Past Year Sees Increase in Number of Honor Candidates

Outstanding in the report that has just been compiled by the Committee on the Choice of Electives is the fact that there has been an increase during the last year in the number of candidates for honors, and that the number of men concentrating in English is steadily decreasing, while the number in Economics is rapidly on the increase. If a similar rate of change continues another year the Department of Economics will include more men than the Department of English.

A year ago the English department held a margin of 124 students over the next largest field, Economics. Today English leads by but 35 students. The Department of Economics which has increased by 198 in the last two years, and included in 1924, 13.8 percent of the members of the three upper classes, now takes in 16.9 percent.

The Department of History, as well as the Departments of Philosophy and Psychology, also shows an increase in the number of men concentrating in these fields, while the Divisions of Mathematics and Chemistry have shown a consistent drop in the past few years.

The increase in the number of the candidates for honors is indicated by the fact that the percentage of the undergraduates, entering Freshmen excluded, who are approved candidates for honors amounts to 31.7, an increase of 3.4 percent over last year. Of the ten largest fields of concentration, the combined Departments of Philosophy and of Psychology lead the list.

In the following list the number of men concentrating in a field and the number of approved candidates for honors are respectively given after each of the fields of concentration:

Anthropology 41, 8: Astronomy 3, 3; Bio-Chemical Sciences 71, 22; Biology 87, 17; Chinese Archaeology 1, 0; Chemistry, 156, 52; Classical Archaeology 1, 1; Classics 38, 25; Economics 406, 111; Engineering Science 13, 3; English 441, 150; Fine Arts 95, 26; Geology 48, 10; German 29, 14; Government 135, 51; History 227, 77; History and Literature 98, 41; Literature 17, 8; Mathematics 85, 37; Music 15, 10; Philosophy and Psychology 89, 45; Physics 48, 11; Romance Languages 213, 53; Semitic 7, 3; Social Ethics 42, 3.