HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ENTRANCE

Although for two decades at least Dartmouth through H. T. Moore and C. L. Stone has furnished leaders in the preparation of scholastic aptitude tests, she has always been from Missouri in her interpretation, willing to experiment continually but willing to accept inferences rarely. This attitude is well illustrated by the present position of the college with reference to the use of these tests for admission purposes. There is no possibility of Dartmouth's adopting a policy which would exclude an applicant simply because he had a low score, or which would admit another one simply because he had a high score. Under the selective process a class of approximately six hundred is admitted each year from approximately sixteen hundred well-prepared applicants. In the selection it is usually possible to choose without too much chance of error about five hundred and to refuse about seven hundred, but the best solution of the problem of selecting the remaining one hundred from the four hundred apparently equal prospects has not been reached. Our present analyses fail to distinguish in any vital way between these four hundred, each being unmarried and out of jail, and each having had at least an average school record and having received the enthusiastic endorsement of his principal and various alumni. It might be good business to request these four hundred to take the scholastic aptitude test of the College Entrance Examination Board and finally choose the one hundred from those having the best scores. The two drawbacks to this procedure are, first, the very considerable expense to the individual applicant, a serious matter for those living in remote country districts, and second, the conviction in the Admissions Office that such a procedure might quite often assume a false accuracy.

In closing it should be stated that Dartmouth College feels that the present splendid work of the College Entrance Examination Board in studying the results of these tests for a very large number of individuals over a period of years is a distinctly promising undertaking for which the Board should receive the thanks of the educational world in general, the trouble with previous developments having been that these tests were promulgated by isolated individuals who were enthusiastic advocates of their particular tests.

NEW YORK CITY TWELFTH ANNUAL DINNER OF THE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION OF NEW YORK CITY, AT DELMONICO's, WEDNESDAY EVENING, JANUARY 19TH. 1876