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The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (.)

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I was absolutely riveted to this book for 3 weeks. I read every single one of those footnotes that was more than a bibliographical entry, as well. Why? Because Jerome Karabel has taken a fairly esoteric subject and made it interesting, important, revealing, "juicy" and downright enjoyable.

Karabel shows how the current admissions policies of the Big Three (Harvard, Yale and Princeton) came about in trying to restrict admissions by the "wrong kind," namely Jews, in the 1920s. He follows the policies, unstated rules, and goals of the three colleges' admission departments to the end of the 20th century, covering outright racism, minority outreach, coeducation, the restrictions on Asians that paralleled the earlier ones on Jews (that never quite went away), and most of all, the search for academically qualified students who were capable of paying their way.

Karabel' discovered that the Big Three worried over the number of students with high SATs who also had family income sufficient to pay their tuition. Coeducation was not done in the name of women's liberation but to increase the limited wealthy applicant pool, and also to prevent desireable male students from attending other co-ed schools.

As one of The Chosen (Princeton '82), I often wondered why the Admissions Office made the decisions they did. Karabel went into the nuts and bolts of how all three of the college's Admissions Offices worked their way through an increasing number of applications. Why were 6 applicants admitted from my college-prep school but only 1 or 2 from the nearby public schools with four times the class size? Was Princeton still engaging in their "Docket" game, where all the public schools throughout New York and New Jersey were only alloted the same number of admissions spots as just Andover and Exeter?

And I was alternately delighted and shocked to find Karabel had unearthed quite a bit on the gatekeeper to our admissions. John Thatcher was the Alumni Schools Committee rep who not only interviewed every one of 300 applicants from my county, but also was one of the "alumni in revolt" who joined together to form Concerned Alumni of Princeton. Thatcher served as their pointman on Admissions issues, especially noting the decline of legacy admits.

Letters from CAP members to the official alumni magazine suggested nostalgic bigots who could not deal with the influx of Jews, minorities and women to what they still thought of as a private country club. The CAP publication Prospect, distributed to all campus residents, beat those drums for years. It took them almost 10 years to realize that coeducation meant that alumni could have their daughters attend and this could be a good thing. It is unfortunate this book was published right before Samuel Alito's CAP scandal hit the news, as Karabel gives some great background on this group and a similar group at Yale.

This is investigative journalism with detailed history, inspired conclusions, and enough context for six different disciplines. Absolutely brilliant.

I agree it was a little long, but still think it was a great book. For anyone who thinks they wouldn't be interested in the history of admissions to Yale, Princeton and Harvard, I would encourage them to approach it rather as a cultural/social history. What I found most compelling and interesting is the reflection of our own American society as it manifested itself (and no doubt continues to manifest itself) in university admissions policies. I was particularly surprised and disturbed by some of the overtly discriminatory policies implemented by persons of substantial education and keen intellect.

Never met Karabel, though I did admissions way back a decade after mid-century, and know most of the folks he quotes and profiles, and know the issues faced. I saw the atrocities and hints of better paths to social equality, as practiced in the three colleges he uses as a focus. Jerome Karabel, younger a bit than I, has compiled what stands as a full "social history," an inside look at how what we prefer not to call a class system (with bias, bigotry, discrimination, even virtues rewarded) characterized our recent past--and continues. Karabel's precise and factual; the good and bad show up in the work of selecting students for a college some while rejecting very strong other students (a pretty crazy practice, justified with much defensive rhetoric). But the good and bad practices have persisted, ebbing and flowing, very bad in the 1920s, not very academically oriented in mid-century, perhaps peaking with the positive movements in the late 60s and early 70s, only to level and then decline at century end.
Without indexing "Iraq," "CIA," "WMD," "blue and red states," Karabel provides enough material to initiate the needed National Public debate that might push at least one of political parties toward, indeed, a reasonable and enlightened 2008 Presidential Platform. We can hope.
John Osander, Director of Admission, Princeton 1965-1971

A skilled editor could have turned this good book into a great one. Given its narrow topic, it could easily be cut in half and as a result, be more effective in conveying its message.

OK, enough sniping. This is a thoughtful social history that pokes holes in the fabric of hype that surrounds admissions at elite academic institutions. No, Harvard, Yale and Princeton do not select the best and brightest. Yes, their admissions are heavily biased to the wealthy. The facts presented tell a solid story of institutions that historically and currently have discriminated on the basis of race, religion and class in admissions. Their definition of "merit" is a floating one that conveniently serves to justify self-serving admissions practices. Historically and presently, these institutions favor "dumb sons of the rich" (the quote is from 19th and early 20th century Harvard president Charles Eliot).

What is most deft about this book is that it makes arguments carefully and precisely without overheated language. Karabel quietly lets the facts speak for themselves. And those facts are damning.

The implications of discriminatory practices in admissions are profound for leadership in this nation. Given that presidential candidates, Supreme Court justices, corporate leaders, et al. are preferentially chosen from the ranks of Harvard, Yale and Princeton graduates, the biased admission practices of the elites leads to a country where our leaders are not the best and brightest. They are often simply the children of the well connected and wealthy.

