HOW TESTS ARE USED
The scholastic aptitude test scores are used as the basis for choosing special sections in freshman English, that department being of the mild opinion that variations in scholastic aptitude in general form a good basis for separating the goats and the sheep in their preliminary English course. In general, the first semester English consists of perhaps ten special sections (men whose scores are in the top quarter of their class) and about twenty-five general sections. During the second semester this course, and many others, is sectioned on the basis of first semester grades.
The department of French uses to a very slight degree the results of the scholastic aptitude tests in determining which freshmen shall be demoted to more elementary courses and which ones promoted to more advanced courses in French than those to which their entrance credits automatically give them admission. These placements, however, are in general determined by new-type examinations.
Those upperclass courses which are sectioned according to accomplishment are arranged at present entirely on the basis of scholastic records, the department of psychology having discontinued its former practice of sectioning its sophomores on the basis of the scholastic aptitude scores, the freshman year record apparently being a better criterion for this division.
The test scores are used by upperclass faculty officers as in freshman year for the purposes of spurring on slow but ambitious boys to continued effort and to illuminate the devious paths of the professional loafers. When senior year arrives and placements are in the offing, the Personnel Bureau takes into consideration a man's scholastic aptitude test in conjunction with his four years' record, feeling that if he has had even occasional flashes of scholastic accomplishment and has also ranked high in his test that it is justified in assuming that he has latent possibilities which will develop as soon as he takes up a line of endeavor which will really interest him and upon which he is eager to concentrate.
