Theodore
Now, remember, you apply when you're in high school-your senior year, I
guess. Maybe in the fall of senior year. But that's what I put down. I also
applied at Princeton and MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] and
considered colleges that didn't teach engineering, but I really wanted to take
engineering. Those were the three that accepted me, but our family was not
financially able to pay my
there wasn't enough money for me-my
sister was already in college. She was going to Western Maryland College,
commuting from home-Western Maryland College is in Westminster, about
12 miles from Reisterstown. So it was a question of my getting a scholarship
or not going. We were land poor, with that farm. Half the time we didn't even
make expenses on it. I can't say that we were all that bad off, because my
father had bought other properties and was renting them. These were properties
that were in need of rehabilitation. He would buy a property that didn't have
a water supply-didn't have indoor plumbing. It would have a well on the back
porch and he would put in a pump and a water system, upgrade the house and
rent it.
But this was during the
you see. I graduated from high school in 1935
and a lot of those people didn't pay the rent, and my father was too good
natured to put them out, so we never had much money. And it was a question
of a scholarship or I wouldn't have been able to go to college.
Fortunately, Hopkins had a lot of scholarships through the state scholarship
system in the engineering school, and I took that exam. I had also applied for
and got a small scholarship at Princeton, but it would not have been enough.
To live in Princeton would have been expensive, so I just reluctantly-since
Princeton was my first choice-gave it up. But I had done very well on the
scholarship examination for Hopkins. I never really considered MIT very
seriously, although I was accepted. In those days, they didn't use the Scholastic
Aptitude Test. They used the College Entrance Examination Board exams,
which were held on the campus at Johns Hopkins and were largely essay-type
questions.
And so I was accepted, but my recollection was that I didn't do particularly
well in the science part of the CEEB exam. MIT sent me the grades.
Apparently I had actually flunked the science exam, but I had done well enough
in all of the others that they accepted me.
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