During the mid-century period Phillips Academy policies on admissions, scholarships, and college admission all changed from operations that were played pretty much by ear to highly organized, scientific procedures that made all three areas big business at the School, far beyond anything dreamed of in the earlier years. At the turn of the century most of the admissions work was done by the Headmaster, with assists from other members of the Faculty and Administration. From the very start, a good character was a prime requisite for admission, but there was no elaborate system of entrance examinations. When boys who had been admitted found that they could not do the work, they were simply transferred to a lower class. As a result, boys of eighteen or nineteen were regularly classified as juniors or Lower Middlers.

After World War I admissions procedures became better organized when Lester Lynde, Dean of the Academy, was put in charge and a system of entrance examinations was instituted. The examination system had its difficulties, however; examinations were given in Andover and New York in the spring for boys who could get to those places, but the rest had to take their examinations locally under conditions that the School had no way of checking. The tests helped to determine which boys should be admitted and in what class.

In these days of Fair Educational Practices Acts, it is hard to remember how easy it was to discriminate against minority groups before World War II. Phillips Academy was no exception to a practice that was followed by most American colleges and private schools and was probably neither worse nor better than any of the others. It used a quota system, as did most of the rest. Writing to another school in 1935, Dr. Fuess said, "It is just too bad about the little Jewish boy, but I can't very well blame Dean Lynde for trying to keep our school as predominantly Aryan as possible. If we once start to open our doors freely to members of that race, we shall be overwhelmed by applications. As a matter of fact we have hundreds each year as it is."(30) On another occasion, writing to the Headmaster of a British School, Fuess reported that at Phillips Academy there were thirty to thirty-five Jewish students out of a school of 690. "We shall never," he said, "have a larger percentage, and I am trying to reduce it just a little. On the other hand some of them make first class students and real leaders, although very few of them are permitted to hold important social positions."(31) In another letter to the same man, he added, "The pressure to get Jews into Andover is tremendously strong, especially from bankers among our alumni body, but so far we have been able tactfully to resist it."(32) Occasionally, Jewish students who had managed to jump the admissions barrier met with anti-Semitism within the School. An alumnus writes of his first years at Williams Hall, where there were a few Jewish students enrolled. It was decided to give them the so-called "silent treatment," and as a result none of the other students in the dormitory would speak to them. The alumnus went along with this vicious performance, at the same time hating himself for doing so, but he did not feel strong enough to defy the herd. Generally speaking, however, most of the Jewish students were well accepted, and some of them made distinguished records during this period. Jack Fuess's attitude toward black students was of a piece with his attitude toward Jewish students. Replying in 1944 to a request from an alumnus for more blacks at Andover, he reported that there were two in school at the time, one of them a member of a Society. But he felt that more might make trouble.(33) In short, Andover had a few token blacks, but no concerted effort was made to recruit any.

The admission picture changed with the arrival on the Hill in 1934 of James Ruthven ("Spike") Adriance. A graduate of Phillips Academy in the Class of 1928, where he had been Class President and a school leader par excellence, he had gone on to Yale, where, among other things, he had been a member of the Whiffenpoofs. After a short tour of duty at the Hill School, he returned to his alma mater, first as Assistant Dean and then, in 1942, as Director of Admissions. It would be hard to find a man better fitted for his post. Wherever he went, he exuded a geniality and affability that soon put people at their ease. His concern for all kinds of people was genuine and contagious. As Director of Admissions he spent countless hours trying to help parents whose sons had been rejected at Andover find other schools for the boys. Spike and his talented wife, Nancy, did a lot of traveling for the School, not only on admissions business but for Alumni dinners as well. They soon became great favorites, and before Spike retired from Phillips Academy he was widely known as "Mr. Andover."

After he had been Director of Admissions for six years, Spike wrote an article summarizing admissions procedures that can serve very well as a statement of the School's policy in 1948.(34) At the head of the organization was the Admissions Committee, made up of the Headmaster (when he was available), the Director of Admissions and his Assistant, the Deans of Faculty and Students, the Director of the Summer Session, and four members of the Faculty. This group would meet regularly after the May entrance exams and also at the end of the Summer Session and at the opening of school in September. In most cases Spike's recommendations were simply approved, but with difficult ones long wrangles often took place. In the main the Committee was looking for boys of good character, with satisfactory school records, who had also distinguished themselves in some kind of extracurracular activity. In reaching their decisions the Committee depended on the form filled out by the boy's previous school; it would include his academic record and any comments the school might make. For example, under the topic "Principal Weaknesses" one school wrote, "He has a math blind spot, and a mother who is just short of being batty." Boys who were able to do so were urged to come to Andover for an interview; in other cases the interview was conducted by an alumnus nearby. Each applicant was asked to produce three letters of recommendation, two from teachers and one from an outsider. The School also gave entrance exams (this was before the SSAT tests) that included a spelling and an aptitude test, as well as subject exams. The spelling test often revealed reading disabilities that would make the applicant's chances at Andover very poor indeed. When a boy wrote "annusement" for "announcement" and "touploup" for "tulip," the danger flag went up.

