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There is the case of a bright small-town boy, son of a construction foreman in northern Wisconsin. He has straight A's in math and science, B's in English, and he wants to be an electrical engineer. The state university fits his pocketbook, but his dream is M.I.T. He should try M.I.T. (though his only-average college board score in English is a hazard), and he should also try Wisconsin's Ripon College (enrollment: 600). He may feel happier at Ripon because it is smaller and less expensive. And it is one of the 17 colleges currently in M.I.T.'s "two-degree plan." After three years at Ripon, he can go on to M.I.T. for two years, emerge with a B.A. from Ripon and a B.S. from M.I.T.—an impressive record.
LOOK HARD, TRAVEL FAR
Or there is the case of a pretty, sophisticated girl in suburban Scarsdale, N.Y., whose adman father ($30,000 a year) can afford to send her anywhere. He already has—to Britain, France, Italy—but she has never been west of Ohio. She writes well and hopes to be a magazine editor, but her math and science marks hover at C. Against stiff competition, she might barely get into an Eastern woman's college. But why not Northwestern, California's Mills College, or even the University of Hawaii? For her, each would offer much.
By his junior high school year, a student should have picked three colleges. If all are equally tough to enter, disaster is possible. One prospect should be tough, one medium, one a shoo-in—and all worth the price. The odds are still unpredictable. Objective as they try to be, admissions men are still partly subjective. One may like redheaded girls, another tall boys from Texas. Many will gamble on a youngster with poor marks but some special flair that can liven a college. But willingness to look hard, and travel far, usually pays off in acceptance by at least one college of the student's choice.
No one in search of quality need regard as second choice such vigorous institutions as Antioch, Carleton, Grinnell, Hamilton, Haverford, Kenyon, Mills, Oberlin, Reed, and California's Oxford-inspired Associated Colleges (Claremont Men's, Harvey Mudd, Pomona, Scripps). All are tough to get into, and worth it. The California group's freshmen come almost entirely from the top 5% of their high school graduating classes. Pennsylvania's Haverford has long been a sort of pocket Harvard, has an impressive faculty-student ratio of 1 to 7. Iowa's Grinnell is known as "the Harvard of the Midwest," and Oregon's Reed boasts one Rhodes scholarship for every 70 male graduates—the highest percentage in the nation.
Dozens of lesser-known names are just as worthy of investigation. North Carolina's Davidson College has twelve Rhodes scholarships to its credit, and plenty of new money (TIME, Dec. 21). Ohio's Marietta ranks eleventh (with Antioch) in the U.S. in production of prominent men scientists. Ohio's College of Wooster produced the famed scientist brothers Compton (Wilson, Karl, Arthur). And Lawrence College in northern Wisconsin is a hatchery of university presidents. One former teacher, Victor L. Butterfield, heads Connecticut's topnotch Wesleyan. One former president, Henry M. Wriston, later took over Brown. A successor, Nathan M. Pusey, went on to Harvard.