The Wide, Wide World of Walter Winshall

One thing about Walter Winshall is that he does like to keep busy. Son of a Detroit dentist, he graduated from high school after winning a National Merit Scholarship and enrolled at 16 in an electrical-engineering course at Cambridge's Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There he was an editor of the student weekly, played intercollegiate freshman hockey, participated in intramural football and softball, was rushing chairman of his fraternity, played a nice game of bridge, invested in the stock market, dated lots of girls (sometimes two in the same night), graduated in 1964 with a B average, and enrolled in Harvard Law School.

Spurts of Work. After a year at Harvard, Walter Winshall found that he just wasn't busy enough any more. "All my needs were not satisfied," he explained. He decided to become a secret superstudent. He continued his full-time courses at the law school, but also signed up at M.I.T.'s Sloan School of Management for another postgraduate degree. At first, neither school knew about his double life. For two years Walter Winshall carried twelve courses a semester between the two schools, devoting many hours at the start of each term to calculating a schedule with a minimum of class conflicts at the two campuses, which are two miles apart.

Although he had a battered 1962 Chevrolet to make those ends meet, he sometimes had a couple of classes scheduled at the same hour. This didn't bother Walter, and besides, his study habits were rather erratic anyway. "He works best in spurts," says a fellow student. "Walter gets way behind; then he panics and does in a couple of days the same work that most Harvard and M.I.T. students take a month to do."

"No Great Feat." Still, Walter seemed to have time on his hands. He became a teaching assistant in finance at M.I.T., won an investment contest in Harvard's Bull and Bear Club by totting up a 68% gain in four months, acted as resident tutor at his fraternity house, founded his own data-processing company, which has a contract with the First National Bank of Boston, and flew to New York City once or twice a month to work in the institutional-research department of a brokerage house, Oppenheimer & Co. As the time approached for him to get his degrees (Harvard's LL. B. this month; M.I.T.'s master of science in September), Walter also sandwiched in flying trips around the country for job interviews.

Last week, after a Boston newspaper disclosed Walter's secret, he shyly insisted that it was "no great feat." Harvard didn't think it was so great either. Apparently annoyed at having the sheepskin pulled over their eyes, Harvard authorities notified him that he would not be recommended for a law degree this year, "pending an investigation." M.I.T. administrators had learned Walter's secret last fall, but had permitted him to continue, even though one official said that he would never have been enrolled if authorities had known of his Harvard enrollment. "It just would have been too much work for him."

Walter is not even breathing hard. Says he: "I just went about my day-to-day activities." Assuming he gets his M.I.T. master's, he plans to go for a doctorate there next year. And probably work at Oppenheimer in New York. And run his Boston company. And play the stock market. And--well, as Walter puts it, "I'm just following my interests and I'll continue to do so." He is 23.

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