The Committee's task was complicated by the wide variations in the quality of education at the applicants' previous schools. A boy in the top 10 percent of his class in a big city high school wrote a paper that the Phillips Academy English Department pronounced completely illiterate. A school mathematics teacher obtained a copy of the Andover entrance exam in algebra and gave it to his class. Much to his dismay only two out of sixty passed. Yet Spike refused to yield on this point. Phillips Academy was a school with high standards, and he insisted on keeping them so. Generally speaking, the character of the undergraduate body changed very little during Spike's term as Director of Admissions. For a good part of that time applicants were not numerous, and the School would not have been able to engage in social engineering to change the make-up of its student body even if it had wanted to. During a ten-year period after the war, every year the five states from which most of the Andover undergraduates came were Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and the representation from these five accounted for well over half of the undergraduate body. To be sure, there were about forty states and a number of foreign countries also represented, but in a large number of these cases it was only by one or two boys. Having the son of an Andover alumnus from Idaho may look good in the catalogue, but it contributed very little to the diversification of the student body. The fact of the matter was that in the postwar years Phillips Academy was happy to fill the School with able boys and did not concern itself about what social class they came from. It was not until the 1960's that the School would make a conscious attempt to control the make-up of its student body through the recruiting of different kinds of students.

In 1955 Spike Adriance left his position as Director of Admissions to become Assistant to the Headmaster, a post from which he could continue to exercise his considerable gifts with the Alumni and the general public. As his successor the Headmaster appointed Robert W. Sides, who had been Assistant Director of Admissions up to this time. Bob Sides was different from Spike; though warm and friendly with people, he did not have Spike's effervescence. His approach to admissions problems was more scientific, less intuitive. Perhaps it reflected the fact that in addition to being Director of Admissions he taught Mathematics and Navigation. Bob's sensitivity to boys and his ability to go beyond superficial impressions are illustrated by the following episode. A boy arrived with two very high-powered parents who spoke glowingly of their son's abilities and his keen desire to go to Andover. The boy himself said very little. After some conversations, Bob told the parents he would like to interview the boy alone. When they were together Bob said, "Nothing that is said in this room will ever be told your parents. Now tell me honestly, do you really want to come to Andover?" "Hell, no," the boy replied. "Don't worry," Bob said, you won't have to." And in due course the application was rejected.

One of Bob's first innovations was to involve the Faculty more with admissions decisions. Though the old Committee had had four members of the Faculty, it was dominated by representatives of the Administration. The admissions people were regularly attacked by members of the Faculty who wondered how so-and-so could possibly have been admitted. To give the Faculty a greater share in selecting boys for admission and at the same time to silence the Faculty complainers, Bob Sides instituted a new procedure. The folder of each applicant would be read by three Faculty members of the Admissions Committee and by one of the Admission Officers. Each reader would vote on a scale of five-one being a shoo-in and five being hopeless. Then the total would determine whether the boy would be admitted, rejected, or put on a waiting list for further study. A score from four (the lowest possible) to eight was a sure admit, from sixteen to twenty a sure reject. That left a large pool of boys with scores from nine to fifteen for the Admissions Office to agonize over. Alumni sons were recognized by having three points subtracted from their total, while applicants with other alumni relatives received lesser bonuses. One disadvantage of this procedure was that it took a tremendous number of man hours to implement, and this necessitated increasing the number of Faculty members on the Admissions Committee markedly. But as more and more of the Faculty came to understand the difficulties in the admissions process, complaints about decisions almost disappeared. In addition, it seemed logical to have those who were going to teach the students have a say about whom they were going to teach. Finally, instead of admissions being handled by an elite group dominated by administrators, the new procedure was broadly democratic. Aside from the work involved---the number of applicants was often over one thousand---the new system brought nothing but plusses to Andover admissions.

Bob Sides was also one of the leaders among a group of schoolmen who established the Secondary School Admission Test, administered by the Educational Testing Service. Known to thousands of boys and girls as the SSAT, these tests replaced the individual school entrance exams and did for secondary education what the College Board had done for the colleges. Though charges have been made that too great an emphasis is placed on these aptitude tests, the scores provide one item in an applicant's total record that has proved very useful in predicting his future success in school.(35) During Bob's term as Director of Admissions the Commonwealth of Massachusetts proposed, and eventually enacted into law, a Fair Educational Practices Act that would make any kind of discrimination in admissions procedures on the basis of race, creed, color, or national origins illegal. Phillips Academy supported that Act in general but was unhappy with some of the proposals for implementing it. For example, the Act banned the use of pictures of applicants in the admissions process. Bob Sides and other members of the School went to Boston to protest some of these features. Bob pointed out that since practically every Andover applicant was interviewed, if the School was going to discriminate, it would do so on the basis of the interview, and he insisted that he used pictures to remind him of a previously held interview. But it was politically difficult to oppose any part of the Act; anyone doing so immediately became suspect. The great many schools and colleges that had reservations about certain parts of the Act eventually had to accept it pretty much as originally drawn.

