Education: Luck & Pluck

With the 1961 race to college already on their minds, two of the nation’s most sought-after campuses sorrowfully got ready to be swamped:

¶ Yale Law School’s Dean Eugene V. Rostow is “seriously considering” a lottery to pick evenly matched applicants. In culling 250 entrants from 1,200 applicants, Yale Law has no trouble choosing 80 from the superior “A group.” Problem is selecting 170 from the remaining “B group,” all of them with equal marks. “Interviews only give you impressions,” said Rostow. “I myself have no faith in my ability to interview an applicant and necessarily come up with the best prospect. Choosing them by lot would probably be fairer.”

¶ Dartmouth’s Director of Admissions Edward T. Chamberlain Jr. said that “every admissions officer in the United States would give five years of his life” if he could use an IBM machine to cull freshmen. But no one has yet found the right punch-card formula, Chamberlain mused, a trifle sadly, in the Saturday Evening Post. “One wag predicts it is more likely we shall find a way to punch holes in the candidates and run them through the machines.”