essentialsaltes: (Herbert West)
essentialsaltes ([personal profile] essentialsaltes) wrote2011-04-14 09:21 am
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Impress them with our prowess, do.

[livejournal.com profile] jimvanpelt indirectly mentioned a NYT article about how elite colleges were a buyer's market back in the day, when elite really meant elite. Harvard accepted nearly 90% of the students that sat the entrance exam in the 1860s, and they advertised pretty hard to attract students of the proper calibre. But the cool thing is the PDF of (part of) the 1869 Harvard entrance exam. Okay, they mailed it to you, so I presume it was sort of an open book untimed test. And obviously, the importance of the classics, geography, and classical geometry has dwindled. But still. I think Dr. Pookie and I working together might, might, conceivably qualify to be a college freshman.