The Roots of Selective Admissions

It’s pretty interesting to read about the history of selective admissions at Ivy League schools. Having grown up in Princeton, I had many Jewish and half-Jewish friends, so I’d heard about the history of Anti-Semitism in admissions but didn’t know exactly how they’d implemented their screening process. And I especially didn’t realize that they began giving preference to geographical diversity as a way to avoid letting Jews test into too many open slots. It always seemed odd to me that I’d meet Princeton students from Oklahoma or Alaska who were smart but who wouldn’t have been in the top echelon of students at Princeton High School. They got in because of where they were from, whereas countless Princeton High students didn’t get in because of where they were from. If you were from Princeton, you needed to be one of the top five students or so to have any chance to get in, so most people with Ivy-level credentials looked to Harvard, Yale or Columbia, where they had a better shot. So, ironically, kids in my generation (at least) were losing out to kids from out west or down south because of a system put in place to prevent too many Jews from attending Columbia or Harvard.