Social Hurdle

Last week Dr. Frederick Bertrand Robinson, slim, suave, self-assured president of huge (enrollment: 19,664) College of the City of New York, offered 200 of his would-be medical students a blunt explanation of why many of them will be turned away from medical schools. Said he:

"In spite of increasingly prohibitive scholastic standards the volume and pressure of students come up and swamp the medical schools. The facilities of the schools are inadequate to meet the number and only the most excellent students are taken.

"City College is intellectually superior to other colleges in the country but it is not fortunate in personality and social prestige. Medical schools look to see who would be the most gracious practitioner of medicine. They look for affability and appearance.

"Unless you are truly eager to help people and to search out new discoveries, turn your efforts to some other branch of study." Few U. S. university presidents have dared speak out thus frankly about the social hurdle which has been set up before their overburdened medical schools. Unable to eliminate brilliant applicants on the basis of marks, some medical school boards now weed them out for pimply faces, loud voices, awkward manners or unpressed pants.

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