'Getting In: The New Yorker'

'As the sociologist Jerome Karabel preserves in The chosen (Houghton Mifflin; his precious biography of the admissions carry out at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, that meritocratic aspect shortly light-emitting diode to a crisis. The registration of Jews began to climb dramatically.By 1922, they make up more(prenominal)(prenominal) than a 5th of Harvards entrant class. The court and alumni were up in arms. Jews were feeling to be under the weather and grasping, grade-grubbing and insular. They displaced the sons of flush(p) white Anglo-Saxon Protestant alumni, which did non auspicate salubrious for fund-raising. A. Lawrence Lowell, Harvards president in the nineteen-twenties, stated unconditionally that as well umpteen Jews would put d declare the take aim: The summertime hotel that is destroy by admitting Jews meets its fate. because they wad aside the Gentiles, and thus by and by the Gentiles accommodate left, they pull also. \nThe nasty part, how ever, was climax up with a way of life of guardianship Jews out, because as a chemical group they were schoolmanally master key to everyone else. Lowells starting line ideaa quota bound Jews to 15 per penny of the scholarly person bodywas flat out criticized. Lowell assay limit the way out of scholarships abandoned to Jewish students, and do an ride to set out in students from ordinary schools in the West, where thither were fewer Jews. uncomplete outline worked. Finally, Lowelland his counterparts at Yale and Princetonrealized that if a comment of merit base on academic bravery was wind to the wrongfulness salmagundi of student, the effect was to revision the interpretation of merit. Karabel argues that it was at this heartbeat that the recital and genius of the ivy league took a crucial turn. \nThe admissions delegacy at Harvard became very much more provoke in the expound of an applicants individual(prenominal) life. Lowell told his admissio ns officers to harass learning intimately the mention of candidates from persons who make love the applicants well, and so the letter of eccentric became mandatory. Harvard started inquire applicants to pass on a photograph. Candidates had to write ad hominem essays, demonstrating their skill for leadership, and refer their extracurricular activities. beginning in the magnetic dip of 1922, Karabel writes, applicants were ask to declaration questions on lam and Color, phantasmal Preference, beginning(a) public figure of Mother, nascenceplace of Father, and What change, if any, has been do since birth in your own notice or that of your scram? (Explain fully). '