After the passage of the Act in 1956, any quota systems that educational institutions in Massachusetts may have used in the past became dead letters. This was accomplished without any school or college ever being hauled into court. Perhaps the provision that in case a school discriminated, the Headmaster and the Director of Admissions could be put in jail had something to do with it. Phillips Academy's acceptance of the Act was made even clearer when, under Bob Sides, the first concerted efforts were made to recruit minority students to make the Andover student body more diversified. Since these programs were intimately connected with the School's Scholarship Program, they will be discussed below.

In 1972 Robert Sides resigned as Director of Admissions, his place being taken by Joshua Miner. In general Josh Miner has continued Bob's basic policies, though he has stepped up the recruiting programs significantly. In recent years the number of applicants has steadily mounted, and although a variety of factors are responsible, especially the advent of coeducation, one of the major reasons is the skill and sensitivity in dealing with people that josh and his staff have demonstrated.

If procedures for admissions became more scientific during the Mid-century period, those for awarding scholarships became equally so. The tradition of helping poor boys get an education is as old as the School itself. In the Academy's Constitution, provision is made for aiding what were then called "indigent" students, and early in the school's history special funds were set aside for that purpose. This tradition continued without much change well into the twentieth century. Some deserving students were given cash grants, others were given jobs in the School---waiting on table being one of the most popular. A scholarship student was expected to maintain a respectable academic average and could well have his scholarship revoked if he failed to do so. This all seemed to work pretty well; yet there was no rhyme or reason in making awards. The parents submitted no financial statement to determine if they were eligible for a grant, nor was there any scientific method for determining the size of the grant. Scholarships were usually awarded after conversation with the parents, and the School official involved had to play it pretty much by ear. At times mistakes were made, and members of the Faculty would become enraged when the parents of a boy on scholarship would come to pick him up in an expensive new car.

Andover was no different from all the other schools and colleges in this respect, and the wonder is that it took so long for somebody to do something about it. That somebody was John Monro, '30, at this writing an Academy Trustee and at that time in charge of financial aid at Harvard. He was the moving spirit in the establishment of the College Scholarship Service, which at long last put the awarding of financial aid on a scientific basis. It also encouraged foundations and corporations to make grants for scholarships because they could have confidence that the money would be awarded fairly. The procedure that CSS developed involved the submission by parents of a detailed financial statement not unlike an Income Tax form that listed all income, assets, expenses, other children, and the like and then asked the parents to indicate how much they could pay toward the student's tuition. Computation developed what the parents should pay on the basis of the statement submitted. The balance, if any, could be made up by the college in the form of grants, loans, or jobs, or a combination. One of the major aims of the Service was to eliminate the size of grant as a factor in the student's choice of college. If all colleges followed the same procedures, that should automatically be the case, and to ensure it, all colleges had to report all the offers they had made to applicants, so that comparisons could be made. Frederick S. Allis, Jr., of the Andover Faculty was a member of the first College Scholarship Service Committee, representing the schools, and he also served as Chairman of the CSS Subcommittee on Computation. As a result he became familiar with the new procedures and determined to introduce them at Phillips Academy. The School's Scholarship Committee under Dean of Students G. Grenville Benedict had already moved in the direction of the CSS program by working out a rough table of grants that related the size of the grant to net income, but the procedure was not nearly so sophisticated as that of CSS.(36)

In the course of the next few years Fritz Allis, who had been appointed Director of Financial Aid, was able to implement the CSS policy at Andover. Permission was obtained to copy the CSS financial statement, and at first the computation was done at Andover by some very sharp Faculty wives. If this was good for Andover, it should be good for other schools as well, and before long the School Scholarship Service was organized, closely modeled on the College organization. Eventually the schools stopped doing their own computations and turned the job over to the Educational Testing Service at Princeton, as the colleges had done from the beginning. The new procedures in the awarding of financial aid enabled the Director to act with infinitely more confidence than was the case in the old hit-or-miss days. The job was difficult, for it involved making decisions about a family's life blood. What were legitimate expenses, for example? Should the family of an applicant for a scholarship own an expensive boat? One angry mother wrote the Director that he was so stingy that he probably cut his own hair. Another parent insisted that he was a tither and therefore could not afford to send his boy to Andover on the grant offered. The Director suggested that in effect he was asking that Andover scholarship money be given to his church, but the boy never came to the Academy. A distressed mother arrived with her family budget and asked the Director to go over it with her. She did not see how she could possibly pay what the School expected her to. The Director, who usually did not get into family budgets, discovered an item of fifty dollars a week for the husband's "beer and bowling" and suggested that that was where the tuition money could come from. In this case the boy came and the father presumably found some less expensive form of recreation. With the passage of time the whole business of financial statements and computation became routine both for parents and for the Scholarship Office. Some modifications were made, like the introduction of a loan program for families on the borderline; but generally speaking what had been a jungle of confusion and uncertainty became a policy of clarity and equity.

