EXAMINATIONS, GRADES AND CREDITS. 369 



that the systematization of entrance examinations under the auspices 

 of a board will be harmful to secondary education.* The German 

 method, which has made some progress here, of leaving the decision 

 to the school seems much better. If we can not accept the recom- 

 mendation of the school, I should prefer to see the candidate passed 

 upon by two psychological experts. If their independent judgment 

 agreed, I should have more confidence in this than in the results of 

 any written examination. In general, I should admit to college any 

 students who were not pronounced unfit by expert opinion, dropping 

 of course those who subsequently proved themselves unfit. Eequiring 

 all students to pass an examination in Latin composition and the like 

 is as out of place in a modern university as an ichthyosaurus on 

 Broadwayf . 



Our college entrance requirements and examinations are a serious 

 injury to secondary education, and they select very imperfectly the 

 men who should have a college education. Of 262 students who 

 entered Columbia College in 1900, only 50 completed the regular four- 

 year course in the college. Civil service examinations often exclude 

 the fit from the public service. In Great Britain the method is carried 

 to an extreme, and the results depend as much on the coach as on the 

 candidate. Almost anything is better than appointments for party 

 service; but past performance, character, habits, heredity and physical 

 health are much more important than the temporary information 

 that can be but imperfectly tested by a written examination. I should 

 not be willing to select a fellow or an assistant in psychology by such 

 a method, and to select a professor would be nearly as absurd as to 

 choose a wife as the result of a written examination on her duties. 

 To devise and apply the best methods of determining fitness is the 

 business of the psychological expert, who will probably represent at 

 the close of this century as important a profession as medicine, law 

 or the church. 



I am at present working at the problem of assigning grades for 

 moral, mental and physical traits J, but shall here confine myself 



* Since this was written Professor Thorndike has compiled statistics, not 

 as yet published, which indicate that students who pass these examinations 

 with the lowest grades are as likely to do well in college as those having much 

 higher grades. Those rejected would probably do equally well. 



t In the discussion now in progress at Cambridge concerning the require- 

 ment of Greek at entrance, Professor Jebb ridiculed New Zealand as a Greekless 

 land, because one of its citizens is alleged to have called Andromache ' Andro- 

 mach.' Professor Jebb in his speech called New Zealand a part of Australia; 

 yet he does not regard himself as illiterate. 



I Cf. articles in Science (N. S. 17: 561-570, 1903) and Am. Jour of 

 Psychol. (14: 310-328, 1903). 



