Question

How did Helen take the preliminary and final examinations for Radcliff College

Answer 1

To enter Radcliffe, then the sister college of Harvard, a student had 16 hours of exams. The papers, handed out at Harvard, were sent to Radcliffe by messenger, and Keller was given a number. As she had to type her exams, her identity was not secret. She took the exams in a room by herself, and a guard stood at the door to prevent anyone from entering.

Mr. Gilman read the German papers aloud to Keller, and she repeated the words to make sure she had understood them. She then typed out the answers, and Mr. Gilman spelled to her what she had written. She made corrections that he inserted. However, in the final exams, no one read her work back to her. Then, Mr. Gilman sent her work to the examiners with a note certifying that she had written them.

During her final exams for Radcliffe, one of the teachers at the Perkins Institution for the Blind copied the papers for her into American braille. She was proctored by someone she did not know. Right before the exam, she received an old copy of the algebra exam papers and realized that she did not understand the notation. She asked for a copy of the notations, and she had to study them. She also found the geometry exams confusing, as she was used to reading the problems in print or having them spelled into her hand. She found the braille perplexing, and she could not see what she had written on her typewriter. She was also used to solving these types of problems mentally. She found it hard to read over all the signs correctly. In spite of these difficulties, she passed all her exams.


Helen Keller attended Radcliffe College, an all-female institution of higher education in Massachusetts. Though highly intelligent, Helen was worried that her serious disabilities would hold back her educational progress. Disabled students were incredibly rare at that time, not least because of a prevailing prejudice that they simply lacked the ability to learn properly. Helen Keller was a trailblazer in that regard, showing that disability is no barrier to academic success.

Nevertheless, she still had to encounter practical problems. For instance, during her preliminary examination, Helen had to use a specially-designed typewriter in order to complete her paper. In those days, typewriters were large, clunky machines which made a lot of noise when the keys were pressed. As this would disturb other students taking their exams, the decision was made that Helen should sit separately.

When she finally sat down to write her paper, the questions had to be given to her by way of manual alphabet, sentence by sentence. She would then repeat the sentences to make sure that she fully understood the question before writing her answers. Not surprisingly, Helen's preliminary examination took an incredibly long time for her to complete—sixteen hours in all, to be precise. Despite all the various practical obstacles she had to overcome, however, Helen passed all her entrance examinations, receiving honors in German and English.