A second major alteration in the Scholarship Program during the mid-century period involved a change in the status of the scholarship students in the School. Before World War II no one had considered whether it is a good idea to have the scholarship boys labeled as such. They were a clearly identified group, recognized primarily by the fact that they had jobs to do around the School. In addition, those in the know realized that scholarship boys had to maintain good academic records, or they would lose their scholarships. It must not be supposed that this necessarily was a hardship to those on scholarship. Each year many of the School leaders and outstanding athletes were on scholarship. Indeed, one reason why Al Stearns had insisted on spreading the scholarship boys throughout all the school dormitories, after the disappearance of the Latin and English Commons, was to prevent a special clique of mature, tough boys from dominating the School. In the period between the two wars the boys on scholarship considered themselves an elite group in the school. Ted Harrison, '38, later Director of Athletics, can speak eloquently about this. He was a headwaiter in the Commons and always thought that he and his friends had the best deal of anyone at Andover. In the first place they had a shot at the best food, and in addition they had positions of authority that brought respect. After World War II, however, there was growing concern among the Faculty over what was called the double standard. If a full-freight-paying customer committed some crime, he would be put on probation. If a scholarship boy committed the same crime, he would likewise be put on probation and also might have his scholarship revoked. He was thus in a double jeopardy that to many seemed unfair. And the same situation obtained with regard to academic performance: a full-tuition boy might fail two courses and be put on No-Excuse; a scholarship boy might get No-Excuse and lose his scholarship as well. During the 1950's the Scholarship Committee had great difficulty with this double jeopardy policy, particularly because, in many cases, taking a boy's scholarship away was the equivalent of expulsion. As the decade wore on, the Committee gradually moved further and further away from the double jeopardy policy. The first step was to eliminate taking away a boy's scholarship during the school year; only at the final Faculty meeting in June could this be done. A second step was to remove scholarships only by a vote of the Faculty as a whole in June. After a year or so, the double-standard policy was dropped entirely, simply because the Faculty refused to vote any more removals. From then on, if a scholarship boy got into trouble, he was not punished more than anyone else.

A second area in which potential scholarship boys were discriminated against was in the matter of admissions. In the period immediately following World War II there were, in effect, two Admissions Committees---one for full-freight-paying customers and one for scholarship boys. The two worked closely together and had the same general standards for admission. The major difference was that when the scholarship funds ran out, the Scholarship Committee came to a halt, even though they might still have some very promising candidates. As time went on, it became more and more frustrating for all concerned to have good scholarship applicants turned down for lack of funds while mediocre boys whose parents could pay full tuition were accepted. When the problem was presented to John Kemper, he characteristically met it head on. First, he found ways of supplementing the scholarship budget so as to enable the Scholarship Committee to accept more good boys. Then, with the strong support of Trustee Jack Stevens, he revolutionized the whole procedure. Jack Stevens had often said that there were only two really important items in the Academy's budget---teachers' salaries and scholarships---and it was up to the Trustees to find whatever money was necessary for both. In the late 1950's the Trustees, egged on by Jack Stevens and John Kemper, voted to wipe out the distinction in admissions between scholarship and nonscholarship boys. The Admissions Committee and the Scholarship Committee were to be merged and instructed to get the best boys they could find, regardless of whether they needed financial aid. The Trustees would foot the bill that resulted. This courageous act on the part of the Trustees meant that a promising boy would no longer be penalized because of his father's financial status and would improve the quality of the student body. A most important contribution to the success of the new policy was the grant by the Independence Foundation of Philadelphia, under the leadership of Robert A. Maes, '27. The Foundation granted the School $50,000 a year for Scholarships for a twenty-year period, 1952-72.

The term "Most Qualified" or MQ has been applied to this policy, and though the Admissions Office has had to fudge a bit occasionally, generally speaking it is still in effect today. Those who feared that the policy would mean a majority of the School on scholarship, with astronomical scholarship budgets, have been proved wrong. The fraction getting financial aid has never gone much over one third. The financial aid budget has certainly grown tremendously over the years---it is now pushing one million dollars a year---but this has been due more to inflation than to an increased percentage of scholarship students. In a very real sense the MQ policy is a logical culmination of Samuel Phillips' original desire to help indigent boys of good character.

The final step in changing the status of Scholarship boys at Phillips Academy came in the late 1960's when the Faculty voted to have all students do work around the School. From the very beginning, boys receiving financial aid from the School had been expected to do some kind of useful work in partial repayment for their grant. Some boys were given a chance to earn part of their tuition money through concessions. The difficulty with this arrangement was that no one could predict how much money a boy could make from his concession. A high-powered leader with an effective sales pitch might sell contracts with the laundry he represented to a large part of the School, while a timid boy from a rival laundry would wind up with almost no sales at all. An even more callous part of the system made the youngest boys on scholarship deliver newspapers before breakfast. The sight of a small junior making his rounds in a blizzard to deliver his papers was reminiscent of something out of Dickens. Gradually the use of concessions as a means of helping boys on scholarship pay part of the tuition expenses was abandoned. In part this resulted from a decline in sales---today, for example, most students do their own laundry in washing machines in dormitory basements---and in part because there was too much variation in the amount of money that different boys made. Newspaper deliveries have been stopped, in part because the School decided that the labor of boys on scholarship should not be used to subsidize Boston papers. But the other jobs---working in the Commons and in school offices---remained. As the 1960's wore on, more and more of the Faculty became uncomfortable with a system whereby the scholarship boys did useful work while the rest of the students watched. Furthermore, there was pressure from other quarters. One mother wrote to see if there was not some way that her son could be on scholarship. She knew she was not eligible on the basis of need, but she said that the boys on scholarship were getting the best education at Andover and she wanted her son to gain the experience that working for the School could provide. This feeling grew steadily until in the late 1960's the Faculty finally voted to have all students share in the work to be done around the School. Thus the last vestige of a policy that had distinguished boys on scholarship from other students disappeared. Scholarship students were no longer identified as such, the amounts of their awards no longer appeared on their record cards, and generally every attempt was made to give them a status of complete equality in the School. Some of the Faculty believed that this was going too far, that it was bad education to encourage students in the belief that the financial condition of their families made no difference in life. These Faculty members also feared that the scholarship students would be in for a rude awakening in college, where such an egalitarian policy did not prevail. For example, colleges sometimes admit an Andover scholarship student even though at the time they have no scholarship funds to award him. But the great majority of the Andover community believe that the present system, despite some drawbacks, is preferable to the old one, in which scholarship students were a group apart in the School.(37)

