The fast-talking executive wound up his pep speech to a group of aspiring advertising copywriters by holding up a pack of "Sweet Caporal" cigarettes.
"Anyone here ever see this kind of cigarette before?"
A few nodded their heads.
"Not many, are there? Well, they used to be pretty popular. Widely-advertised--Ask Dad, he knows'--and all that. then they figured they'd be able to sell on quality alone. They quit advertising. Get the point?"
America's colleges have gotten the point. Many of them would still like to sell on quality alone. But, as the chairman of one Harvard Alumni Schools Committee put it, the problem of admissions policy is One of the most vital that faces the College today. Each year we see wonderful boys of Harvard calibre go elsewhere. If we don't keep selling, we'll soon be left behind. To let up one iota in this fiercely competitive field would insure the same results as an established firm deciding it was not necessary to advertise."
During the last decade, Harvard, a well-known, established firm, has abandoned the policy of living easily on its past prestige. The College has thrown itself, for good or bad, into this fierce advertising competition. University Hall, rather than letting up on its efforts to "sell" the College, has intensified them, making Harvard an all-out competitor.
The increasing concern with words like "balance," the national college," and the "scholar-athlete" indicates the importance of the admissions problem, which since the war, has resolved itself into an earnest nationwide rivalry to recruit the country's most outstanding students An especially keen competition has developed between Princeton, Yale Dartmouth, and Harvard all of which are seeking the elusive scholar-athlete is evidenced by certain facts: Yale drew a record number of applicants Spring. Princeton's Committee on admissions found its selection task "the most difficult in history": Dartmouth officials chose 760 men from an unprecedented number of 3.511 applicants Harvard admissions officers have also had a tremendous job: 3.800 men filed application for the Class of 1956, 600 more than for the previous freshman class.
The fact that, a year or two ago, Harvard was faced with the problem of catching up with its Ivy competitors is ironical. For Harvard was perhaps the first college to introduce such a policy. In 1931. President Conant's National Scholarship program represented the biggest step ever taken by an Eastern school to become a "national college." One of the program's major aims, according to Conant, was to "present the advantages of Harvard in places where Harvard is not so obvious"--chiefly in the West.
However, even before the introduction of the National Scholarship program was initiated Harvard attracted a considerable number of men from great distances. In those days, there existed no problem of "recruiting" top students; a cosmopolitan body was maintained through prestige alone.
But during the thirties, several factors began to complicate the picture. Excellent state universities like Michigan and California, and private colleges like Stanford and Oberlin, grew in academic stature and began to appeal to students all over the country. Harvard, armed with with a reputation and a National Scholarship program, was able to ignore the competition until Eastern schools like Princeton, Yale, and Dartmouth began to expand westward.
Right after the war, the other Ivy schools greatly stepped up their recruiting programs. But Harvard, having abandoned the National Scholarship program for the duration of the war, had not geared itself to the upsurge of alumni activity at other colleges. F. Skiddy von Stade, Jr. '38, former Director of Scholarship Aid and new Dean of Freshmen, claims that the College lost many contacts during the moratorium. Conant believes that the movement for "Balance in the College" lost momentum about this time.
Provost Speaks
Provost Buck noted the completely changed and changing character of admissions policies, and realized that Harvard faced a possible loss of its pre-war balance. In his 1946-47 articles in the Alumni Bulletin, he warned that too many applications were "running to type" and he claimed that:
"...What is not obvious to outsiders and even to many close to the situation as it existed in the prewar years--is the paucity of applicants of the kind we must 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 warning note was quickly answered. From 1947, when the Provost's Bulletin articles appeared, until early 1951, six steps were taken which put Harvard's physical machinery for advertising and recruiting on a par with that of Princeton, Dartmouth, and Yale:
(1). On the evening of the 1949 Princeton football game, alumni, conferring with University administrators, agreed to revitalize Schools Committees.
(2). In 1950 John U. Monro '34 was named to head a Financial Aid Center.
(3). Then Director of Scholarships von Stade compiled financial aid data in a 54-page "alumni Handbook,"
(4). The admissions Office added several men as assistants to Richard M. Gummere, Director of Admissions.
(5). Francis P. Kinnicutt '30 became Secretary to the president of the Associated Harvard Clubs and began working as a roving lialson between University Hail and the Schools and Scholarships Committees.
(6). Other groups, like the reorganized Overseers' Visiting Committee on Athletics and the Varsity Club, joined the program.
The Big Shift
During the academic year 1951-52, several further steps have been taken in this aggressive admissions policy. The first, and most important of these, is the University Hall shakeup which moved Wilbur J. Bender '27, Dean of the College, into the Admissions Office, replacing the retiring Gummere. The post that Bender will occupy as Dean, not Director, of Admissions, is a strengthened one, with a three fold responsibility: admissions, freshman scholarships, and financial aid.
