(* Princeton interviews are completed reports filed with Admissions office: Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth figures include unfilled interviews)

(# Princeton and Harvard figures are in terms of active committees, whereas Yale and Dartmouth figures include individuals as well as groups)

(@ Princeton scholarship figure includes loans)

"... There is an aristocracy to which the sons of Harvard have belonged, and let us hope will ever aspire to belong--the aristocracy which excels in many sports, carries off honors and prizes in learned professions and bears itself with distinction in all fields of Intellectual labor and combat..." PRESIDENT ELIOT, INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 1869.

These six steps have at last provided most of the necessary machinery to match similar Princeton, Dartmouth, and Yale programs. Yet they represent no guarantee of successfully "balancing the College" without alert, aggressive alumni to fill committee ranks.

At the same time, however, the project carries certain grave dangers. Unleashed alumni who track down only football players could do the College much greater harm than those who overlook the athletes and other schoolboy leaders and hunt solely for scholars. Probably the basic questions to be faced are whether everyone has the same definition of "Balance in the college" and whether everything about Harvard's new program is helping to meet this goal.

4.What Does 'Balance' Mean?

"Balance in the College" does not mean a student body of "all-around boys." As Dean Bender points out, it is not the mission of Harvard College to educate a vast horde of C-"good citizens." Bender and others realize that Harvard is too important an institution to tamper with. "Superior academic intelligence is still our primary concern," Bender emphasizes.

But beyond this common student base of top intelligence, the College is seeking a variety of skills and tastes in its undergraduate body. It seeks scholars. But it also wants top writers, athletes, politicians, musicians, debaters, and even some men who don't seem to be doing much of anything right now.

"Balance" is a crucial factor in education itself, Harvard has always felt. For a national student body possessing many and varied talents offers the most perfect cosmopolitan environment for teaching and for learning. Samuel Eliot Morrison '08 says in his "The Founding of Harvard College":

"As long as Harvard remains true to her early traditions, rich men's sons and poor, serious scholars and frivolous wasters, saints and sinners ... will meet in her Houses, her Yard, and her athletic fields, rubbing off each others angularities, and learning from contact what cannot be learned from books."

Much of this balance is achieved almost automatically. Harvard still holds undisputed first place as the nation's top University, a reputation which will always attract a solid group of fine scholars. Anyway, for better or worse, the College's inevitable reputation as a "brain factory" will probably keep shunting to Harvard "the best boy we've had in years." But only about ten percent of the College form this absolute "scholar class"; it is below this top ten percent "balancing" qualities (like character, extra-curricular interests, and of intent) enter into the picture.

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 a proposition," Gummere points out. This year saw a record number of personal interview reports come in. So big are today's problems that a quorum of the Committee on Admissions holds session almost daily from April through June.

Although National Scholarships and recent alumni activity have already reached many new areas, the feeling still persists that Harvard is not getting its full quota of the men who are outstanding "leaders" as well as scholars.