# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1953_S142
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

142 SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES

preparatory schools. It shows that, over the past 11 years, the pe:
centage of graduates completing six years of study in Synod’s
paratory system has declined from 55% in 1943 to 39.2% in 1953..

Policy Studies Required

The inevitable result of this situation is a sharp, immediai
rise in the graduations during the period when college admissio:
at Synod’s preparatory schools are increasing at a rate almost t
as fast as the total new ministerial admissions and almost six ne:
as fast as the high school division admissions. There is every rea;
son to believe, also, that this strong trend toward advanced stan
ing enrollments will continue. ,

In the past year, for example, 19.5% of all new ministe!
admissions (73 students) were enrolled at junior college lev
During the past triennium, an average of 36.4% of all new
isterial enrollments have been at the high school junior level
above. Advanced standing admissions (above sophomore
school year) ranged, at the individual institutions, from a low
13.6% to a high of 75.6% during this period.

It will be readily apparent that this development makes
impossible to predict accurately the ministerial graduations fromy
the preparatory schools and admissions to the St. Louis Se
even as much as two years in advance; e.g., in 1951 a total of
new ministerial students enrolled in the preparatory schools.
the basis of past experience * this enrollment would be expecte
to produce approximately 170 admissions to the St. Louis Se
inary in 1957. However, 97 of these new students enrolled as cof
lege freshmen (76) and sophomores (21) so that the majority o§
them will apply for admission to St. Louis in 1953, thus confron
the seminary with approximately 75 students more than wo

normally be anticipated from the size of the freshman class o
inally enrolled at the preparatory school.

It is recognized, of course, that fluctuations of these data
to be expected, but the net effect of the development mus
evitably be a pattern of sharply increased admissions at the St.
Seminary, since so many students arrive at that level two or tk
years after admission to the preparatory schools, instead of six y
later as Synod has assumed.

The Board’s data show, further, that this situation seve:
. modifies, at this time, Synod’s traditional pattern of six years
preparatory training when Synod has not yet had the benefit?
conclusions on the experimental programs now being carried ‘fg
ward at Fort Wayne and at Portland. Of the 1952 ministerial grag

* Assuming normal dropouts on a six-year basis.