WHAT OF ADMISSIONS AT DARTMOUTH?
GETTING into the college of one's choice is close to being Public Problem Number One, at least for families having teen-age sons and daughters. Since this looks like a seller's market, it is generally assumed that the colleges and universities are sitting pretty and have nothing to worry about when it comes to acquiring students. Quite the contrary, the colleges that care about excellence know that one of the prime ingredients is a superior student body, and they have their own problems of maintaining a full and steady inflow of outstanding boys and girls. Efforts to attract their share, and hopefully more than their share, of topnotch students are being stepped up by colleges across the land. In the forefront of these efforts are alumni workers by the thousands.
Dartmouth makes no secret of its insatiable appetite for more applicants with academic and personal qualifications of the highest order. Good as the student body is today, the College wants and expects it to be far better by the time of the Bicentennial in 1969. Looking ahead to that goal, and as part of the College's critical self-study on all fronts, the Trustees Planning Committee in February 1959 named a special Subcommittee on Admissions and Financial Aid to examine present principles, policies and operations, in the perspective of the next ten years, and to recommend what needs to be done to assure that Dartmouth will have the best possible student body with which to begin its third century.
The report of the Subcommittee, headed by Hadley Cantril '28 of Princeton, N. J., was submitted to TPC earlier this year. TPC at an April meeting approved all but two of the nineteen recommendations in the report, and the Board of Trustee's in June added its official approval of the report as accepted by TPC. The recommendations, some strengthening existing policies and others proposing new programs and procedures, are summarized on the adjoining page. To implement them, the Trustees have ordered reviews of certain areas of admissions and financial aid work and have assigned responsibilities for carrying out the accepted proposals.
Early in its study, the Subcommittee stated, it came to the conclusion that the chief admissions problem faced by the College is one of attraction rather than of selection: that is, "getting the type of boy Dartmouth wants to admit interested enough in the College to apply for admission and, once admitted, to come."
The answer to this central problem, it added, will have to be found outside the offices of admissions and financial aid, because the selection and aid-granting systems now in operation at Dartmouth were judged to be devoid of any serious shortcoming. Chastening to the Subcommittee early in its deliberations, the report said, was "the knowledge that the admissions officers had long since anticipated in whole or part nearly every suggestion advanced, that they were in the best sense professionals who were in full touch with what other admissions officers were doing and thinking, and that their standards were impressively high. Our appreciation of their worth will be abundantly evidenced in this report." Praise for the alumni engaged in enrollment work and in helping to make the Dartmouth system work was also expressed in the report.
The really significant factors in the College's ability to attract, select and matriculate a student body of preeminent quality in 1969, said the Subcommittee, are associated with the over-all concept of the College, its academic standing, the quality and reputation of its teaching staff, in short, its public "image." And the important key to strengthening this public concept is the faculty, it asserted. Admitting that it was going somewhat beyond the bounds of its assignment, the Subcommittee proposed several ways in which the drawing power of the faculty might be increased; and it also urged a larger role for the faculty in the recruitment activities of the College.
Assuming that the attraction exists, what kind of student does Dartmouth want to attract? The Subcommittee tackled this question and decided that there was no one ideal Dartmouth type and should be none. It agreed that academic ability and intellectual motivation were the primary qualities to be sought in men coming to Dartmouth, but beyond that it recognized that personal qualities were also important and would take a variety of desirable forms among the thousands of boys applying each year.
"We would put heavy emphasis," said the Subcommittee, "on various combinations of intelligence, creativity, honesty, energy, dedication, and imagination, as well as dozens of other desirable characteristics likely to be found among some young men in more or less degree." At another point in its report the Subcommittee said, "We are convinced that there is an abundant supply of young men of high intellectual aptitude and drive who at the same time possess exceptionally strong character and a deep concern for the needs and future of society, men who can be inspired to assume the great responsibilities attendant upon a college education. The recommendations in this report will, we hope, suggest some improvements in the means of identifying, selecting and attracting more of such young men who will best fulfill the purposes for which Dartmouth College exists."
With its faculty, alumni, and administration segments representing different points of view and different emphases, the Subcommittee failed to reach agreement on several questions. Among its nineteen recommendations was one, tentatively put forward without majority approval, concerning the type of student to be admitted. Backed mainly by the faculty members, the proposal called for the automatic admission and granting of financial aid where needed to the top 25 per cent of each year's applicants, ranked academically, except in cases where personality or motivation, as determined by the Directors, would interfere with academic performance or where there was evidence of moral turpitude.
TPC considered that the advantages in such a policy would be outweighed by the disadvantages, the chief of which would be the introduction of an undesirable rigidity in the administration of the admissions and financial aid systems. The Board of Trustees agreed with this view, but emphasized that the search for excellence, which it defined as including both academic promise and good character, must always be the foundation of admissions policy.
Also failing to receive TPC and Trustee approval was another minority proposal that the alumni-son preference be eliminated in order to "improve the total academic picture." Here it was the view of both TPC and the Board that on balance the alumni-son preference contributes to the strength of the College. They noted the important fact .that the great majority of alumni sons admitted to Dartmouth are accepted on their merits in competition with all other applicants and not because of the preference, which comes into play in the relatively small number of cases where other factors of choice are about equal between candidates.
With regard to financial aid, the Subcommittee urged that the College seek the best men regardless of need. "The College's financial aid program should march together with that of admissions," the report said, "using the same criteria in decision-making, and it should enable the College to attract and matriculate the top men regardless of financial circumstances."
The Subcommittee felt that the College is making available sufficient scholarship funds for the present quality of applicants. "But we are not satisfied with the quality of applicants," the committee added. "As this quality improves through greater enrollment activity, the use of faculty members in recruiting, etc., we will need more scholarship funds to support the greater number of desirable needy students who may be attracted."
