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College Entrance Examinations „ ,-i. 
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COLLEGE ENTRANCE EXAMINATIONS. 
T EN years ago, the entrance examinations of our colleges, 
with two or three exceptions, were solemn farces. With 
profound gravity, professors and tutors listened to candidates 
wildly bungling in translations, demonstrating problems in 
geometry parrot-like, without comprehending their own words, 
and often flatly failing to meet the so-called requirements laid 
down in the catalogue; but the examiners passed them, some, 
it is true, with gentle conditions, and, with beautiful impartial¬ 
ity, gathered the stupid and the studious, the prepared and the 
unprepared, into the academic fold. The more fairly conducted 
examinations of Freshman year weeded out these immature 
and unsightly plants after a brief experience of prompting, 
“ poneying ” and shirking ; but the harm of the hollow entrance 
ordeal had been done, a career had been entered upon, a failure 
in life had been made that might have been avoided at the 
,§tart. These old-fashioned examinations were generally oral. 
The candidates were assembled in a hall in the college building 
on the appointed day. The professors and tutors turned out in 
full force, and passed frorn one applicant to another, putting a 
few questions in Latin, Greek, and mathematics, and the newly 
admitted were directed to present themselves to the College 
Treasurer. These oral examinations were feasible while a 
scanty number of candidates presented themselves for exami¬ 
nation, but, within the last v ten years, a desire has been grow¬ 
ing among parents in this country to send forth their sons into 
the world as accurate scholars and cultivated gentlemen, and 
applicants are now numbered by hundreds in many of Our col¬ 
leges. Written examinations have therefore been generally 
adopted, and, Harvard taking the lead, faculties have been 
vying with one another in making the ordeals as severe as they 
were previously lax. Indeed, professors of repute have been 
heard to boast: “ I assure you, sir, it is as difficult for a young 
man to obtain admission into our college, as into Harvard.” 
And as if it were a matter highly creditable, each college pub¬ 
lishes a long list of those who failed entirely, those who were 
conditioned, and those who “got through.” 
In the President’s Annual Report of Harvard for the year 
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