When, in 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down their now famous decision in Brown vs. Topeka, in which the justices ruled that separate educational facilities were inherently unequal and mandated a policy of school desegregation, their ruling had no direct effect on Phillips Academy. Aside from relatively small grants from the Federal Government under the hot lunch program, the School received no money from either the federal or state governments, and the Trustees had made it clear that they did not want any. At the same time there were many in the Andover community who did not wish to hide behind legal technicalities. They believed that integration was the law of the land and that Phillips Academy should do its share in helping to implement this vital national policy. Certainly up to this time the School had done little if anything for blacks. For the previous century there had been one or two in School about half of the time, but there were long periods when there was none. From 1911 to 1934, for example, only four had enrolled. Both Al Stearns and Jack Fuess were dubious about the value of an Andover education for blacks and had discouraged their admission. Now, in the mid 1950's, the School's policy toward the admission of blacks was to change dramatically. Partially, one supposes, as a result of the Supreme Court decision, the numbers began to increase; in 1956 there were twelve, with the numbers for the next three years, 11, 10, and 10. The black students were still, for the most part, children of black professional people---those who had already made it. Not until the 1960's did the School embark on a concerted program to recruit black students---not just sons of professional people but disadvantaged ones as well. At the heart of this drive was an organization formed by a group of independent schools called ABC---A Better Chance.(38) Before the formation of this program, the School had worked with the National Scholarship Fund for Negro Students---known familiarly as Nessfeness---which had developed a recruiting program for blacks; but their main focus was on collegiate education and it was believed that a separate organization for schools was in order. Those behind ABC were all the more determined to develop school programs because of the testimony of sociologists to the effect that if one waited to help a black student until he was old enough for college, it was often too late. In the fall of 1963 Dr. Howard Jones of Northfield-Mt. Hermon and President John Dickey of Dartmouth began planning for a program the following summer designed to prepare black students for entrance into independent schools. As the program developed, schools were found willing to accept black students and provide them with scholarships. Dartmouth was able to get the Rockefellers to subsidize the summer program, and the college itself agreed to pay for the overhead. At the same time, plans were made for an Independent School Talent Search Program designed to identify black secondary school students of promise. The first summer program was held at Dartmouth in 1964 under the direction of Charles Dey, now head of Choate-Rosemary Hall, and a high proportion of the black students who attended went on to independent schools in the fall. Headmaster John M. Kemper had been enthusiastic about ABC from the very beginning---indeed he helped to set it up and he made the substantial resources of. Phillips Academy available for the program, for it was going in precisely the direction that the School had been heading since the mid 1950's. One year, for example, when two promising ABC students could not find places in independent schools, he accepted them at Phillips Academy, even though the School already had its quota. Once the ABC program had been established, it expanded rapidly. Additional summer programs were set up at other colleges besides Dartmouth, and eventually Phillips Academy decided to start one of its own as part of the Andover Summer Session. The general aim of the Andover authorities was to have about 10 percent of the undergraduate body black, roughly the same percentage as in the nation as a whole, but this goal was never achieved. In the School year 1969-70 the high point was reached, with fifty-four black students or 6.2 percent of the student body and with a record number of fifteen blacks in the Class of 1971. After this peak year the number dropped to an average in the mid 30's.(39) But it was not simply a matter of identifying promising black students and getting them placed in independent schools. The culture shock of entering a white environment on a twenty- four-hour-a-day basis was acute. As one of the first students to enroll at Andover under the program put it:

I knew it would be hard work, but it was more than that. There's a dislocation. When someone is transplanted from one environment to another, he can't grow without some very abrupt adjustments. When I was here ... there was no social scene at all for Blacks .... On the other hand, you were forced into new social situations---getting to know new people---opportunities to have new experiences. But it wasn't easy at first.