This book shows just why you probably find yourself shaking your head in disbelief during presidential debates and asking yourself is this the best we can find? The answer is an emphatic no. For that, we have to assign some blame to the admissions officers and presidents of the "HYP" schools past, present and (no doubt) future.

This is one of the best academic works I have ever read, and worth purchasing just for the treasure trove of research findings mined from the archives of Harvard, Yale and Princeton. Those findings are presented in a manner that would do any advocate proud -- by letting them speak for themselves in a very well organized fashion, Karabel makes them utterly compelling. It really should be required reading for anyone seeking to be a historian, as well as for all secondary schools seeking admission to an elite university (and their admissions counselors).

The taxonomy of the book, by era and theme, is the key -- and it is not something that you will want to sit down and read from cover to cover. But it rewards reading in essay fashion, starting with era and issues, most important to you -- and you can move back and forth within it quite easily to follow the threads or themes of most interset to you.

I purchased this in Harvard Square as my daughter visited colleges in her senior year of high school -- 30 years ago I attended one of these schools, and found the research findings (the writing can best be described as sufficient and workmanlike) to be like a series of epiphanies that explained much of what I did not understand when I attended. Schools, driven by a class system, now driven by a need for funds and for smart students, caught up in a kind of "parallel play" in their competition for students. Rank, articulated discrimination against applications of different stripes -- Jews, blacks -- public school kids. Biases in favor of alumni children, or those who could help with funding. For all the good these schools have accomplished, this book, with its fabulous documentation, rips the cover off the fabulous hypocracy that has characterized the admissions process to so many schools, with appropriately deluded alumni. Read it, and conclude, that your own sense of self worth does not (or should not) depend upon where you went, or where your child should go.

Karabel has created a massive tome of information surrounding the history of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton since the early 1900s. His account is very well researched and provides ample documentation to support his arguments and findings.

While reading "The Chosen," it become clear how convenient it is to use admissions and selections at institutions of higher education as a tool for creating the cohort of students that the institution wants to educate. At Princeton, the average height of the male class was around 6'2", giving rise to the claim of the "Princeton Man." It is almost offensive at some of the ways students were excluded or the comments written about certain students in their official file; however, times have certainly changed in the past 100 years.

One problem with "The Chosen" is that Karabel invests a huge amount of time with the admission and exclusion of the Jewish population at the start of the 1900s. This in and of itself is not a problem; but, when one-third of the entire book revolves around one student classification and hardly anything is mentioned about the exclusion of women and African-Americans I start to wonder about the focus of the book. The only reason I can see for this overwhelming focus is that the practice of admitting and excluding certain student types followed the model of admitting and excluding Jewish students which started the revolution of diverse student populations.

"The Chosen" also will provide a better education to many people who still believe that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are only interested in elite students. This book chronicles the lengths that these schools have gone to in order to diversify and make a more "well-rounded" student population. In fact, these three schools did not even originally recruit at public schools and now they do a large portion of recruiting at public high schools. This book provides a wonderful historic account of the evolution of the elite three higher education schools in the United States.

I highly recommend this book for anybody who works in a college environment or who may have a child who might be interested in attending one of these three schools. I also recommend this book for history fanatics.

As a graduate of Harvard College, I can say I am more embarrassed than usual to admit it after reading Karabel's book. Karabel lays out in great detail the slimy admissions practices of the "top" Ivy colleges. Today's sub rosa selection process was born of anti-Semitism and carried on well into the middle of the 20th century. When I applied they required pictures, just to make sure the "coons," as one Ivy official referred to Blacks, got special Jim Crow treatment. Now that era is passed, and the Asians wonder if there is a quota for them. The college officials cry, "Goodness, No !" Yet they continue to favor the children of the same alumni who were chosen as a result of the now decried previous discriminatory policies. (See George W. Bush). Then they call that "fair." After reading this book one will be convinced once again never to believe them. The irony is these colleges deliver only mediocre educations to underclass students.

The Chosen is, simply put, fantastic. This is nonfiction that reads like a novel--a riveting page-turner. I found myself cheering the heroes and booing the villains while learning the history of the United States from a new perspective: the deepest bastions of power and privilege in America. It's all here: from the anti-immigration movement, to WWII, the Cold War, to feminism, civil rights, and the rise of the market ethos. This is the story of how America -and especially its elite--changed over the course of the twentieth century.

In "The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton," Jerome Karabel describes the evolution of admissions at "The Big Three" from one that is based on an examination to one that is now based on a wide range of criteria that permits admissions officers to select applicants who serve their immediate institutional interests. (The "opacity" and "discretion" of admissions, in Mr. Karabel's words). At first, this shift in admissions was to protect the WASP ascendancy ("the stupid sons of the rich," in Harvard President Charles Eliot's words) against Jews, but slowly over time, driven by three charismatic and powerful reformers who were each responding to particular crises in American history (Harvard's Charles Eliot during the Progressive era, Harvard's James Bryant Conant during the Depression, and Yale's Kingman Brewster during the Civil Rights Eraj, the admissions policies of the Big Three were designed to defend and justify, augment and promote America's free enterprise system that sacrificed "equality of condition" for "equality of opportunity." Throughout this process, the Big Three defended their institutional interests and promoted their hegemony in the American education apparatus at the cost of higher ideals (social justice, intellectualism, equality, education, "meritocracy"), and the political differences of every one of its Presidents (who themselves were loyal gifted products of the system) came down to how to best defend institutional interests.

