In a recent tabulation of the relative standing of the many graduate schools throughout the country Harvard again asumes first place. In the most recent issue of the Alumni Bulletin the findings of Lawrence Foster are opitomised in a reprint article from "School And Society."

Numerous writers at different times have attempted to rank American graduate schools in order of their eminence, employing one set of criteria or another. No one, however, as far as the writer knows, has made such an extensive collection and presentation of possible criteria for such an evaluation as Laurence Foster in his recent volume, "The Functions of a Graduate School in a Democratic Society."

A total of 53 different institutions are found in one or more of these tables. Only sixteen institutions, however, are named in over half of them. These sixteen Mr. Foster has undertaken to rank according to a composite index based upon 26 of his 28 measures. In deriving this composite index, however, he has added together indiscriminately men points, and percentages and inadvertently has really assigned chance weights to the different components which seems hardly justified--certainly he does not attempt to justify them in his derivation of the final compostite table.

It seems worth while, therefore, to combine Mr. Foster's original data by another method to see what difference, if any, it would make in the final ranking of these sixteen outstanding graduate schools. t This has been done after conference with Mr. Foster and at his specific request. This article in The Alumni Bulletin is published with his approval.

The 28 criteria which were used were as follows:

1. Institutions at which Guggenheim fellows are located.

2. Institutions at which national research fellows are located.

3. Institutions at which national research fellows in the physical sciences are located.

4. Institutions at which national research fellows in the physical sciences are located.

5. Institutions at which members of the committees of the Social Research Council 1923-33 are located.

6. Institutions at which officers and members of committees of the American Association for the Advancement of Science are located.

7. Institutions at which members of the National Research Council 1931-32 are located.

8. Present or former location of delegates of the American Council of Learned Societies.

9. Institutions at which starred men from "American Men of Science" are located.

10. Institutions at which follows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences are located.