Babes Lead Lion; Ford Recipients Top Columbia '55

Competence in academic, social, and extra-curricular affairs characterizes the 51 young students who hold the new Ford Foundation Scholarships at Columbia College, Assistant Deax Charles C. Cole reported this week.

Recently established, the Ford Fund for the Advancement of Education awards pre-induction scholarships to students under 16 1/2 years of age. Financed by the Ford Foundation, the plan is in operation at Yale. Chicago, Wisconsin, and Columbia.

Harvard Invited

At the time the project was conceived. Harvard was invited to take part in it, but according to reports, discussions did not advance very far. Officials here felt that it did not coincide with the College's educational philosophy.

The 200 young men under the plan had not completed high school when they became college freshmen with these awards. The object of the experiment is to give men at least two years of liberal education in college before induction into U.M.T.

The figures released by Cole show that the "Ford" freshmen had attained a group average of B at mid-term, while the average of the entire freshmen class was only B. In a total of 262 courses, only two failures occurred. There were 51 'A's, 116 B's, and 93 C's.

Grades in Columbia's freshman English course were poorest, probably because many of the students missed their fourth year of high school and a good deal of reading material. On the other hand, grades in Mathematics were almost uniformly excellent.