HOW THE SCHOLARS WERE CHOSEN

The students who were awarded Fund scholarships under the program were not selected by the Fund itself, but by the individual colleges and universities. In general, each institution employed its own usual procedures in admitting Scholars, but some used special recruiting efforts and screened candidates for Early Admission more carefully than candidates for regular admission.

The Scholars were selected above all for their high academic promise. Admissions officers based their judgment of this on the applicants' high school records and their scores on scholastic aptitude tests, coupled in most cases with achievement tests. Except in the case of Shimer, no applicant was accepted unless his aptitude score was higher than the customary minimum for entering students. Shimer tried an experimental procedure of admitting Scholars with a wide range of aptitudes, including some of average and below-average capacity.

The choice of Scholars was not guided solely by the consideration of high scholastic aptitude. Admissions officers generally attempted a more careful appraisal of the applicants' social and emotional maturity than is customary with ordinary applicants, in recognition of the fact that not every young high school student of unusual intellectual endowment is ready to handle the greater freedom of college wisely. Many institutions insisted on personal interviews with the Scholar candidates. All relied heavily on the judgments of high school principals where such judgments were available. One college found the students' application letters revealing. Another requested and studied autobiographical sketches.

In cases where the academic promise and emotional maturity of candidates were considered roughly equal, the choice was influenced by other factors, some quite unrelated to the intent of the program itself but important to the institution. Most of the colleges, for example, sought greater geographical and socioeconomic diversity than usually exists among their entering freshmen.