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Harvard College's calm, mature Martin S. Feldstein, 21, was named by his 1,000 classmates to deliver the serious commencement oration this week. At his Long Island public high school, Feldstein ranked fifth in the class, scored in the "low 700s" on his College Board exams, and had no Harvard-alumni ties. Harvard not only spotted his promise but also helped him get a full four-year General Motors scholarship when his father, a lawyer-accountant, died in 1957. Feldstein focused on math, economics and premedical courses, got a prize for straight A's in his sophomore year, made Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year, became president of the economics honor society chapter, and this year won the Palfrey Exhibition award for the outstanding scholarship student. He also tended babies, sold junior-executive hats to business school graduates and worked summers at the Sloan-Kettering cancer research lab. Already accepted at Harvard Medical School, he will first use his Fulbright Scholarship to earn a bachelor of philosophy degree in economics at Oxford's Brasenose College. "I want to learn how the National Health Service operates in England," says he.
Princeton's Valedictorian Frederic Kreisler, 21, a summa cum laude major in medieval history with a four-year average of A+, is a nephew of Violinist Fritz Kreisler, and himself an accomplished pianist. One professor calls him "intellectually and personally the most outstanding boy I ever met at Princeton." Fluent in French and German, he was top man at Pelham (N.Y.) Memorial High School, top freshman at Princeton, made Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year and won a Carnegie grant for summer research at the University of Vienna on his thesis. "The Coronation of Charlemagne" (grade: A+). Known for wearing lederhosen even in winter, Kreisler says that "I don't think I have ever consciously considered grades as a goal." A Marshall scholar, headed for two years at Oxford's Balliol College, he wants to be a teacher-scholar. His main interest is man's "preservation of the ability to adapt to accelerating revolutions." As though for the nation's entire class of 1961, he sums up: "Our job now is to keep changing, keep responding, keep living."