Word: program
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Advanced Standing is an established program whose educational merit is rarely questioned. In May 1954 the Faculty of Arts of Sciences voted to institute the program "in order to strengthen the continuity between secondary school and college and between college and graduate school, and to encourage able and mature students to enter the most advanced courses for which they are prepared." And tomorrow, nearly 45 years later, a new crop of first-years will file petitions for sophomore status. But since I filed my own such petition three years ago I have wondered: Is Advanced Standing an academically sound program...
...reassess the "worth" of individual A.P. courses (a score of 4 or 5 on the United States history exam, for example, now counts for one full credit; four such scores would count for one year's worth of study); it will not reconsider the worth of the Advanced Standing program as a whole--a review which in my opinion is long overdue...
...very small, focused percentage of students, Advanced Standing is a good program; it gets them where they're going faster. Indeed, one of the two reasons Dean Todd gave me for keeping Advanced Standing (and the stronger one in his view) is that "there are students who can make good arguments to use it." But he also had this to say: "For most students, it's a misfortune and a missed opportunity" because "people who graduate in three years have skipped precisely those courses which will be most broadening for them...
...other reason he gave for keeping Advanced Standing which cuts more to the heart of the matter, namely that "it helps attract good students to Harvard." Director of Admissions Marlyn McGrath Lewis '70-'73 agreed: "We are quite certain that if there were no Advanced Standing program," she said, "we would be at a competitive disadvantage...
...ironic that Advanced Standing might have more to do with College admissions than it does with undergraduate education? Perhaps. But it would not be all that surprising--because on educational grounds, it seems to me, there is little to no justification for keeping the program alive...