Notes on Admissions (1969)

The Notes on Admissions were written by Van R. Halsey in January 1969.

The Hampshire admissions process will not be a contest. We will encourage each interested student to become a partner with us in judging his or her readiness for the Hampshire program, and to do this by sharing the responsibility for candid exchange.

As a college with a distinctive and demanding program, Hampshire College is necessarily approaching the question of admissions with the goal of identifying those students most likely to benefit from experience in that program. Although the full admissions policy is not yet formed, certain guidelines are taking shape. One of these recognizes a need for a greater flow of pertinent information between the high school student evaluating the college, and the college evaluating the high school student. A second guideline points toward a smoother transition between high school and college, a period which ought to be one of growth and not of apprehension...(p. 1)

One possibility is the admission to college of some students in tenth grade with matriculation deferred until after completion of twelfth grade. This would remove from them the enormous pressure for extrinsic reward that now fills the high school years. Another possibility recognizes that a number of secondary schools have become unhappy with the programs that the students carry in the last half of their senior year after they have been admitted to college. Hampshire is considering a variety of programs which may form a link between the secondary school, the student, and Hampshire College at the midpoint of a student's twelfth grade year. These might include field work supervised jointly by Hampshire and the high school; they might include the beginnings of the Hampshire program itself. There need be nothing pressured or intense about this arrangement; what is important is that a period in the student's life when he may need a different kind of experience, there should be an opportunity by which he can satisfy that need and also grow from one institutional setting to another.

Another set of possibilities also involves breaking some of the habits of American education. It appears that for some of today's high school graduates it would be very useful to leave the academic world for a few months, a year, or two years before tackling college. Where appropriate, some students will be actively encouraged by the College to take time to express their social concern through action, or to gain a degree of purpose. Responsible experience in business or government, in poverty programs or Peace Corps work, or in community development is very much a part of Hampshire's idea of a modern liberal education. The basic intention is to allow the student who wants and can benefit by a break between secondary school and college to have it. (p. 6-7)