Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/439

Rh the graduates as a whole (e) greater than for their high grade men (d), and these colleges had so few alumni mentioned in 'Who's Who' as to give their figures but little weight in a statistical study of this nature.

The names in the two books furnishing our data, considered in still another relation, tend to corroborate the conclusion already arrived at. In column f of the table is shown the percentage of graduates which each college, so far as I have been able to secure the figures, elects to Phi Beta Kappa. It will be seen that there is no common custom and that the variation is considerable. Each represents, however, the proportion of high-grade men, according to our criterion, among its living alumni, and, consequently, the proportion we might expect to find among its representatives in 'Who's Who,' if high grade in college has nothing to do with one's expectancy of place in that book. The average percentage of such for all the colleges considered, as shown at the foot of the column, is 15.7. The next column, however (g), shows the percentages of such men who have actually received such honorable mention, and in the two we have the basis for another comparison: that between representation based upon the numerical expectancy of the high-grade college men (an average of 15.7 for all the colleges) and upon their actual achievement (39.3 per cent.). The comparison is certainly an encouraging one to the high-grade men, showing as it does that they have surpassed their mathematically computed expectancy by more than 150 per cent.

I have been able, through the courtesy of officers connected with two of the larger New England colleges, to supplement this study of Phi Beta Kappa graduates by one based upon the exact standing in class, of each one of their alumni mentioned in 'Who's Who.' This enables us to determine not only the percentage of high-grade men receiving mention, but also the distribution of the rest through the lower grades of the class. I had hoped to make this study cover a larger number of institutions, but have been unable to secure the data. The figures for the two are as follows: