Classifying the Freshmen

(The scholastic aptitude tests)

As soon as candidates are accepted for entrance toDartmouth College there remains a test for them which isno part of the entrance requirements but a test which mayhave a great influence upon their college careers. This isthe scholastic aptitude test, which as Dean Bill explains isstill in the experimental stage.

SCHOLASTIC aptitude tests are not used at Dartmouth College as a part of the selective system of admission but each matriculant is required to take such a test the night before college opens in September, the results being used for advisory purposes throughout his college course.

Although actual scores on these tests are never divulged to the undergraduates, those who have very low scores, for example, in the lowest ten per cent of the class, are told very early in the year by the dean of freshmen and by members of the freshman advisory council that they must give their assignments more time than the average boy, must keep their noses constantly on the grindstone, and must watch their steps along the seductive trails of extra curricular activities. Moreover, when freshmen with high scores, for example, in the upper twenty per cent of the class, with firstclass secondary school records start failing courses promiscuously, it is possible to correctly diagnose their cases in nine out of ten times as the most common source of scholastic illness, namely, excessive indulgence in the privilege of loafing. Test scores falling in the great middle reaches of the scale are of little value taken by themselves in the above type of diagnosis but may help toward an intelligent understanding of the individual student's difficulties if taken in conjunction with many facts discovered during the course of the selective process of admission. It is, of course, unnecessary to add that at no stage in an individual student's college career is any claim made that his test score proves anything specific although comparatively accurate prophecy is possible when the numbers involved are large. Character and habits of industry fortunately will continue to upset scientific analysis in individual cases.