Those were the days, Provost Buck notes, when Harvard was "living easily on its past prestige." Nobody thought seriously of having to "recruit" top-quality students. Gummere recalls that admissions problems in those days were "open and shut": the committee could do its whole job of picking a class in just four days, and somehow there always seemed just the right supply of outstanding candidates.

During the 'thirties, however, several things began to complicate the picture. First, excellent state universities like Michigan, Illinois, and California, as well as private colleges like Stanford and Oberlin--grew in academic stature and thus gained appeal for men across the country. At first, Harvard, with her tremendously strong reputation could ignore the competition. Armed with National Scholarships, Harvard could continue to push for a national college without any real worries of having to step up recruiting.

"From the first foundation to the present, four main streams have watered the sell on which the Universities have flourished. These ultimate sources of strength are: . . . the cultivation of learning for its own sake; . . . the general educational stream of the liberal arts; . . . the educational stream that makes possible the professions; and the never failing river of student life . . . The cultivation of learning alone produces not a university but a research Institute. The sole concern with the student life produces an academic country club or merely a football team maneuvering under a collegiate banner. The future of the university tradition in America depends on keeping a proper balance between the four essential Ingredients. . ." PRESIDENT CONANT, TERCENTENARY ADDRESS, 1936. Classes of 1954 at a Glance   HARVARD  YALE  PRINCETON  DARTMOUTH Gross number of applicants  3000  3000  3200  3380 Number In class  1150  1049  763  719 Number Interviews (approximate)  2000  2000  1800  3300 Geographical Distribution: New England  44.4%  28.4%  7.1%  33.2% Middle Atlantic  26.3  35.9  57.1  39.8 Middle West  14.0  18.9  22.5  16.0 Far West  6.0  6.8  4.8  5.9 South  6.0  8.1  6.4  2.9 Foreign & Others  3.3  1.9  2.1  2.2 Private Schools  50  63  50  39.5 Public Schools  50  37  40  60.5 Scholarship Students  24  28  30 -40  23 Non-scholarship  76  72  70  77 Number Alumni Committees  90  300-400  87  300-400

COMMENT: The above figures indicate, that in pure numbers, Princeton is attracting the largest number of gross applications per places to be filled and that Dartmouth is well ahead in the number of interviews conducted. And despite Harvard's early National Scholarship program, both Yale and Princeton now have better national distribution percentages.

In the above figures, Princeton interviews omit unfiled interviews. Princeton scholarship figures include loans. And in the Alumni Committee statistics, Yale includes individuals as well as full committees.

But Eastern competitors like Princeton, Dartmouth, and Amherst started following Harvard's lead in looking west. The other eastern colleges naturally saw similar advantages in expanding their own clientele. Noting Harvard's success, they responded by sending their alumni on the road both to attract new students and to interview them for admission.

All the eastern colleges--Harvard especially--soon discovered that expanding westward and also increasing scholarships resulted in multiplying by three or four the number of schools contributing applicants. Harvard was no longer dealing with schools like Exeter, Groton, and Boston Latin, whose headmasters and principals knew well which men the College was looking for. As a result, the Admissions Committee could no longer count so heavily on school recommendations, and it then began to see the need for much more personal interviewing.

During the war, Harvard's drive for a national college was mothballed. Then, right after the war, the other Ivy colleges greatly intensified their efforts over anything they had ever done, but Harvard, meanwhile, seemed still to be suffering from its war-time stagnation. Conant himself believes that the movement for "Balance in the College," nationally and otherwise, lost some momentum right about that time.

3. Buck Notes Danger

Whatever the reasons, Harvard simply had not geared itself to the surge of alumni activity by other colleges, and it even found itself facing possible loss of its pre-war balance. The Provost's 1946-47 Bulletin articles pointed to the fact that many, many applications were "running to type," and he warned:

". . . We should take measures to increase the flow of good students who have other qualities that are needed to reach our ideal balance. . . . I believe there are many boys of the kind we want in the second quarter of classes that now send up only top men.

". . . (But) let me make it clear that I do not propose that we should take any action to stop the flow to Harvard of the studious or sensitive type of boys. This should be obvious. What is not obvious . . . is the paucity of applicants of the kind we desire.

". . . We need at Harvard an extended organization for making contacts with the 500 to 1,000 schools which now send us students, often only occasionally. . . . And we must more effectively carry our message of what Harvard is and what it offers to the country at large."

Buck's words did not long go unanswered. Since 1946-47 six things have happened to put Harvard on a virtual par with Princeton, Dartmouth, and Yale in at least its physical capacity to spread its name and admissions data:

(1). The night before the 1949 Princeton football game, University administrators met Harvard Club delegates at the Harvard Club of Boston. Alumni agreed to revitalize and to man Schools Committees. The administrators on their part agreed to take appropriate steps in Cambridge to implement the program. Over 90 such Harvard Club committees are now in operation, although only half of these can currently be classified as truly "active."