by running an interview with a mythical Scholar named "Percival Suckthumb, aged 9, senior major in atomic physics." The college observed in its report to the Fund that the authorship was shrouded in mystery but that the article may well have been written by one of the Scholars. The case seems worth citing, not as an indication of the general collegiate attitude, but because the caricature is perhaps not far removed from the concept of the Scholars held by some people who have had no first-hand experience with them.

What were the Fund Scholars really like? From what kind of families, high schools, and community backgrounds did they come? While it is as impossible to produce a truly typical Scholar as it is to produce a truly typical college student, Chart I (pages 16 and 17) affords as clear a composite portrait of the Fund Scholar as it is possible to present. It is based on statistics for the four combined Scholar groups.

As the chart indicates, the Scholars were not "infant prodigies" or "baby geniuses," but merely students who happened to be relatively younger and relatively more promising intellectually than ordinary students. Most of them were 16 years old or younger, and only a small minority had completed 12 years of schooling before entering college. The majority came from large cities or suburbs, but roughly 10 per cent came from small towns and another 10 per cent from rural areas. By and large, they were the products of public schools, and most of them were from middle-income families whose breadwinner was either in business or one of the professions.