With such time-tested mechanical devices as College Board scores, the Admissions Committee can easily eliminate the academic dregs. But the large middle ground of applicants presents critical problems of evaluation.

As ever, the Committee on Admissions weights grades highest, but it also emphasizes geographical location by starting the selection process in the west and then working east. When it comes to appraising things like general seriousness of purpose or kinds of extra-curricular activity, the admissions process becomes a "highly individualized proposition," Gummere points out. This year a record number of personal interview reports were submitted, and each particular report must be evaluated in a different way. So big are today's problems that a quorum of the Committee on Admissions holds sessions almost daily from April through June.

6. Advertising Problems

Yet the feeling still persists that Harvard is not getting its full quota of men who are outstanding "leaders" as well as scholars.

President Conant describes the College's latest moves of promotion as a case of "running hard to stand still." The program of "running hard" involves sending officials and alumni into various schools where they contact possible applicants. A combination selling and information campaign follows in areas where Harvard feels it may have been cut off from its normal flow by the recruiting programs of rivals.

"Selling" a college, though, can become a performance approaching a Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza.

In fact DeMille himself could probably take a few pointers from the annual "College Day" held at many large mid-western high schools. The schools, many of them no doubt irked at the unending parade of college admissions men, have in many cases had over 400 college officers assemble in the same place on one day to talk shop.

John Monro, who has been playing the Illinois circuit for Harvard during the past several years, says that "the travelling circus of admissions counselors descends on a high school like locusts." Monro explains that he takes a table, plunks down some pamphlets, hangs up a Harvard banner, sees a few harried students and parents, and then pulls up stakes for the next town's "College Day."

Monro feels that this type of selling and interviewing "doesn't do too much harm," but it isn't exactly his idea of how to conduct the program. He much prefers to deal with each school individually, and by virtue of his coming from the East, he usually does manage to conduct his business more calmly outside the arena.

Dean Bender does not want to see this high pressure selling get out of hand either. "We can certainly benefit from good salesmanship and the added evidence from interviews," he says, but the problem "must be approached with perspective and humility." Bender insists that any College of "real integrity" will inevitably be out of tune with some powerful currents in American life. As a result, Harvard would surely be wrong to try to become a "popular" college that was "all things to all men." Harvard's biggest selling point is its tremendously strong educational reputation; as Bender notes, "We cannot possibly hope to appeal to all the leaders of schools and still expect to maintain this basic integrity."

One other extremely delicate problem concerned with nation-wide promotion is that of judging applicants from one region against those of another. It could be easy to-accept large numbers of Western students while rejecting better qualified eastern students. Educational standards could be sacrificed through such a careless procedure.

7. What About Athletes?

To many both inside and outside the Harvard family it may seem that the College and all its Ivy rivals have gone on gigantic athlete-purchasing sprees. Some skeptics maintain that Harvard is abandoning its traditional policy of having students play football in favor of having football players attend colleges.

No Harvard administrator will flatly deny that the College is conducting an intensive search for scholar-athletes; but at the same time, the College will point out that it is not at all changing its amateur athletic policy. A "Balanced College," administrator say, requires an intercollegiate athletic program.

Since the war, however, rival Ivy League recruiting has unquestionably attracted many fine scholar-athletes who might normally have come to Cambridge. In striking back, Harvard may expect unpleasant consequences no matter what it does. Even when Crimson alumni try to convince a good scholar-athlete to come here, the boy will often construe such talk as the same old bribery they have heard from Big Time recruiters, albeit done up in a dignified package. Some Harvard alumni may even have made empty, irresponsible promises, but Dean Bender feels that any "disillusioned" football players here today are more likely victims of the current national mania that seems to say a college owes the athlete something special.