The Pre-Baccalaureate
Program at the College

An experimental effort to identify higher
educational potential among disadvantaged youth
may yield new data on the controversial

question: How valid are current admissions criteria?

by Leslie Berger

E VALIDITY OF current criteria for

admission to the City College has
become a critical question in recent
months. Some faculty members express
deep concern about maintaining stand-
ards by calling for even more stringent
academic admissions requirements than
are now in use. It is their strong be-
lief that such admissions requirements
and the ultimate quality of education
are directly related to one another.
They argue from statistical grounds
that the chances of a student’s success
in college is in direct proportion to his
high school and entrance examination
grades; and they maintain, therefore,
that the quality of instruction after the
student is in college will also vary
according to the level of these admis-
sions requirements.

On the other hand, there are those
who argue that higher education should
be made accessible to a larger segment
of the population. They maintain that
current admissions criteria are measures
of past achievement rather than poten-
tial ability and that they reflect middle-
class cultural experience — that their
practical effect is to act as barriers to

many disadvantaged persons seeking
higher education.

New criteria for selection of college
students are constantly being suggested
and debated. Qualities of leadership
and adeptness in human relations are
frequently recommended in lieu of
more traditional academic bases of stu-
dent selection. Personal interviews,
and/or recommendations by principals,
guidance counselors and teachers have
also been advocated as a basis for
identifying promising college students
seeking admission to City College.

Evaluating the relative worth of
these alternate methods of selection
poses many difficulties. For example,
how much weight should reasonably
be given to the recommendations of
high school administrators and teach-
ers, when the students’ inadequate aca-
demic averages for college admission
testify to the failure of these same
teachers and administrators to guide
students to full achievement over a
long period? Again, it is at best ques-
tionable whether natural endowments
of leadership and/or social graces are
necessarily indicative of an individual’s


Associate Professor Leslie Berger, director of the Col-
lege’s Pre-Baccalaureate program, received his bachelor’s
degree magna cum laude from Brooklyn College in 1954.

He received his master’s degree and Ph.D. in psychology
from the University of Michigan and is a Diplomate in
Clinical Psychology. He has been on the faculty of the
City College School of General Studies since 1961.

intellectual or aesthetic capacities.
Gifted students will often create poor
impressions in an interview (and vice
versa) ; and interviews often produce
poor conclusions that reflect unsub-
stantiated or undefined criteria on the
part of the interviewer. Yet on the
other side of the argument, it can be
pointed out that many students who
meet the highest traditional standards
of admission fail in college.

It is interesting and pertinent to
note here that people on both sides
of the issue are emphatically question-
ing student selection methods. Yet it
may very well be that the most con-
structive effect of the dialogue will be
the focusing of attention on a reevalu-
ation of teaching methods.

The fact is that some 30 per cent
of City College students with good
high school averages and college board
scores fail to complete college. In the
face of such a statistic, is it time, then,
to reevaluate and improve both our
selection predictors and our teaching
methods? It is hoped that one of the
dividends of the College’s Pre-Bacca-
laureate Program, instituted in the sum-
mer of 1965, will be data that can be
used in any future reappraisal of this
kind.

As presently constituted, the Pre-
Baccalaureate program (which is sup-
ported through a special grant) pro-
vides students from disadvantaged
backgrounds — a majotity are Negro
and Puerto Rican youngsters — with a
protracted and individualized entrance
process which may last a year or longer.
First, we seek to determine as soon as
possible whether a student can reason-
ably expect to matriculate and eventu-
ally earn a baccalaureate degree at City
College, or whether he should be ad-
vised and encouraged to pursue other
goals elsewhere.

The student who is judged qualified
to pursue the baccalaureate degree has
an opportunity during this early period
to improve his scholarship to meet
standards he could not meet at the
time of his initial application. Teachers
and counselors work very closely with
each student on a personal and highly

individualized basis, Placement exam-
inations are administered to all stu-

dents in Englsh, reading skills, mathe-
matics and foreign languages. On the
basis of the test results, the Pre-Bacca-
laureate student may attend the same
classes as regular degree candidates or
may be assigned to specially designed
sections of courses, when the academic


department considers this advisable.

The specially devised Pre-Baccalau-
reate sections and courses are designed
to integrate remedial work with college
level work. A student in such a course
is expected to complete the college syl-
labus for the regular credit course. To
accomplish this dual remedial and aca-
demic aim, some of the classes meet
for one or two more clock hours per
week than regular courses covering the
same material, Individual tutoring is
available to students seeking to remedy
past deficiencies, as well as to more
capable students who wish to progress
more rapidly.

