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The University of Chicago's exuberantly extracurricular Alice Schaeffer, 21, is an English major from Evanston, who moved the dean of students to burble that she is "the veritable Renaissance woman of unending versatility." A top scholar, Alice won such praise by tireless toil for the university theater, the annual Blackfriars shows, the Darwin show, the Billy Barnes Revue, the interdormitory council and the Festival of the Arts. This summer she has a job in a student revue at Chicago's Sherry Hotel; next fall she heads for Stanford and a master's degree. Her dream: to be a dean of students.
Michigan State University's Ted Petrie, 21, is the first student in M.S.U. history to graduate with a straight-A record. Son of a foreman at an Oldsmobile forge plant in Lansing, Petrie sagged below A only twice in high school (B's in gym and English literature) "because I didn't work." At M.S.U., where he eased the financial pinch by living at home and working summers as a lifeguard, he found time for swimming, handball and bottle-ball as well as math. Awarded hefty grants for undergraduate research by the National Science Foundation, Petrie now has a $3,200-a-year N.S.F. fellowship for graduate work at Princeton. The future worries him: "Communism seems to be creeping up on us all over the world. I don't feel I can plan ten years ahead."
James Edward Gunn, 22, is a summa cum laude graduate in math and physics at Rice University, the Southwest's toughest campus. A straight-A high school graduate, Gunn attended Rice on a four-year scholarship, won a peck of academic prizes. "I've never been able really to determine the limits of his ability,'' says one physics professor. "I've never been able to ask him an exam question that he can't give a perfect answer to.'' Except for the astronomy club, Gunn steered clear of extracurricular activities, studied ten hours a day. Still, he found time for Army R.O.T.C. and the girl he married last week. Headed for Caltech to study astrophysics, Gunn thinks that "academic life is the only one that would suit me. I'm interested in problems that industry has no use for." Main ones: "The secrets of gravity and traveling to the stars." For if myopic man "ever becomes a galactic being." muses Gunn, "it will probably be a key to his maturing."