Chapter IV: The Appointment

ELIGIBILITY, REQUIREMENTS, QUALIFICATIONS, EXAMINATION, METHODS OF SELECTION, METHODS OF PROCEDURE AND INSTRUCTION

The Rhodes Trust now issues Memoranda which deal with the regulations and instructions which govern the eligibility and selection of candidates in their respective centres. Information may be had from the Local Committees.[32] A brief condensation of these regulations as they appear at present will answer most of the technical questions which may present themselves to a prospective candidate.

Eligibility.

Candidates _must_ be _subjects_ of those countries which they represent, i. e. Colonials—British subjects; Americans—citizens of the United States; Germans—German subjects.

Candidates must be unmarried.

Candidates must have passed their nineteenth birthday (except: West Australia—seventeenth, Queensland, Jamaica, and Newfoundland—eighteenth); but must not have passed their twenty-fifth (Newfoundland—twenty-first, South Africa—twenty-fourth) by October 1st of the year for which they are elected.

Candidates, _except those who are exempted by the Colonial Universities Statute or by special regulations (see, for various States, Provinces, and Colonies, below)_, shall pass the ‘Responsions’ examination of the University of Oxford or its equivalent before becoming eligible for election.[33]

_This examination is in no way competitive._ It is merely a _qualifying test_ to guarantee a degree of scholarship which will allow a student to take up a course at Oxford.

The Examination.

[Sidenote: Papers.]

At the request of the Trustees, the University of Oxford named in 1904 and 1905 a Board of Examiners to prepare and handle papers for this special examination. The same method will be adopted in 1907, and probably with little change henceforth. Papers are arranged in Oxford, printed, enclosed in sealed packages, and sent to the Chairman of each Committee of Selection. These packages are opened by the supervising examiner at the time and place announced for the examination and in the presence of the candidates.

[Sidenote: Time and place.]

This examination will be held each year (except in the case of American, German, and South African scholarships, as noted above on p. 24) in each State or Territory, Province and Colony, not later than the month of January, at suitable centres fixed upon by the respective Committees of Selection. The Committees will appoint suitable persons to supervise the examination and ensure its impartial conduct.

Stationery will be supplied. The packets of papers when opened will be found to contain the examination questions, time tables, the printed text of classical passages, &c., which are set in questions. Therefore _no textbooks will be required_.

The subjects and books assigned may vary slightly from year to year. The requirements, however, are as follows:[34]—

=1.= =Arithmetic=—the whole.

=2.= _Either_, =The Elements of Algebra=—Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, Division, Greatest Common Measure, Least Common Multiple, Fractions, Extraction of Square Root, Simple Equations containing one or two unknown quantities, and problems producing such equations;

_Or_, =The Elements of Geometry=.

Elementary questions, including propositions enunciated by Euclid, and easy deductions therefrom, will be set on the subject-matter contained in the following portions of Euclid’s Elements, viz.:—

Book I. The whole, excluding propositions 7, 16, 17, 21.