Taking office time as a basis of judgment, Student Placement's No. 1 job is that of counselling future job-holders. This is simply a process whereby Huntington and Crooks talk with any student who wishes to come into their office and discuss their future plans. These talks usually begin with a discussion of the student's desires, an evaluation of his talents, his immediate future (military service and graduate school), and finally, definite suggestions.
"Our first job in counselling is to sit back and let the student talk," Crooks said. "We aren't psychiatrists; what we want to do is to reduce areas of ignorance, both in the student's minds and in our own." He cited three main problems in the minds of those who want counselling: military service, graduate school, and a career. Concerning the first problem, Student Placement feels that it has the best collection of information about the armed services and the draft in the college. "People are just delaying their ideas about the military," Crooks said, "and we feel we can give them the advice they need."
The most important individual problem concerning graduate schools, according to Crooks, is whether the particular student can get in. "Almost everyone wants to go to some Harvard graduate school," he said; "the question is: is it the best thing and can he make it?" The Medical School supplies Student Placement every year "with lots of leftovers." Concerning future careers, Crooks said that "the first thing we have to do is to tell them about Jones & Larkin." After that the student is supposed to take over for himself, utilizing the multifarious folders and the Company Interview Program. Including alumni and returning service men, Crooks and Huntington counselled over 800 men last year.
Long Range Plans
Student Placement has other services, some more concrete than others. A student with some initiative can find a summer job in the office's voluminous files; there are some 315 alumni scattered all over the country who serve as "alumni counsellors" to all students who would like to personally speak to someone established in a career; and there is much information concerning any graduate scholarships a student might wish to try for. (Crooks himself handles the Fulbright scholarships.)
Student Placement then, as a comparatively infant organization, is only just beginning to learn of its potentialities and its limitations. Its ultimate Utopia is to serve as a kind of finish to the Harvard educative process, in that every graduating student will come to its doors in search of advice and information. There can be no doubt that its function is an important and a much-needed one, but until it undergoes some kind of expansion it can never really achieve its capabilities. Two administrator-counsellors, four secretaries, and a little building on Dunster Street will not support Student Placement's Utopia.