"WHO WOULD have thunk it?" chants a character in The Group over and over again. "Who would have thunk it?"

It's a popular Harvard game, too. You sidle up to a friend, smile coyly, and murmur into a waiting ear, "Would you have believed me if I walked over to you freshman week and said, 'By senior year your friends will be dedicated revolutionaries, you'll be smoking dope regularly, and not a single person you know well won't have seriously considered suicide?'"

Of course you wouldn't have believed it. I certainly didn't.

When I was in high school, the one thing I wanted to do more than anything else was to get into Harvard. Almost everything I did was geared to that end: if I joined a club, it was to get it listed in my fat little dossier; if I took an extra honors course, it was to make my record look better. One of the more adventurous projects I undertook in high school was an elaborate three-year piece of research. It started out small scale, but with tenacity, guidance, and the dangling carrot of Harvard admission, I ended up presenting my results to a national convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

I was the classic high school science wonk, and I thought it would get me in. At the same time, I knew that I was literate; in fact, I enjoyed reading and writing and writing about reading more than almost anything else, certainly more than science. But high school humanities is a peculiar thing. It usually doesn't range very far from Silas Marner, and the closest you get to, say, New Criticism, is an occasional baffling allusion in your reading.

But once-and it's the kind of once that shapes personalities-I had a fantastic English teacher. I loved her. We read Emerson and Camus, and Falkner and Melville and Dostoyevsky and Stevens and Ginsberg and Whitman and Joyce. And I began to wonder whether to drop my science project and instead to flesh out my high school conception of the professional humanist and renaissance man. But I wanted to get into Harvard, so I continued on the road that eventually led me to the AAAS convention.

Around that time, I filled out my application to Harvard. One of the questions, the essay, was, "Discuss a recent significant decision and its consequences." Here's a section of that essay, in which I rationalized my commitment to science. It's hideously embarrassing, but enough to the point to deserve extensive quotation.

SINCE THE early part of my sophomore year I have been working on a scientific research project, first in connection with the chemistry department of my school and then independently. My principle activities and thoughts have thus been chiefly scientific. However, in my junior year I was enrolled in an English course which enormously broadened my perspective. Previously my scientific orientation had limited me to the systematic cogito ergo sum of Descartes. Then for the first time I was confronted with the disturbing thought that the " I exist; now what? " school has exerted a greater impact on the sensibility of contemporary man than any well-ordered body of scientific thought. Emerson's over-soul. Faulkner's loss of Eden, Camus' death of God-to me, all these were new and vital concepts which I could not ignore.

I was faced with the dilemma of the modern scientist. It has been traditional that philosophy and humanism, with their emphasis on the internal and the empathic, cannot exist simultaneous with the precise, categorized world of science. My problem, in concrete terms, was whether or not to continue my research. The work showed a large potential for success; it seemed that the need for a project like mine was current and emphasized. But could I continue with the research, knowing that my very actions, based strictly on the scientific method, violated the principles I had formed in the past year? In short, could the conflict of the sciences and humanities be resolved?

My decision was to continue the work, fully cognizant that I might not be following the path recommended by a humanist. However, I feel that the sciences and humanities can co-exist. The purpose of one is to check the other, but there is no reason that one must completely overrule and subordinate its companion. The analytical-imaginative unit must work in complement. The consequences of my decision to proceed are that the rewards of truly understanding the principle underlying a phenomenon, the thrill of the research process, and the contact with distinguished minds which my project has involved have all helped develop my scientific sense. At the same time, I feel confident that my sense of the compassionate and my ability to appreciate existential and naturalistic viewpoints have also grown. One is not at war with the other; they are mutual aids.

Looking back at it now, I think I see why they took me. I was prime material for Harvard science.

HARVARD SCIENCE-for that matter, any intensive pre-professional science-is a very different thing from high school science. About 480 of the 1200 high-school seniors accepted indicate on their application blanks that they would major in science if they came to Harvard. Second thoughts traditionally follow the first set of hour exams. By springtime, when freshmen indicate their fields of concentration, 180 have changed their mind. By graduation, 40 more have switched out.

As an undergraduate, even as a freshman, a science major has the opportunity to take extraordinarily advanced and fast-moving courses. Physics 13, Math 55, and Chem 20, after they separate the men from the boys, divide the masochists from the men. More than native intelligence and industry are needed to succeed in these gates to future science success; grim determination, isolation, and hours of gruelling work are essential. In spades.

Chem 20, for example, has developed a mystique all its own. Confi Guide reviewers each year bill it as the nearest American equivalent to Buchenwald. Former pre-medical students list Chem 20 as the major force in their decision not to become physicians. The course is taught in three lectures, a section, and an eight-hour lab each week, there are five hour exams a term, and most of those who get honor grades spend more time (anywhere from 10 to upwards of 20 hours a week) working for that course than for any other.

Most science courses are difficult, and they demand almost endless lists of prerequisites. The high school senior who enjoyed biology and would like to major in it, for example, finds that he can't take Physiology (Bio 18) until he's had Bio 2 and Physics 1a and 1b and Chem 20, and he can't take Chem 20 until he's taken Nat Sci 3 or Chem 6. The upper level courses demand more prerequisites, are more difficult, and are sometimes dishearteningly specialized. As a result, many never get far beyond the freshman introductory courses in a science before looking enviously at the greener and less arduous pastures of the social scientist and humanitarian.