learned how to face difficult and trying experiences with success? The opportunity for college training must not be diminished but its real value must be more clearly understood. We have adopted our new admission system because we believe it will be of service in training young women to meet more fairly and successfully the inevitable "examinations" of real life.

8. Because we believed in letting the person who is most concerned, the person for whom schools and colleges actually exist, have a genuine opportunity to express herself at her best and to submit the evidence which she considers does her the fullest justice. It will be observed that the candidate is asked to select all four subjects for examination. She is not to be tested at the points where her training is weak but where she herself feels she is best prepared. Is it not strange that in the older systems so little emphasis was given to what the student herself might think of her preparation? Excellence in one field counted for nothing. The dead level of mediocrity seemed to be the ideal. At least it let the student into college without conditions. The new plan corrects all of this. It begins by asking for her best and ends by basing its decision upon all the evidence and not merely upon defects or even failures in certain places. It must not be assumed that the arrangement of examinations places only those of the same value in each group. Obviously a one unit examination in History is not regarded as equal to the three unit examination in English. The plan was devised rather, to test the student in the main fields of her preparation without limiting in a rigid and mechanical fashion her choice of the actual examinations. The aim was to give her every reasonable opportunity for a perfectly fair test in the very subjects which appeal to her most.

9.

Because this new method was unquestionably the next step in the solution of the far more difficult and perplexing question of the content of the entrance requirements. There is great gain in securing the co-operation of the four colleges in the administration of the new method of admission. For the present nothing is said or done about the subjects required for entrance. This means for example that Smith College will continue to require 142 units for admission among which as prescribed subjects are the following: Latin 4 units (or Greek 3 units), English 3 units, Mathematics 21 units, and History 1 unit. No doubt

this fact is the occasion of very great disappointment among the high schools particularly of the middle and far west. Nevertheless it must be borne in mind that this new method paves the way for a far more satisfactory solution of that problem. By eliminating the question of the content of the requirements real progress has been made. After this method has gone into successful operation we shall then be in a much better position for the larger question. That it demands consideration at the earliest possible date goes without saying. The new method is most acceptable to the private school but for the reason already stated it is not so agreeable to the high schools. It is hoped, however, that they may realize the full import of the new plan and find in it the prophecy of a change in the content of college entrance requirements. The colleges ultimately must face as possibilities (1) the losing of their western constituencies or (2) the modifying of their entrance requirements or (3) the developing of their organizations in such a way that while the integrity of the degree of Bachelor of Arts is preserved, a place is provided for the multitudes of excellent students who have not taken four years of Latin in High school. The last possibility involves policies of far reaching moment and carries us too far afield to be discussed here. It is however one of the vital issues of a not far distant future.

There are certain questions which are raised so frequently that they ought to be answered even though it involves repetition. Will it be possible to enter college by examination in all subjects? Yes. So long as the College Entrance Examination Board continues to offer such examinations the college will maintain this method of entrance as an alternate plan. Does the new plan involve the actual discontinuance of the certificate system for all schools? Yes, beginning in September 1919. When does the new plan become operative. At once. A student may enter by the new plan any time but beginning in September 1919 it will be compulsory. Certificates are valid only in 1917 and 1918.

In conclusion, it ought to be said that the four women's colleges acknowledge fully their indebtedness to Harvard University for leading the way toward a new plan of admission and that they welcome a full and frank discussion of their new system of admission. Criticisms, objections, and suggestions should be forwarded to any one of the four colleges.

Comprehensive Examinations of the College

Entrance Examination Board

BY PROFESSOR ROBERT N. CORWIN, YALE UNIVERSITY. JONINGANCHAMUNEXAMINATIONS for admission may, as we all know,

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be a bond or a barrier between school and college. Modern educational practice demands that these examinations be no longer regarded or treated as restrictions and exactions imposed by the stronger upon the weaker, but rather as treaties of alliance between equals,-treaties which must safeguard the interests of both contracting parties if they are to benefit either permanently. For admission tests cannot but influence deeply those who give and those who receive. The infallibility of the college examiner and the docile acquiescence of the secondary school teacher belong, fortunately, to a discarded dogma.

