BEYOND MEASURE

Among the many panaceas proposed of recent years towards alleviating the ills of the college few obtained as general support as the "scholastic aptitude" tests which were made part of the admission requirements in many universities. At one of these, Amherst, investigations were made to determine whether they really fulfilled their function of predicting scholastic ability any better than the usual entrance examinations, and after a six year period the results are decidedly negative. Comparison of the test results with the records made by the men in college show that in no case did the two show more than a fifty per cent correspondence. The endeavor to diagnose by psychology what value a student will obtain from a college education was no more efficacious than the older method of testing his knowledge by examinations.

Both of these measures, the one of the latent powers of the student's mind and the other of the training it has had, are necessarily limited in their usefulness as indicators of his later successes. The capabilities which they reveal with more or less accuracy resemble the system by which education in presented to the student in being only the raw material with which he is to work. Combined in varying proportions as determined by the individual and the college, they mark the outside limits of his achievements. But both system and native talent together can do little unless there is added the leaven of personal endeavor and desire to learn, and this is what no combination of tests can reveal.