The Pre-Baccalaureate program em-
ploys whatever pedagogical, adminis-
trative and psychological services are
available on the campus to develop an
attitude in the student that will enable
him to find pleasure in educational ac-
complishment and that will provide
him with a reasonable expectancy of
achieving professional status after
graduation. For disadvantaged young
people the acquisition of such attitudes
or prospects often involves a massive
change both in personal outlook and
in daily routines and habits, It is be-
lieved that an experienc: of mastery
and success is a potent motivational
force for these disadvantaged students
whose backgrounds are so often filled
with experiences of frustration and
failure. Thus, every effort is being
made at the College to provide the stu-
dent with an educational situation in
which chances for success are maxim-
ized.

It should be emphatically noted that
this prolonged Pre-Baccalaureate pro-
cess, while providing a challenging ex-
periment in creative teaching, involves

no compromise with City College
standards, The above-described proce-
dure of offering special sections and
courses protects the matriculated stu-
dents by “preserving” sound educa-
tional standards, at the same time that
it provides the Pre-Baccalaureate stu-
dent with optimum chances for success.
Once a student is matriculated as a
baccalaureate candidate, he attends
regular City College classes in his sub-
jects and must meet the retention stand-
ards in effect for all students.

HE PRE-BACCALAUREATE Program

at the College is now in its second
year. The program began in September,
1965, with 113 students: One year
later, 81 of these students are still in
attendance.

While it is still too early to draw
conclusions, a pattern is beginning to
emerge. About half of those who en-
tered have been able to maintain ap-
proximately a “C” average or better,
which is the grade average of the ma-
jority of students in good academic
standing. Significantly, there have been
no appreciable differences between the
grades received by Pre-Baccalaureate
students attending the special classses
and grades received by these students
in “regular” classes in which matricu-
lated students are also enrolled.

Though predictions cannot yet be
made on this early evidence, it is hoped
that about 50 percent of the Pre-Bac-
calaureate students will eventually ma-
triculate and receive a City College
degree. And it should be emphasized
that these are all students who were
clearly ineligible by conventional City
College admission criteria, which last
spring required a composite score (high


school average plus Scholastic Apti-
tude Test score) of 169. (As noted
earlier, of those who do meet these
requirements, only about 70 percent
are expected to graduate.)

It should perhaps also be mentioned
that several of the Pre-Baccalaureates
are doing exceptional work. One young
man, for example, with a high school
cumulative average of only 70.2 has
already completed 30 college credits
with a straight “A” average, with the
exception of Physical Education and
one remedial English course in which
he received “B”’s. (He received a
grade of “A” in the regular English
course.) Courses in which he received
“A” included Spanish 3, and Russian
51 and 52. Another student with a
high school average of 75.6 has com-
pleted 16.5 credits with a “B—” aver-
age, including an “A” in Social Studies
1 and “B”’s in Math A 36 and Math
2. One of the girls with a high school
average of 79.84 has com leted 29
college credits, all with “ ”'s and
and “B” ’s, with the exception of one
“C”, in Art 1.

Based on these early but promising
results, 190 new students were ad-
mitted to the program in September,
1966; and current plans call for ad-
mission of an additional 100 students
in February, 1967.

In its present form, the Pre-Bacca-
laureate Program is an innovation.
However, it should be noted that the
School of General Studies at the Col-
lege has provided educational oppor-
tunity for more than 50 years for
thousands of students whose educa-
tional backgrounds differed in many
ways from those of the average enter-
ing City College freshman. For exam-

From the City College Alumnus, December 1966

ple, it has accepted as non-matriculants
those who were not academically eligi-
ble as baccalaureate candidates, because
they had not taken the proper second-
aty school courses or had not met the
grade requirements set for matricula-
tion. As non-matriculants these students
were thus given a “second chance” to
prove their ability to perform at a col-
lege level, and many were able to do
just that. In turn they were then ac-
cepted by the College as regular bac-
calaureate candidates, with full credit
for work taken as non-matriculants.

Ee POLITICAL or social upheaval
abroad — early in the century in
Eastern Europe, later in Central and
Western Europe and more recently in
the Orient and Latin America — has
brought different groups of foreign-
born students to the College through
the School of General Studies. It is in
the spirit of this tradition that the City
University and City College are today
trying to meet their responsibility to-
watd the Negro and Puerto Rican
minorities.

This responsibility is both a chal-
lenge and a rare educational oppot-
tunity. By evolving new and creative
approaches to aid in the quest of these
groups for higher educational oppor-
tunities, the College is attempting not
only to preserve the tradition of high
educational standards at City College,
but also to uncover new insights at the
very heart of the educational process.
Thus, in time, all students and faculty
members will be beneficiaries through
the fulfillment of City College’s moral
and educational responsibility during
this period of social revolution.