Given these discouraging facts about well prepared students, most people are hard pressed to define or explain the syndrome which they represent. The only systematic effort was made in the Blackmur Report, General Education in School and College, a six man study of the relationship between Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Andover, Exeter, and Lawrenceville, in which Dean Bundy participated. Their explanation was that the well-prepared freshman is disturbed by the elementary quality of the freshman courses, becomes bored, and stops working for a few years.
Although most observers agree that boredom is common among Exeter students, and that the recommended Advanced Standing Program should be a valuable remedy, they note that the "over-prepared" formula fails to explain several facts. First, Harvard Gen Ed courses may indeed have elementary lectures aimed at an extremely unsophisticated mind, but they certainly do not have elementary reading lists. Yet the Exeter syndrome involves rejecting reading as well as lectures. Second, the Exeter "A" student generally suffers less from boredom at Harvard than his academically less proficient schoolmate.
A more adequate explanation centers around the generally recognized arrogance of these Exeter students. The Exonian is not impressed by anything or anybody. He exudes sophistication from the moment that he enters his freshman dorm. He is, after all, better than his fellows, for he has been to Exeter.
One example of this attitude is the reaction to grades. Most incoming freshmen get a C or a D early in the fall, and most of them are scared. They go to see their grader or their sectionman in order to find out what they have done wrong and how to do better. Exeter students also get low grades on occasion, but they are less likely to be scared than to be contemptuous of the grader who has failed to appreciate them. The reason is apparently that the Exeter student is unawed by Harvard, and really does not believe that the grader is fit to pass judgment on him.
The Penmanship Grade
One reason is that the Exonian soon discovers that the graduate student is not as good a teacher as the Exeter faculty member with ten or twenty years experience. He is likely to conclude from this that this graduate student can teach him nothing. He also notices that his grades are not consistently related to any observable quality of his work except penmanship. He therefore concludes that these grades are meaningless and arbitrary. Both theories contain just enough truth to make them a useful raft for his sinking self confidence.
But the syndrome is not restricted to anti-academic values. For while the Exonian rejects the academic, he places amazing emphasis on intellectual sophistication, subjectively defined. He feels that he is different from his classmates, and he treasures this distinction. Yet the only real difference is that he is a little older intellectually. In order to feel really different he must forget what he was like but a year before. When a classmate discovers that the truth is not always in the Bible, or that the devil did not invent Communism, the Exonian's feelings are akin to those of an older brother explaining that babies do not come from storks.
Noveau Riche Superiority
The effort to remain apart from his classmates comes, then, from his precarious hold on superiority. The Exonian's intellectual feelings are not unlike those of the nouveau riche. Both are seeking to prove that they have already got what only passing years can bring, while constantly afraid that their inferiors will refute the claim to superior status.
But why, we may readily ask, should Exeter be the breeder of these feelings? Why are not other well-prepared students equally intent on asserting their superiority? Although there is no pat answer to this question, two factors may help explain the pattern.
First, Exeter is more like Harvard than any other school. The Exonian, having reached the top of a very select and highly competitive group after four years of struggle, is reluctant to admit that he is on the bottom of the pile again. While he is no different from his classmates in this respect, he finds it easier to avoid recognizing his new lowly position.
This is true primarily because he has a large number of friends when