Harvard University - Red Book Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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Every Admission Committee is fabled to regard the class it has most recently admitted as the best that has entered college. The freshmen of 1886 seconded the motion in that year when they wound up the 250th anniversary parade with a transparency reading: Harvard has waited for two centuries and a half to greet us! Allowing for slight but pardonable exaggeration, we are ready to declare that we look upon the Class of 1955 as a group which will give a good account of itself and do credit to the memory of the Founder who sits in bronze dignity before University Hall. We note with pleasure a high median, far above the average college norm, in the Aptitude Test and, - a satis- factory concomitant, - larger numbers than usual engaged in some athletic activity. Statistics indicate a wide spread of geographical representation. Thirty-eight per cent of ad- mitted candidates are residents of New England, 28 per cent hail from the Middle States, 13 from the North Central region, 8 from the Far West and Pacific seaboard, 7 from the South, 3.5 from the Central States, 2.5 from foreign countries. This cosmopolitanism is one of Harvard's aims, a unity of spirit but a variety of individual interests and talents. This interchange of ideas leads to what President Eliot called one of the durable satisfactions , it prompted President Lowell to develop the House Plan and the Society of Fellows, and it is a main element in the National Scholarships in- augurated by President Conant. These figures also indicate that upon graduation the new alumnus will find himself at home and welcome in any of the 120 Harvard Clubs scatter- ed throughout the world, and will know men of his own college class from all parts of the United States. This, in my opinion, is one of the many assets of a Harvard education. The proportion of public to private school graduates in 1955 is 56.7 per cent of the former to 43.3 of the latter, - a ratio which has been almost identical during the last three years, and has stood between these figures, in either direc- tion, for nearly two decades. Over 700 schools are repre- sented among the successful applicants. One must not at this time, and in the present state of the world, hazard prophecies. It is impossible anyhow, in a group of 1114 students, to define the spirit of a class or their corporate prospects as one might possibly do in a small college. But it is fair to expect that the problems of the draft will be met as such war problems have been met by their predecessors, and that upon their graduation they will find a better adjusted civilization in which to exercise their abilities both for success and for service. They have the advantage ofa year in college for all, and continued educa- tion in essential studies for many. It is our hope that with plenty of interests outside the classroom, both mental and physical, and with the comradeship which comes from mu- tual respect, thecircles within circles which offer seventy-five activities and organizations will make the present Freshman Class both men of the world and men above the world. With good wishes to every man of 1955, we greet you with the highest hopes. 1 4 ft. An Introduction

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THE FRESHMAN REGISTER CLASS OF 1955 Published by the Staff of Harvard Yearbook Publications 52 Dunster Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts November, 1951

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