October 27, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



519 



value as a broadening influence to its stu- 

 dents and as a factor in the life of the 

 whole nation. 



Our policy with regard to entrance re- 

 quirements is thus governed by two sepa- 

 rate considerations: our duty to ourselves 

 of not admitting boys except those who are 

 able to do the kind of work which will be 

 required of them, and our duty to the pub- 

 lic of admitting all kinds of boys who can 

 do this, on as equal terms as possible. Our 

 student body must be at once hard working 

 and national. 



In order to make ourselves national we 

 admit boys to our undergraduate courses 

 by examination only and not by certificate. 

 We believe that the examination method is 

 fairer to boys who come from distant 

 places. The certificate system is the nat- 

 ural one for a state university, which 

 draws its pupils chiefly from the schools 

 of one locality and can inspect and examine 

 those schools; but if a national university 

 tries to apply this system it gives either an 

 unfair preference to the boys from schools 

 near at hand, or an inadequate test to the 

 boys from remote ones. We believe also 

 that the examination system brings us the 

 kind of boys who can take the best advan- 

 tage of the opportunities we offer. By 

 refusing to admit on certificate we lose some 

 good boys who are afraid of an examina- 

 tion; but as a rule, the boy who is afraid 

 to stand an examination on a subject where 

 he has been well taught is better fitted for 

 the protection of a small college than the 

 liberty of a large one. 



The subjects of our examination must be 

 such as to prove whether the student can 

 or can not pursue our courses to advantage. 

 We must have enough mathematics to test 

 the power of precise thought and enough 

 language to test the power of precise ex- 

 pression. We can not allow other subjects 

 to be substituted for these merely because 

 we believe that it is a good thing to have 



these other subjects taught in the schools. 

 In this respect our policy has differed rad- 

 ically from that of Harvard. When the 

 question has come up of introducing music 

 or wood-working among the entrance re- 

 quirements, the question with Harvard has 

 been mainly. How far does the college de- 

 sire to encourage the teaching of music and 

 of wood-working in our high schools ? The 

 question with Yale, on the other hand, has 

 been. Can a student who is deficient in 

 grammar be properly admitted to the col- 

 lege because he knows music? Can a stu- 

 dent who is deficient in certain parts of 

 his algebra properly be admitted to the 

 scientific school because he understands 

 wood- wording ? Every new subject intro- 

 duced as an alternative to the entrance 

 requirements means not simply that we are 

 ready to cooperate with the schools in 

 teaching that subject, but that we value it 

 sufficiently to be content to get on with less 

 than we formerly required of the things 

 which were once considered essential. 



On account of this difference in view 

 Harvard has gone rapidly in the introduc- 

 tion of alternative entrance requirements, 

 while we have gone slowly. Our scientific 

 school has not found that the submission 

 of notebooks and experiments, or the exam- 

 ination which could be given in various 

 forms of descriptive science, could well be 

 made a substitute for mathematical theory. 

 It has indeed encouraged pupils from 

 schools where there were good laboratories 

 to pass a supplementary examination on 

 laboratory practise and has admitted them 

 to advanced sections; but it has insisted 

 that these examinations should be regarded 

 as supplementary to the regular require- 

 ments instead of excusing the student there- 

 from. Our academic department has in- 

 troduced modern languages as substitutes 

 for ancient languages only when they could 

 be made real substitutes. We accept 

 French instead of Greek only when it is a 