But you never gave up. No matter what. When you were down in the depths about your situation, you still felt that commitment, that charge you had to keep. And you kept it.(40)

Some of those in charge of the ABC program at Phillips Academy hoped that the black students would become integrated into the School community but, for the most part, this did not happen. Blacks and whites might work together in class, might compete together in sports, might live together in dormitories, but in other areas the blacks tended to constitute a distinct group. For example, they all sat together in the Commons at meal time. As time went on, it became clear that the black students were not going to integrate socially with the whites and that they needed a social center of their own. Though John Kemper had reservations about such an institution, he finally agreed to the establishment of the Afro-American Society, later called the Afro-Latino-American Society, and turned over to the new organization the upper floor of Peabody House. Here the black students could put up posters reflecting black accomplishments, have their own music, and serve their own food. Even though such an institution ran counter to the goal of integration, it filled a crying need of the black students to have a place of their own. At times there was racial friction. When a black student with an unusually fine voice was refused the chance to try out for the leading role in the spring musical, The Boyfriend, because, according to the Director, the part called for a white, undergraduate resentment was so strong that the entire production had to be abandoned.(41) A program like ABC was full of risks. Despite summer preparation for the independent school experience, some of the students found the adjustment too difficult and had to be sent home. But the majority came through with flying colors and went on to college. They provided a new meaning to the phrase "Youth from Every Quarter." Douglas Suisman, '72, who made an admirable study of the Andover undergraduate body over a fifty-year period, concluded in 1972 that "socially Andover now has reached the fullest integration into, and the greatest compatibility with American society" of any time in its history.(42)

As was true of both the admissions and the scholarship areas, Phillips Academy's policy on counseling boys on their choice of college was a relaxed business before the 1930's. Much of the work was done by teachers and housemasters, and no single person was in charge. To a large extent this situation was due to the fact that Andover boys had little trouble getting into the colleges of their choice, whether they graduated or not. Each year, for example, there were a certain number of "Non-Returning Upper Middlers" who were not returning because they had already received admission to college without diplomas. On one occasion Al Stearns got into a fight with the Director of Admissions at Amherst because of the college's rule that a boy must take mathematics the year before entering college, but for the most part it was a matter of letting nature take her course. When Willet Eccles became Registrar in the early 1930's, he introduced more system into college counseling, as he did with so many other aspects of his office, and when he left to become Headmaster of St. George's in 1943, he was succeeded by G. Grenville Benedict, who took college counseling very seriously and developed a highly sophisticated system for helping boys gain admission to the college of their choice. "Geegee" or "G squared," as he was known to the boys, each year became father confessor to the whole Senior class---and many of their parents to boot---and achieved a high degree of success in this work. As Dean of Students he had many other responsibilities as well. He was Chairman of the Faculty Discipline Committee and fought many a fight with the more conservative members of his committee trying to save some unfortunate youth who had committed some heinous sin. In both his disciplinary work and his counseling, the undergraduates came to understand that he really did have their best interests at heart, and until he retired in the 1960's he was one of the most popular and respected members of the School community.

In the 1930's college admissions won by Andover undergraduates followed a very consistent pattern. The most striking thing about this pattern was the large number who went to Yale, as noted frequently above. The tradition went back to the days of Uncle Sam Taylor. A high point was reached in 1936, when 90 boys went to New Haven, which meant that about one freshman in ten on the Yale campus was an Andover man. This was also about three times as many as went to Harvard that year. Harvard usually ran second during this period, with Princeton third, but only once during the 1930's did more than twenty boys go to Princeton. Then followed Dartmouth, M.I.T., Brown, and Amherst, the order of these last four varying from year to year. Wartime figures are unreliable because of the number of accelerations and entries into the armed services, though a new high of 95 going to Yale was registered by the Class of 1942.(43) Once the war was over, the whole college admission picture changed drastically. Returning veterans, supported by the GI Bill, swelled the number of applicants for college places. In addition, the rise in national income made it possible for more families to send their children to college than had been the case in the 1930's. Just as after World War I a high school diploma became for the first time the expected goal of most adolescents, so after World War II that goal became a college degree. The effect of all this on Phillips Academy was to make it more and more difficult for Andover graduates to get accepted at their first-choice colleges and thus to make effective college counseling essential. In the early 1950's, for example, Harvard had 3500 applicants for 1100 places, Yale 4000 for 1000, Princeton 3000 for 750, and Amherst 1200 for 250. It was clear that what Gren Benedict called the "Edwardian Era" in college admissions was gone.(44) All of this came as a shock to Andover graduates and particularly their parents. As one disgruntled student put it, "If I can't get into my first-choice college, why bother to come to Andover at all? I could have done just as well from high school." When a mother was told that her son could not get into Yale, she replied, "What do you mean he's not going to Yale? I've told everyone in Darien that he was going there." And the situation was not helped by colleges like Amherst, the Faculty of which believed that the college had too high a proportion of private school graduates and wanted to increase public school representation. In the 1940's Amherst had been very generous about admitting fourth-quarter Andover boys, but no longer. The effect of this squeeze for college admission on Phillips Academy graduates soon became clear; a much smaller percentage of the graduating class was admitted to the Big Three---in 1937 74 percent of the class went to Yale, Harvard, and Princeton; in 1957 the digits were reversed: 47 percent went to those institutions.(45) A second result was the increase in the number of colleges that Andover boys attended. Before the War the number of institutions attended was seldom more than twenty. By 1959 the number had increased to 40, and by 1965 Andover seniors applied to 96 colleges and wound up attending 66. It was Gren Benedict's job to get Andover seniors and their parents to accept the facts of life in current college admissions, and though there was plenty of parental outrage when a boy had to enroll in a non-Ivy League college, other families discovered that there were many relatively unknown institutions where a student could get a fine education. One Yale graduate who had set his heart on having his son go to Yale was told by the New Haven admissions people that he would not be admitted. The boy wound up in a small Midwestern college. After several visits to this college, the family became so enthusiastic about it that they in effect transferred their allegiance to it and kissed Yale goodbye. The percentage of boys admitted to their first-choice colleges also declined steadily in the 1950's and 1960's. In 1951, 91 percent were admitted to the college of their first choice; by 1959 the figure had dropped to 73 percent; and by 1965 to 6 percent.(46) Part of the reason for this decline was the growth of multiple applications; a boy might apply to as many as eight or ten colleges. In many of these cases the indicated first choice was unrealistic, and the boy settled down in a less prestigious institution. In addition to these changes the pattern of admission to prestige colleges changed also. The number attending Harvard increased markedly during this period until it approached that of Yale; in 1950, for example, there were actually more admitted to Harvard than to Yale---64 to 46. With the increase of Californians in the Andover student body, Stanford became a strong contender, often ranking fourth in number of Andover boys admitted. Finally, the University of North Carolina---in part because of an outstanding Freshman Honors Program and in part because of the highly publicized Moorehead Scholarship Program---became a popular choice. In the midst of all these pressures and confusions Gren Benedict each year managed to get all but a very few Seniors settled in respectable colleges. And the wonder is that he could do such a job when all his other responsibilities as Dean of Students are taken into consideration. Occasionally he would get an encouraging note from a former Senior. One boy wrote, "Blank University is not the best, but it's good enough for me. A year ago I didn't think so." In 1965 Gren Benedict turned college counseling over to Robert P. Hulburd, a graduate of Exeter and Princeton, who was particularly successful at making friends with college admissions officers, so that they could all work together in the best interests of Andover boys. Today it is big business, with the counselor devoting virtually full time to the job. And there is no reason to believe that things will change in the future.

