For thirteen hours before the History 134b hour examination, he explained the problems of European philosophy to her. He had done the reading, and understood it; she had done the reading and didn't understand it.

"When the exam came," she said later, "I wrote down only what Andy told me-no more and no less. After all, he understood what the course was about."

She received an A- on the exam; he received a C+.

Stories like this keep raising the perennial Cambridge question, "Are girls smarter?" Few Harvard students will admit the superiority of their black-stockinged counterparts. If the Cliffies do happen to take home higher grades, such happenings are easily explained away by apple-polishing or by sentimental tales of Mathla, where there was a girl who "couldn't even read numbers." The girls, on the other hand, explained their consistently better records by claims to sheer intellectual power.

Statistics Back 'Cliffies

Which side in this battle of the sexes is right? Statistical information backs the 'Cliffies. Every year a higher percentage of Radcliffe students make Dean's List than do Harvard scholars. Last year, for example, 39.2 percent of Harvard ranked in Groups I-III. Well over half-57 per cent-of the three lower 'Cliffe classes earned Dean's List privileges, and this rating does not include Radcliffe seniors, over 60 per cent of whom rank in Group III or above.

Honors records also favor Radcliffe claims. For the class of '58, Radcliffe-variety, 53 per cent won honors. Only 41.8 per cent of their Harvard counterparts received honors degrees.

Over the years, however, Harvard students do tend to receive more degrees summa cum laude than Radcliffe proportionately, according to Wilbur K.Jordan, Radcliffe president.

One complicating fact may assuage the fears of militant feminists. Relatively few girls major in the Natural Sciences, which award the highest number of summa degrees. Since most areas in this field do require General Examinations, or thesis preparation, and since Honors are usually calculated on the basis of grades in which the 'Cliffies hold the edge, the lack of the girls' overall superiority may be due the small number in Natural Sciences.

Radcliffe More Selective

Another way beleagued Harvard apologists explain the "smartness" of their Radcliffe counterparts concerns admissions and the old economic law of selectivity. Radcliffe, with entering classes of about 300, naturally can accept a higher percentage of the "cream of the crop" than Harvard, which admits a class of 1100, so the argument runs.

On the other hand, Harvard's admissions record is not a subject for shame. The largest number of secondary school applicants on record applied to Harvard last Fall; over 60 per cent were rejected. And the students admitted are by no means scholastic slouches. On Scholastic Aptitude Tests, members of the class of '56 scored from 474 to 674; for the class of '62, scores ranged from 543 to 743.

The problem of comparing this statistical "smartness" with that of students admitted to the 'Cliffe is accentuated by Radcliffe's traditional tight-lipped policy on SAT scores. "Radcliffe has no mathematical formula for choosing students, as most men's colleges do," Constance Pratt, 'Cliffe admissions director, explains.

In effect, this means that college board scores do not give an accurate appraisal of the calibre of the average Radcliffe student. High school seniors scoring in the high 700's on College Entrance Board Examinations might not be admitted, while a student scoring considerably lower might be.

Annex Intuition in Admissions