University of Virginia Library

PREPARATION FOR THE ACADEMICAL
SCHOOLS.

Some special preparation for the courses taught in the Schools of Latin,
Greek and Mathematics will be found indispensable. But even for these
Schools it is more important that the preliminary studies should have been
careful and accurate in quality than that they should be extensive. For
the other Schools the essentials of a plain education in the common school
branches constitute the only indispensable preparation. In all the Schools
alike, however, the student who has had the benefit of mental training,
and who brings with him good and well-established habits of study, will
derive increased profit from the University instruction because of these
advantages.

In order to encourage the desire for a proper preliminary training, the
Legislature has made the free tuition of Virginia Academic students conditional
upon their reasonable preparation for the schools which they
wish to enter. (See p. 71.)

But it has never been the policy of the University to reject any student
merely because of deficient preparation. The standards of teaching and
of examination can be otherwise maintained; and experience has shown in
a multitude of instances that young men of vigorous mind and earnest purposes
of diligence, brought hither by a laudable ambition to excel, may
overcome all disadvantages, and become conspicuous among their fellows
for success in study. On the other hand, such cases of failure to profit
by the University teaching as sometimes occur are traceable, in nearly or
quite all cases, whatever may have been the state of preparation, to ill
health, to idle or vicious propensities, or at least to a lack of earnest and
resolute diligence. In such cases, as they arise, the proper remedy is
applied; it is not thought useful or necessary to guard against their occasional
occurrence by indiscriminate rejections at the outset.

The attention of the young men of Virginia who have been taught in
the Public Schools is especially invited to the advantages here offered
them for extended and substantial courses of study in those branches for
which their preparation is fairly adequate, and to which they are admitted
under the law without payment of tuition fees.