Education: Lift for the Lopsided

Lift for the Lopdises

Stung by the charge that it favors "grade-getters" and penalizes creative students, the nation's biggest private dispenser of college scholarships last week revamped its selection system. To this year's 850 "wellrounded" winners, the National Merit Scholarship Corp. is adding 85 "lopsided" types in four new categories. Sample winners in each category:

¶ A Maryland boy who acts, paints, writes wild science-fiction, charts the orbits of imaginary planets and understandably gets middling grades. "An individual fighting a conformist world," he is now on his way to Harvard College as one of 25 students picked for "exceptional creative performance."

¶ A California girl, sub-par in math, who scored in the upper 2% on the N.M.S. verbal test. Outstanding in writing and history, she is one of 20 winners "showing superior attainment and promise in one field."

¶ A brilliant 17-year-old Massachusetts boy who entered M.I.T. last fall from his high school junior class. He is one of 20 scholarship winners who "have shown an ability to depart from the traditional academic pattern."

¶ A Midwestern farm girl whose family has moved nine times, earns less than $1,000 a year and forbids her to read books. Despite sub-winning test scores, she is headed for a state college as one of 20 able students picked for "exceptionally determined effort to overcome severe financial or similar disadvantages."