Bender is familiar with all of these tasks. After the war, he directed veterans admissions, and he won a great deal of praise for the job he performed. As Dean of the College, he was in charge of the Committee on Scholarships and Financial Aid.
The shakeup which moved Bender into this stronger position indicates two things: 1.) University Hall is prepared and willing to extending and fortify its admissions policies until it has no equal among competing colleges Bender has long interested himself in the admissions problems, and he has consistently supported a firm program. The fact that the post will bear the name "Dean," which it did not before, seems to be a recognition on the part of the administration of the increased importance of the situation.
2.) At the same time that the administration wants to maintain a powerful recruiting program. It does not want the program to get out of hand. The centralization in Bender's hands of admissions, scholarship, and financial aid, at a time when the deans system is being decentralized, reveals University Hall's desire to keep the program completely under control.
As an administrative problem. It is perhaps the greatest Challenge Bender has yet confronted. Bender, as Dean of Admissions, will have to maintain an effective coordination between three more or less diverse groups: University Hall, the Alumni Schools and Scholarships Committees, and the recently-formed Undergraduate Schools Committee.
In connection with the financial aid part of the program. Director of Financial Aid Monro announced that the number of full-time jobs open to freshmen has almost tripled. While only 60 jobs existed before, 160 are available to the Class of 1956.
A second major step in this intensified admissions policy is the growing importance and effectiveness or the Undergraduate Schools Committee which in the last year has been quite successful in screening and recruiting applicants. Organized in December, 1950, the group has grown from a membership of 40 to morethan 110. Originally, the Committee intended to concentrate on the South and the Far West, where selling and recruiting work is needed most. But the program has expanded in scope, so that members now represent 38 states--most of them midwestern and the group also does extensive work along the Atlantic seaboard.
The Committee has played host to over 200 students most of them from New England and Middle Atlantic schools. On one weekend in the middle of May, some 65 students from the New York-New England area visited the College under the auspices of the New England Associated Harvard Clubs, and directed by the Alumni and Undergraduate Schools Committees.
Joint Statement
In the field of athletic policy, the joint statement made last fall by Harvard, Yale, and Princeton was actually little more than an affirmation of an already existing policy. The statement claims that "all aspects of college athletics are subordinate to the purposes for which the colleges exist and must be controlled by educational considerations...No athletic scholarships or special subsidies of any sort for athletes are given by Harvard, Yale, or Princeton."
An important factor to be considered in the 1951-52 program is the March of Time film, "Invitation to Harvard." This, according to Peter E. Pratt, Director of Alumni Records, is "A terribly effective presentation of what the College is like." Pratt estimates that, while 217 recorded private showings of the film have been held, the actual total--with unrecorded reelings included--is over 400. "Invitation to Harvard" was shown at Harvard Clubs and high schools from London to the Philippines, while Admissions Office assistants, in their tours through various parts of the country, have taken prints with them.
The effect of the vigorous new policy can be seen in the geographical distribution for some recent classes. The Class of 1955, for example, cut down six percent on the number admitted from New England, while the number admitted from Middle Atlantic, Middle West, and Far West areas all rose slightly. Princeton, on the other hand, stepped up the number of New England students from seven percent of 1954 to 27.3 percent of 1955. while cutting rather deeply into most other sections. Nassau authorities conducted a rather extensive campaign in New England to achieve this result, using such means as the Lawrenceville Hockey Tournament.
However, the entire project involves some very grave, if unavoidable, dangers. The question will arise as to whether the new system and the new methods accompanying it is good, or a necessary evil. Some maintain that its value lies in the more or less thorough acouring of the nation's schools to dig up talent that would in previous years have been left uncovered; others feel that the whole affair has a bad smell about it, but that Harvard must compete as fiercely as anyone else. One of the principal questions facing the administrator and the alumni committeeman as well is: Just what does "Balance in the College" mean?
Samuel Eliot Morrison '08 gives perhaps the best definition in his "The Founding of Harvard College":
"As long as Harvard remains true to her early traditions, rich men's son 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 angularicies, and learning from contact what cannot be learned from books."
For one thing, "balance" does no' mean a student body of "all-around boys," a horde of C-minus "good citizens," as Dean Bender phrases it. Harvard's chief consideration is academic superiority and its reputation will automatically attract true scholars. Objective examinations like the College Board scores will further eliminate any academic incompetents. But beyond this solid core of high intelligence, the College seeks a "balance," an undergraduate body with the widest possible range of skills, tastes, and backgrounds. Geographical location is an important factor, and the Committee on Admissions, while weighing grades highest, will then start the selection process in the west and work east. The danger here is that many a fine student from an eastern school may be by-passed for the student from a more distant locale.
The Hucksters
Administrators are confronted with another dilemma: the techniques of advertising, selling. University Hall and most of the men connected with the admissions program have settled upon "low-pressure" salesmanship as the most effective and least obnoxious method of dispelling popular myths about the College, and for counterbalancing poor athletic publicity. Some of the more effective publicity channels have been the March of Time film, which is now being shown commercially, and the University News Office, directed by William M. Pinkerton, which now distributes over 3.900 pieces of mail annually on the activities of students to Harvard Clubs, newspapers, and scholars.
