Yesterday in class we talked about the college admissions process (Stanford's, specifically) and how it has become more "competitive" in recent years. I started thinking about how the entire college application and admission process has evolved since the first universities were founded in America, and it reminded me of an article that my dad showed me a while back. It explains how admission was decided at Cornell in the late 19th century.
Prospective students had to be at least sixteen years old--seventeen, for females--and be "of good moral character," in addition to passing an entrance exam. Sounds easy, right? I though so, too, until I saw what types of questions were asked. Geography, physiology, Latin and Greek--even the English and "elementary" algebra sections were pretty demanding. Here are some of the questions:
Where does the Zambesi rise, in what direction does it flow, and into what does it empty?
Give antidotes for Opium, Arsenic, Strychnine, Carbolic acid, and Caustic Potash.
Outline the life of Henry Clay.
Describe the constitution of Sparta.
Applicants also had to translate between English, French, Latin and Greek, and write an essay of at least 600 words on a given topic.
Another article I found describes a similar process at Tufts in the 1850s. Applicants also needed to be overall good people and take exams in Latin, Greek, math, and history. If all requirements were met, a fee of $200 (about $5000 today) would secure your place at the school. It wasn't until the 1920s that Tufts began to limit the number of students admitted to 900, and not until the 1940s did the application process start to resemble what we have today, with standardized testing and letters of recommendation.
I urge you to check out the Cornell article and read some of the questions on the entrance exam. Hopefully it will help you appreciate that although it may seem like applying to college is more competitive now than it has ever been, at least we don't have to diagram the eye or know Grecian history to prove our worthiness.
Sierra, thanks for the great post! I had no idea that people used to be tested on such obscure topics. I thought that in the past, if you paid the colleges enough money you would automatically get in. I definitely would not be able to answer any of those questions, and I'm not sure how people in that time could.
ReplyDeleteAlthough we tend to think of standardized tests as pure evil, this post shows that there is actually some good that has come out of them. If colleges were still able to make their own entrance exams and tests, it would be a nightmare for college applicants. Standardized tests, although imperfect, means that everyone is tested on the same topics and that the questions are not as easily influenced by the whims of the colleges. But they're still evil.
This is a fascinating post, Sierra! I love finding out facts about how people used to live in the past because it reminds me just how much better we have it today. Though in one respect, that's not wholly true. Apparently, in the 1800s, colleges weren't nearly as selective as they are today. Yes, they administered really difficult entrance exams, but most who even sat down to take the exams were qualified enough. Harvard once reported that 7 out of every 8 test takers passed the entrance exam. Other universities offered free tuition and "posh room assignments," according to a New York Times article, to entice students to enroll in their school. The main reason for this was that colleges in those days had a very small pool of students to draw from. Most people didn't even have an 8th grade education. Thus, colleges were more desperate for students then than they are now. What a pity Harvard can't boast of a 88% acceptance rate now...
ReplyDeleteGreat post! It is always interesting to see what we did before and why we changed it to what we have now. As you said many colleges changed their admissions processes because of increasing population and thus increasing number of prospective students. In India, however, this idea of entrance exams still exists and in addition to school and standardized testing, students still have to take entrance exams as part of the application process, another bit of work for stressed students, brutal.
ReplyDeleteThanks Sierra! I found this post really interesting. I was looking at the test, and it seemed really difficult. The first thing I noticed is that the entire exam was free response, and not multiple choice. Apparently multiple choice wasn't invented until World War I, and was created for the purposes of evaluating men for the army more efficiently. Not sure how reliable the source is but according to edutopia.org, the army ended up finding the results unhelpful, but the inventor, Dr. Robert Yerkes presented it to educational institutions anyway. In 1926, the SAT was created, and became widely accepted as the entrance exam for college in 1930. As a result, multiple choice tests became more common, and teachers in schools started to teach to those tests in order to prepare students for what they would encounter in college.
ReplyDeletesource: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/dark-history-of-multiple-choice-ainissa-ramirez
Side note: I noticed that a lot of the questions in the Higher Algebra section were exact or almost identical questions we had to complete in Algebra II Honors... suspicious.
Great post, Sierra! Interesting to see how the "standardized tests"/college entrance exams have changed over the years. I couldn't help but notice that the Cornell entrance exams were more specific and factual, as if it were assumed that the student would specifically memorize those details. However, today's SAT/ACT rely more on a student's critical thinking skills--Instead, modern tests require the test-taker to have a established skill set and draw on them to answer a questions. Could this difference be accounted for simply because this entrance exam was directed towards Cornell applicants and ACT/SAT to the general high school demographic? Maybe in the quickly changing modern market, critical thinking is most valuable, so that the graduates can adapt to whichever field is profitable? Or even, factual memorization was more valued during the 1800s without the advent of the computer or immediately accessibility of information?
ReplyDeleteI think this post outlines two different colleges although having very similar applications today are looking for very different things. In the applications there never seems to be a set formula to get into schools, even in those that say they base much of their admissions on academics alone. It just goes to show that these college admissions officers are very subjective in how they pick people and can be very specific like the applications outlined in your post.
ReplyDeleteFascinating post Sierra! Although, we would probably be set on the question about Henry Clay, the rest of the test seemed very challenging. In response to Audrey's comment, it is worth noting that this shift that you mentioned from factual to critical thinking response is much like the shift we are all going through today. Numerous tests today have gone through the same change. For example, the SBAC test requires much more critical thinking and interpretation than the previous STAR test. Similarly, many AP tests, like the Physics 1,2 and USHAP have also changed to turn away from straight memorization and regurgitating facts to conceptual problems. I tried to find resources as to why this shift is occurring now, but I could only find reasons that critical thinking is more beneficial than memorizing. The question then becomes why were a lot of standardized tests memory based in the first place?
ReplyDeleteFascinating post Sierra! Although, we would probably be set on the question about Henry Clay, the rest of the test seemed very challenging. In response to Audrey's comment, it is worth noting that this shift that you mentioned from factual to critical thinking response is much like the shift we are all going through today. Numerous tests today have gone through the same change. For example, the SBAC test requires much more critical thinking and interpretation than the previous STAR test. Similarly, many AP tests, like the Physics 1,2 and USHAP have also changed to turn away from straight memorization and regurgitating facts to conceptual problems. I tried to find resources as to why this shift is occurring now, but I could only find reasons that critical thinking is more beneficial than memorizing. The question then becomes why were a lot of standardized tests memory based in the first place?
ReplyDelete