Notes &
The kids know all of that, too, but they still say it’s a numbers game. And for a brief moment, about a century ago, it was. Fearful that its classes were filled with mediocre young men from prep schools, Harvard College adopted the College Entrance Examination Board as the major basis for admission in 1905.
Other leading universities quickly followed suit. So for a few years anyone with a high enough score – and a big enough bank account – could get in. But the result, to the chagrin of America’s WASP gentry, was a steep spike in Jewish students.
By 1908, the fraction of Jewish students in Harvard’s freshman class had jumped from almost nil to 7 percent; a decade later, it rose to 20 percent. At Yale, meanwhile, an admissions officer complained that the roster of new students “might easily be mistaken for a recent roll call at the Wailing Wall.”