An aggressive admissions policy like those adopted by the Ivy "Big Four" will inevitably lead some people to regard the program as a monstrous athletic-purhasing spree. In their joint statement, however, the presidents of Princeton, Yale, and Harvard. "In order to prevent misunderstanding and misrepresentation," made it quite clear that they are not giving athletic scholarships.
The current athletic scandals, some fear, could bring a reaction against athletes of an extreme sort: after the decade of 1910-20 for example, the University actually discriminated against athletes. On the other hand, others fear that adverse fortunes on the football field might lead to recruiting with a single aim in mind Given three choices abandoning intercollegiate football, as Chicago did, converting to a professional beef trust, or maintaining an amateur policy--the University has chosen the middle course. It will continue the attempt to attract the scholar-athlete, although this attempt may already have been made futile by the rank professionalism existing on today's latercollegiate gridirons.
This intense concern with the near mythical "scholar-athlete" has, however filled some officials with disgust. They are tired of actively seeking after this elusive "glamour-boy" and feel that many a student who doesn't handle a pigskin with an particular adoptness is being ignored and shoved into the shadows.
Intimately connected with the problem of athletes is, of course the scholarship program. Scholarship Director von Stade calls it an "Unhealthy situation" Over 33 percent of the applicants for the Class of 1956 sought scholarship aid. The central problem here is for the Schools Committees to attract more paying guests to ease the burden on Harvard's budget.
Several grants made during the last year, plus a decline in scholarship applicants from 40 to 33 percent have lightened the load somewhat. But thtis Spring. Harvard had over 400 mutual applicants for aid with Yale, and over 200 with Princeton. "Even thouga we do measure students somewhat differently," von Stade continued, "we often decide on the same men." This competition leads some administrators to fear that scholarships will eventually be used for embellishment rather than assistance. With several colleges seeking the same man, a stipend of $600 to $100 may serve merely as a lure. Of course, the element of need often results in the joint awarding of scholarship funds by several schools, what these officials fear is that this money may some day be used as a fancy red ribbon to attract the "glamour boys." at the expense of the needy student.
The year 1951-52 saw the reactivation of several additional alumni Schools Committees, bringing the total to more than 50. Kinnicutt noted a "distinct increase" in activity and interest among committeemen in the last year. The main problem areas for the alumni are still the Southeast and sections of the Far West. States like Kentucky, Arkansas and Nebraska have few College graduates, and most of the University alumni show little interest in the College. Areas like California and Texas have a different situation. Here, even when the Committees are well-manned, they must compete with excellent institutions like California and Stanford on the coast, and with schools like SMU, Texas, and others--most of which are rather generous to athletes--in the South.
The Minneapolis Gang
Practices among the active committees vary. Some of them, like Minneapolis, and, during the last twelve months, Dayton, are lagely one-man shows. The major high and prepschools in Minnesota are combed largely through the efforts of D. Donald Peddie '41 who has converted Minneapolis into a "Harvard town." Similarly, St. Louis and Baltimore are considered "Princeton towns," while Seattle and Portland are pretty well controlled by Yale alumni.
The Birmingham, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Los Anglese clubs are other, particularly active centers. Birmingham, which sent two men to Class of 1951, entered nine in the Class of 1955, including the first national scholar to come from the city.
Within the last year, the most amazing progress has been made by the Dayton committee, whose chief worker is Francis P. Locke '33. Previous classes have attracted one Dayton student in every two or three years. But for the Class of 1956, 34 students from the Ohio city filed applications; 25 were admitted, with the fantastic number of four national scholarships. Toledo, Memphis, Miami, and Portland also showed considerable progress, while on the Atlantic seaboard, the North Shore and Westchester clubs have become particularly active.
Kinnicut, praising the program, remarked that "A lot of enthusiasm has been generated. We're a lot better off than we were two years ago. Alumni are lem and are contributing their assistance. Another factor is the increased interest gradually becoming aware of the prob of the Undergraduate Schools Committee."
In tribute to Harvard's expanding admissions program. Albert I. Dickenson, Dartmouth Director of Admissions, said:
"As an admissions officer of an institution which would like to compete for the 'elite' of the annual crop of college candidates. I should be glad if Harvard's great reputation did not have the strong appeal to desirable boys that it does have, and I should also be glad if the legendary insouciance of Harvard men were not so often the guileless facade behind which Harvard men are in there pitching for the old university."
This article is an up to-date revision of the CRIMSON's first Admissions Report, for which Douglas M. Fouquet '51 and Bayley F. Mason '51 were awarded the 1951 Dana Reed Prize for the best piece of undergraduate writing to appear in a Harvard publication.
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