Those German Schools!

Except for her nationality, Edith Maria Binde had seemed at first to be a perfectly normal student at the University of Illinois. A pert, handsome brunette of 19, she graduated from a typical German secondary school in Lichterfelde, entered Illinois on a foreign-student scholarship last September. But by last week, the university had decided that Edith was not really normal at all: she was nothing less than a female version of the fabulous Mr. Belvedere.

When Edith hit Urbana last fall, she faced the usual requirement of 120 semester hours to get her degree. But her training at the Goethe Schule was so good that she was able to lop off 18 hours for her English, Russian and Latin, nine hours for her mathematics, twelve for history, four for geography, 18 for German. She added eight more by taking an advanced examination in Russian. After that, she was ready to tackle the remaining 51. The major she picked: economics.

Instead of taking the usual workload of 34 hours in her first two semesters, Edith upped the ante to 40. By June, she still had eleven credits left to go, but she decided to toss these off in one fell swoop during the summer. This week, when the university announced that she would get her bachelor's degree after less than a year, her average stands at 4.25 out of a possible 5, i.e., almost all As and Bs.

How had she done it? Not, apparently, by being a grind. "It may sound terrible," she said, "but I averaged about five dates a week." An accomplished pianist, she joined the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, played plenty of tennis, even joined the chorus line at the university's spring carnival show. Somewhere along the way, she also found time to get engaged to Fred Sorenson, 29, the news director of the local TV station, WCIA.

If she was not a grind, then how had she managed? Says Edith hesitantly: "I guess the general level is a little more advanced in Germany. The fact that I could get a degree in such a short time tells pretty well that they do ask for a little more in high school, I think."

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