During the first half of the year, eighty students were reported as doing unsatisfactory work. Of these eighty students, thirteen had received a score of “good” or “very good” in the psychological tests; fourteen had received an average score: while in the cases of fifty-three the score was either “poor,” or “very poor.” During the second term, thirty-four men were reported as doing considerably above average grade. Of those thus reported, five ranked “superior” in their psychological tests; nineteen “very good”; seven “good”; two “average”; and one “poor.”
Interesting results were noted in intelligence tests at the University of Illinois on March 6, 1919, when nearly 3,500 students, who were distributed in twenty-four different halls, were examined simultaneously. The Army test (Alpha) was used. Various members of the faculty, including deans, volunteered for special preparatory training to act as examiners and alternate examiners. It was an interesting spectacle to witness eminent men voluntarily in the rôle of students and being “tested.”
In a summary of the results of the tests, Dr. David Spence Hill says:
“The smallness of difference between median scores of classes within each college of the large groups of students is insignificant. As between freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors the extreme difference was less than 2 per cent. in the college of literature, arts and sciences; less than 4 per cent. in the colleges of engineering, and of agriculture; about 5 per cent. in the colleges of commerce, and less than 3 per cent. in the three years of the graduate school. Differences as small as these are safely to be accounted for by chance or by variations of one kind and another.”
The report of the value as a whole of the intelligence test, signed by members of the University staff, says, in part:
“On the whole, the experiment performed by the energetic coöperation of nearly four thousand university people may be regarded as remarkably successful for the purposes intended. If for no other reasons, it has been worth while as a study of a device used already upon nearly two millions of men engaged as soldiers in the great historic undertaking—the World War. It has been a means of self-revelation to many persons on the campus. When the statistics are all worked out in careful detail we shall obtain new insight into some educational problems.”
At Hamline University, St. Paul, Minn., the Alpha test was given to 74 men and 145 women, but reports on the results of the test are confined to 61 men and 145 women. The median for the men tested was 129 and 133 for women. The higher level for women was accounted for by the fact that there were more seniors and juniors among the women than among the men. The medians for these two classes of women were 138 and 150 respectively, but for the men in the same classes, 132 and 130 respectively. A somewhat higher standing for women was evident when the entire series of tests were considered, although the mathematical problems in the tests were harder for the women.
In questions of practical judgment, disarranged sentences and analogies, all of which involved nimbleness of wit, the women showed superiority to the men. In questions of general information, however, the men established a lead over the women, but of only 2.5 per cent.
Prof. Gregory D. Walcott, who reports the tests at Hamline, is not convinced that the Alpha tests, designed for military purposes, are the best for determining the fitness of students for college work. He says, however, that the degree of correlation obtained in the Hamline tests indicates that the Alpha tests are of tremendous value.
Intelligence tests are being used at regular intervals at the University of Rochester. The method of application is described as follows by Louis A. Pechstein, Professor of Psychology at the University.