princetonian