Harvard Formula Need On Nation-Wide Basis

A Harvard-inspired formula for determining the financial need of scholarship applicants will go into nationwide operation this week. The College Scholarship Service has sent out manuals describing the new system of computation to 126 member colleges, in time for use on the classes of 1960.

Distribution of the manuals reemphasizes one of the basic aims of the Scholarship Service: awarding scholarships primarily on the basis of need. The CSS, in fact began its operation last year in order to stop bidding among colleges for potential "Who's Who" candidates, whose anticipated success would bring reflected glory.

CSS Member colleges now have three options for determining the need and thus the size of their scholarship awards to applicants:

1) they can use their own methods, using as their basis the standardized scholarship application instituted last year by the CSS;

2) they can themselves use the manual, drawing individual information from the uniform CSS applications;

3) they can ask the CSS to compute need as well as to collect applications.

Monro Important

The procedure in the new manual derives directly from the Harvard formula for determining need--estimating the amount parents can devote to their children's education. This was devised by John U. Monro '34, Director of the Financial Aid Center, and a moving force in the formation of the CSS.

Before publication of the manual, the CSS only collected financial information from applicants to member college on a uniform application and sent Photostats to the schools requested by the applicants. It then compiled from the colleges the amount of the grants offered scholarship candidates, and this month will distribute a confidential list of comparative amounts.

This list will allow schools to determine on what basis rival schools have offered scholarship awards to mutual candidates. Neither the Service nor the CEEB purports, however, to police awards.