Personal contact between students and instructors, and small classes are heavily stressed. There is no tutorial for Architectural Sciences majors.

Work for the Arch. Sci. concentrator is gruelling. Between 30 and 40 hours a week are spent by the average student, a majority of which are consumed over a drawing board. Examinations are either oral or drawn. As a senior, the concentrator must take a three-day exam to test his creative ability, and an oral exam covering his special field. Reason exams are not written: the department teaches Architecture, not about Architecture.

For a limited number of promising students whose records are good enough, opportunity of accelerating is granted. By intensive study in the senior year, these concentrators may complete the equivalent of the first year's curriculum of the Graduate School.

Astronomy

Number of Concentrators: 15.

1951 Commencement Honors: cum 2, magna 1.

For the man who likes to apply his mathematics, Astronomy can be a breeze, if he wants it to be.

But the gentleman who can not juggle calculus may find the going a little rough. The department requires seven courses for concentration--only three in Astronomy, two more in physics, and two in math. The gimmick, however, is that only two of the total may be courses regularly open to Freshman; the others must be chosen from the upper class levels, which in Physics, and Astronomy itself, can be rather intensive.

Asronomy I, the department's survey course, needs little application from the mathematically mined majors in the field; some of them skip it, in favor of more attractive course on the upper levels. Astronomy 3 is the basic half course in the practical mechanics of star-gazing, with plenty of mathematical and physical technicalities.

Astronomy I usually gets enough dabblers to make it the largest course in the field, but this year Astronomy 2 (Elementary Navigation, copped this honor. With over 20 members, Astronomy 140, Mathematical Astronomy, is also relatively huge.

The department has some of the most famous astronomy in the world on its staff; Fred L. Whipple, Bart J. Bok., Donald H. Mendel, and Harlow Shapley. But Shapley is retiring as Director of the University Observatory next year, and it is uncertain just how much teaching he will do for undergraduates. Whipple will be on Sabbatical leave, at least for the spring term; he says a visiting professor will probably come in to handle both his and Shapley's classes, but is as yet not ready to announce who this will be.

Got To Be Good

The typical major in the field is usually a person with a deep interest in the complicated workings of the solar system, although the department does not discourage the person who wants only a smattering of the science.

Even though Whipple admits the most of the opportunities in the field are for graduates, the undergraduates, if he is good, find the labs always open, and the professors willing to help on pet projects even to the building of a small telescope. Then, too, the advanced undergraduate gets to the excellent observing and research facilities at Agassiz Park, 25 miles inland.

Over 75 percent of the concentrators make a brave try for honors, but the department is somewhat chary of handing out magnas to everyone who makes the effort. No thesis is demanded, but most of the concentrators "just like to write one anyway," according to Whipple. An oral examination must be taken, however.