C.E.E.B. Delay

Eleven thousand anxious boys and girls watched last week, as they had already watched for a fortnight, for the postman. But even when he came they turned away still worried, depressed, edgy. At last their parents spotted a paragraph in the newspapers: "Grading of College Applicants Delayed. . . ." Their tension remained, but the 11,000 at least understood that the College Entrance Examination Board had not forgotten them, that it was delayed in its terrible function of correcting the nervously scribbled "books" of 22,000 would-be matriculants to Vassar, Smith, Princeton, Yale, Wellesley, Harvard, etc., owing to the facts: that the scribbling was not finished until June 21; that the 700 teachers, who correct the papers at a cost of about $100,000, had had to be sent to Manhattan hotels this year instead of to Columbia University dormitories; that the Fourth of July had interrupted the graders with its parades, swimming, firecrackers. However, half the 22,000 candidates had been notified, announced Secretary Thomas Scott Fiske of the C. E. E. B.; the rest would know the worst "in a few days."