In most fields, the 100 courses are theoretically used to complete the training of students from small colleges with inadequate undergraduate preparation, the courses themselves are considered more for undergraduates than for graduates. In the 200 series of courses, the practice of encouraging undergraduate honors concentrators to register in courses which are not actually seminars has become common. Thus, in larger departments the undergraduate enrollment in 200 courses has often exceeded graduate enrollment, and the combined enrollment is so large that the "conference" course is reduced to the routine lecture course.
The seminar, then, remains as the basic unit of graduate instruction. Since the average seminar requires three times as much preparation as the average lecture course, few students enroll in more than one per semester. Because most of the incoming students have studied at large institutions, however, and are quite well-prepared in their fields, they may actually be wasting their first two years in lecture conference courses. Faculty members are currently debating this question; students are often too busy using what time they have to consider whether or not they are wasting it.
Perhaps the biggest students problem in the Graduate School is the high rate of withdrawals. Only half of those who receive the M.A. degree eventually receive their doctorate. Scholastic account for comparatively few losses; rather, the problem rests with the individual student's purpose and his financial foresight.
The administration can aid students much as is feasible with scholarships, fellowships, and research assistantships. It now grants awards to more than half the men in the Graduate School, though it obviously cannot fill all requests. Purposefulness, however, cannot be bolstered by the University. Here, the department of concentration tries to evaluate a student's persistence and sincerity in judging him for admission.
Well-Versed in Mediocrity
Many faculty members personally prefer the all-around man with the well-developed personality, but there is a strong minority which echoes the judgment of George B. Kistiakowsky, Abbot and James Lawrence Professor of Chemistry: "the well-rounded personality is usually versed only in mediocrity."
Once the student comes to GSAS, he discovers that while life is rigorous it is not so as he might expect. The Graduate Center and adjoining dormitories provide a free community which has been compared to an intellectual apartment development quite unlike anything on the undergraduate level. Aesthetic conviviality prevails, and there are even occasional expeditions to Cronin's. A Graduate Student Council coordinates government and student affairs, and a graduate body stages an informal dance every weekend.
Although many students live outside the University area, and few graduates are familiar with the work that occupies the vast bulk of their colleagues' time, there is an unusual spirit of warmth and unity among the graduates eating in the Harkness Commons or relaxing in the Graduate lounges. It is not the warmth of the House dinning hall or the undergraduate student activity, but the warmth of men and their neighbors.
The Graduate School, with its wholly adult, business-like approach to living might conceivably be located in any city in the United States. It is this social background, coupled with the internal Cambridge intellectual background, that characterizes GSAS, both in the University community and in the field of American education.