Several notable and rather radical changes in the character and administration of admission tests, all recognizing this community of interests and therefore of equal concern to school and college,-have been effected during the past school year:

(1) Harvard, Princeton and Yale, the last of the Old Guard of examining colleges, surrendered to the College Entrance Examination Board their Old Plan examinations,-thus ending, let us trust for all time, that variety in announcement, question-paper and systems of administration, which has so long and so needlessly baffled the teacher.

(2) To meet the requirements of the New Plan of admission to the three universities mentioned, and to such other colleges as cared to "come in," the College Entrance Examination Board enlarged its scope and demonstrated its adaptability by establishing an entirely new and independent set of so-called Comprehensive Examinations.

As it will be necessary to make frequent use of the word Comprehensive, it may be well to forestall any possible confusion by. saying that the term "Comprehensive," as used by the Board, is

applied only to the question-papers set under the New Plan, not to this plan as a whole.

By this New Plan the question-papers were prepared under the auspices of the Board, but the answer-books were read by the examiners of the college to which the candidate sought admission. Some four hundred candidates presented themselves for examination under this plan in June of this year.

(3) In the September examinations, Harvard, Princeton and Yale for the first time set the same examination paper in all subjects and, what is more important, only Comprehensive papers were set. These were made to serve for candidates entering under the Old Plan as well as under the New,-thus eliminating the special privilege character of the fall papers and demonstrating the adaptability of the Comprehensive papers. The experience with the fall papers likewise confirms the hope of many examiners that these Comprehensive papers may at no distant date supersede the Old Plan papers. I should add here in parenthesis that Princeton was prevented from using these September papers because of the postponement of the opening of college.

(4) The four large colleges for women,-Mount Holyoke, Smith, Vassar and Wellesley,-have announced that this new method of admission will in the near future supersede the present system of admission by certificate. As an alternative method of admission it is already in force. Thus the Comprehensive method of examination has already made large inroads both into the Old Plan of examination and into the plan of admission by certificate.

All of the changes noted above have had their origin in the new Comprehensive examinations which I have been asked to discuss today. Perhaps I can perform this task more intelligently by outlining as briefly as possible the essential features of the New Plan of admission and by then discussing the purpose and character of these new examinations and the methods and extent of their application.

It seems fair to assume that the essential features of the New Plan of admission are familiar to all present. The New Plan requires: (1) An official school record covering the four years of preparatory study; (2) a comprehensive or general examination in a few subjects; and (3) the admission of the candidate without condition or not at all.

A word about the first and third of these requirements will leave us free to discuss more fully the second and most important feature; that is, the Comprehensive or general examination in a few subjects.

The first provision,--that a school record shall be submitted,has led some critics to say that this is but a disguised method of admitting by certificate. I am unable to see the validity of this objection, for it seems to me that this requirement has saved the most important quality of the plan of admission by certificate, that is its selective function,-and, by the four Comprehensive examinations, has remedied the principal defect of that plan, that is its inability to establish and maintain even an approximate general standard of quality. A record covering four years of school work, indicating the textbooks used, the proportion of laboratory work and the scholarship grades obtained, and giving a frank estimate of the candidate's character and ability, will certainly give pertinent evidence of his fitness,-while the Comprehensive examinations which accompany this record will serve both school and college as a means of maintaining scholarship standards. Moreover, the section of the four women's colleges would seem to indicate that the New Plan of admission is threatening to eliminate admission by certificate rather than that by examination.

As to the third requirement, the admission of the candidate without condition, or his rejection, will eliminate a most useless and bothersome feature of our Freshman year's work. Entrance conditions serve no evident educational purpose. They merely bring confusion upon the examiner, distract the Freshman in his regular work, alarm his parents, and provide grist for the tutoring mills.

The essential feature of the New Plan of admission is to be found in the second of the requirements noted above,-a Comprehensive examination in a few subjects, and the purpose of this radical change from the older usage is to make preparation for college mean more nearly what the term connotes. For, by a curious anomaly for which neither college nor school is wholly responsible, the preparation for college has come to mean something far from synonymous with fitness for college work. In fact it would be difficult to construct from the Old Plan entrance