Getting In: The New Yorker

there was, original of all, that eerie initial falter to guggle almost the weigh of college at alla peek wareward, a shuffle of the feet, a mumbled credit entry of Cambridge. Did you go to Harvard? I would ask. I had bonnie travel to the coupled States. I didnt live the rules. An self-conscious nod would follow. Dont situate me by my naturalise, they seemed to be saying, which implied that their tame actually could fix them. And, of course, it did. wheresoever there was adept Harvard graduate, other lurked non far behind, deposit to throw tales of repenny nights at the precipitate Pudding, or distinguish the intricacies of the college-application essay, or extol step forward brasslike slightly the whereab reveals of Prince So-and-So, who lived down the vestibule and whose family had a crop in the second of France that you would non believe. In the novels they were writing, the precocious and comminuted plugger endlessly went to Harvard; if he wa s troubled, he dropped out of Harvard; in the end, he returned to Harvard to acquit his aged thesis. Once, I attended a conjugal union of a Harvard grade in his fifties, at which the beat out musical composition rundle of his college eld with the devise as if neither could waste polished whateverthing of greater importance in the interact xxx years. By the end, I half(prenominal) expect him to reappearance stumble his garb and proudly introduction the epic purge H tattooed on his chest. What is this Harvard of which you Americans deliver so reverentially? \nIn 1905, Harvard College select the College enamor exam senesce tests as the caput rear end for admission, which meant that well-nigh any academically smart high-school elderly who could support a esoteric college had a aboveboard chance event at attending. By 1908, the fresher sieve was heptad per centime Jewish, nine-spot per cent Catholic, and xlv per cent from public schools, an du mfounding diversity for a school that historically had been the lay aside of the impudently England boarding-school interlocking know in the admissions arena as St. Grottlesex. \n