Finally, an important mid-century development was the increased cooperation between Andover and Exeter. For nearly two hundred years these two great schools had existed side by side, and many people never thought of one without the other. Yet during a good part of their history, relations between the two institutions were characterized first by apathy and later by hostility. At the time of the founding of the two academies there was, of course, close cooperation because of the interest that members of the Phillips family took in both institutions. Uncle John Phillips, one of the founders of Phillips Academy, a Trustee for the rest of his life and President of the Board from 1790 to 1795, never let his interest in Exeter crowd out his concern for Andover. As we have seen, he made a generous contribution for scholarships in 1789, and when he died, he left one third of his estate to Andover.(47) Samuel Phillips, Jr., reciprocated by serving on the Exeter Board of Trustees from the founding of the Academy until his death in 1802, and while there is no record of his making any donations to Exeter, his presence on the Board must have provided strong support for Uncle John and the new institution. As noted above, the two Boards cooperated in arranging a settlement with Uncle John's widow, with the Andover group generously suggesting "one other cow" for the lady.(48) The Andover Trustees attended Uncle John's funeral, and the Exeter Board were present at Samuel Phillips, Jr.'s last rites.(49) Finally, the Exeter Board asked the Andover Trustees to make suggestions as to a suitable tombstone for Uncle John.(50) In short, as long as these two Phillipses were alive, cooperation between the two institutions was close.

With the passing of the Phillipses, relations between Andover and Exeter all but ceased. There was really no reason for their working together. Uncle Sam Taylor, for example, admitted that he had met the Principal of Exeter only once during his term of thirty-four years.(51) One of the reasons for this lack of contact was that the two institutions were pursuing different courses. Andover sent a large number of its graduates to Yale, for example, while Exeter favored Harvard. With the founding of the Andover Theological Seminary, Phillips Academy became more committed than ever to a very conservative position on religious matters, while Exeter became more liberal in this area. Until after the Civil War, there is no record of significant contact between the two schools.

Things began to change when Cecil Bancroft became Principal of Phillips Academy. The Exeter Trustees and Faculty were invited to the Andover Centennial in 1878, at which Principal Albert C. Perkins of Exeter spoke, while the New Hampshire institution made similar overtures to Andover at the time of its Centennial in 1883, at which Cecil Bancroft spoke. But it had taken Centennial celebrations to get the two groups together. In the 1880's there were a few exchanges between the Society of Inquiry at Andover and the Christian Fraternity at Exeter, with members from each organization meeting together, but nothing much came of this either.(52) As has been noted, Bancroft, unlike his predecessors, sought advice about his School from a variety of sources, including Principal Perkins. The two administrators corresponded fairly regularly during the late 1870's and early 1880's about such matters as the two Centennials, school catalogues, record-keeping, financial and boarding arrangements, the problem of smoking, and Faculty salaries. Incidentally, Perkins thought that Bancroft was underpaid.(53) Bancroft does not seem to have been as close with Perkins's successors---Walter Scott, Charles Fish, and Harlan Amen, but at least he was on speaking terms with the last.(54) It should be stressed, however, that this cooperation between the principals of the two schools was essentially a personal one. Of institutional cooperation, with one notable exception, there was almost none. But that the principals could discuss things together, and that their successors would continue to do so, with varying degrees of intimacy right up to the present, was an important step forward.

The one notable exception to the absence of close relations between the two schools was varsity athletics, which brought the institutions into intimate contact. In 1878 the first Andover-Exeter baseball game was played, which Exeter won handily, 11-1. From then on, the rivalry between the schools in sports became bitter, with charges by each school that the other was hiring ringers, and with a bad riot at Exeter in the early 1890's leading to suspension of competition for two years.(55) Indeed, much of Cecil Bancroft's correspondence with Exeter principals concerned the problems of athletic contests. Nor did the rivalry on the playing field become any less bitter with the passage of time. I can well remember the outrage of the whole Exeter community, from the Principal on down, when, in 1937, a football official ruled that an Andover man had caught a pass when the Exeters thought it had touched the ground first. A similar rivalry developed in debating, which became, in effect, a contest between the two English departments. Each department used to meet to think up arguments for its team. In the areas in which the two schools came into closest contact, their relations were characterized by suspicion, if not outright hostility, until very recent years.

Alfred E. Stearns of Andover and Lewis Perry of Exeter strengthened the tradition of cooperation between the heads of the schools which had been initiated by Bancroft and Perkins. The two men had a lot in common. Though he tried to play it down while he was at Exeter, Lewis Perry had gone to Andover for one term, only to be withdrawn when his father became enraged at a comment about his son made by Professor David Comstock. Al had had Comstock in class also, and thus they had had a common experience at the secondary school level. Though Lewis Perry went to Williams while Al went to Amherst, their college experiences were certainly similar. Perry was one of the great college tennis players of his generation, and though Al's athletic interest was primarily baseball, he was no slouch on the tennis court, and the two men enjoyed matches together over a number of years. Again, however, their relationship was essentially personal; the same kind of intimacy did not exist between the faculties of the two schools. Al and Lewis corresponded---or telephoned each other---about a wide variety of school matters. In many cases their exchanges concerned the problems of individual boys. They were both active in the Headmasters' Association and usually worked together in dealing with various problems presented to that organization. As has been noted, Lewis Perry, one of the wittiest and most urbane speakers of his era, almost stole the show at the Andover Sesquicentennial celebration. Perhaps the most important aspect of friendship was the support that Lewis gave to Al during the difficult times at the close of his career at Andover.(56)

It was not until after World War II that true institutional cooperation began. Coupled with that development came the gradual dissipation of the suspicion and distrust that had characterized the relations between the Faculties of the two Schools up to that time. The change in attitude was accelerated by a slackening of the athletic rivalry. In the 1930'S for example, any student who did not attend an important Andover-Exeter contest was liable to be ostracized by the undergraduate body. In the 1960's this attitude changed markedly. Only a handful of undergraduates attended regular football games, and nothing like 100 percent went to the Andover-Exeter contests. There were even complaints that the Andover-Exeter weekends were "closed"---that is, students could not leave the campus for a visit away from school. This change in the climate of opinion made possible a new order of cooperation between the two institutions. Only a few instances need be mentioned to make the point. In the early 1960's Exeter established the Washington Intern Program. A few years later Andover asked if it might join, and since that time it has been jointly administered by both schools.(57) At about the same time Andover set up School Year Abroad, designed to give students a year in either France or Spain. Shortly thereafter Exeter, and later St. Paul's, agreed to help sponsor this project, and the enterprise has been a cooperative one ever since.(58) Most of the academic departments of the two schools now meet informally every year or so to have a good dinner together and discuss common problems. Such behavior would have been branded treasonable consorting with the enemy a generation ago. Another activity that tended to bring the faculties together was the reading of Advanced Placement Exams. Each June representatives from schools and colleges gather at Rider College in New Jersey to read the essay questions on these exams. Apart from the professional job to be done, these gatherings made possible long, usually alcoholic evenings of discussion during which the Andover and Exeter representatives often found themselves side by side on a disputed point (they fought a lot, too). But the end result of these meetings could not help bettering understanding. Incidentally, the Advanced Placement reading sessions provided an extraordinarily valuable recruiting opportunity for both schools. Their representatives had a chance to meet able teachers whom they could never have located otherwise. For example, Wayne Frederick, one of Andover's most distinguished history teachers, was a member of the faculty of the Isadore Newman School in New Orleans before coming to Andover. Had he not been an AP reader, it is inconceivable that the Andover department would ever have found him.

Yet none of this explains the importance of Exeter to Andover, which feels that if Exeter had not existed, it would have been necessary to invent it. The chances are that this feeling is reciprocated in New Hampshire. Exeter is important because it is a school of comparable endowment, comparable faculty, and comparable leadership which will always serve as an institution for Andover to emulate. When Andover received a vast amount of money from Thomas Cochran to build a number of new buildings, a member of the Exeter faculty was reported to have said, "We're beaten. Exeter can never catch up."(59) Yet in a few years the Harkness grants to Exeter enabled them to equal, if not surpass, the Andover program. This competition, friendly as it now is, has been the hallmark of Andover-Exeter relations in modern times.