Towards the end of this meticulous and detailed (to the point of cumbersome and overwrought) history of the evolution of the Big Three's admissions offices, Jerome Karabel argues two interesting points. First, while today's admissions policies are certainly more fair than in the past when these schools stigmatized Jews, refused to accept students in need of financial assistance, heavily discriminated against minorities, and did not accept women, it is certainly not meritocratic in any strict sense. Tradition, institutional interests, and powerful constituencies influence admissions to ensure that legacies (the children of alumni), athletes, and disadvantaged minorities occupy almost half of the slots -- everyone else must compete hard for the rest, forcing parents to fret on the best strategy once the baby is in the womb.

The second point is even more interesting. Even if admissions were truly meritocratic it would still be unfair because the word "meritocracy" is subjective and has been used to disguise blatant social inequality and injustice in America. Besides pleasing its traditional constituencies (the alumni, the faculty, coaches, and feeder schools) the Big Three, to protect and promote their brand, must also be able to recruit and educate America's next generation of leaders, and to that end they focus more on a person's extra-curricular strengths than intellectual capacity (the Big Three have a fastidious fear of intellectuals, whom they assume, often quite correctly, will end up either as academics, alcoholics, homosexuals, manic depressives, or all of the above). The poor cannot afford extra-curricular activities in the arts, music, dance, and theater, and they certainly cannot afford to pay for expensive SAT schooling and college counselling. In this way, the Big Three are not only perpetuating the class divide in America, but also disguising it with the false consciousness of "equality of opportunity."

If this sounds a bit too Marxist that's because there's definitely a leftist academic perspective running through the book I constantly argued against. Why wouldn't the Big Three engage in self-serving institutional practices, and as private institutions that seek to maintain and expand their brand why wouldn't they seek to admit students from powerful families, constituencies, and groups who will become influential politicians and powerful businessmen? Also, it is still impressive that rather than just decaying and dying these institutions could engage in the continual process of self-invention.

I think the book would be much more convincing and powerful if the author added another point to his litany of complaints: the current admissions policies DO NOT serve institutional interests. First, admitting legacies is the university's traditional way of managing its financies, and it's more than just satirical that throughout the book we read how institutions with hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank run into financial hardship when it upsets alumni. I kept on thinking to myself: why don't those Ivy League idiots learn to manage their institution properly? More important, the heavy emphasis on admissions means there's not enough on education: faculty members can complain that the admissions office is not recruiting enough academically-qualified students without considering whether or not there's something wrong with their pedagogical practices.

I attended Yale College in the late nineties, and I was struck by how financially mismanaged the university was and how it's possible to graduate from Yale without a solid foundation in reading and writing, which is after all the two hallmarks of a liberal arts education (many of my classmates obviously did not understand what they read, and even had difficulties constructing a coherent sentence). If Yale did not have a powerfully recognizable academic brand and seemingly limitless financial resources, it would also not be a socialist incompetent autarky where everyone was encouraged to live in his own deluded petty world.

Despite their problems and failures, the Big Three still continue to play a significant role in American society, and if Mr. Karabel hopes for more equality and social justice then his suggestions on how to make admissions more equitable -- eliminating affirmative action for legacies and athletes, eliminating early admissions, and welcoming the poor -- is not enough. Ultimately, the very power and influence of the Big Three must be reduced, but given their ability for self-invention, the status of their alumni, and their meritocratic image, the probability of that happening is the same of a poor white boy from New York City getting into Harvard.

Focused too much on the top three elite universities in the U.S., this book dissects how their admissions policies and procedures developed and evolved from the late nineteenth century. It's startling to read just how UN-elite their admissions policies were during that time -- they didn't feel they had the choice or duty to seek out the truly gifted, instead they focused on getting the sons of those already wealthy and powerful even if they were third-raters academically. Only 10% of those at these colleges were intellectual, interested in studying, and those were viewed by the college administration as "grinds" not really useful to the colleges' goals of producing the social and power elite of the country. These colleges were in-grown, taking their admissions people from their own alumni, thus perpetuating the system. When Jews and other outsiders used the increasingly excellent public school system to become academically superior candidates to the sons of the WASP elite, an admissions system focused on legacies (sons of alums), athletics, and 'leadership potential' was developed to avoid admitting these hoi polloi that 'gentleman' wouldn't care to associate with. It's interesting to me that these colleges never simply excluded these 'undesirables' per se, just made it extremely difficult for them to gain admission. They excluded applicants from whole parts of the country, like those from public schools anywhere near NYC, instead, vigorously encouraging those from a handful of elite private schools (who seem to have excluded 'undesirables' for them). Many of the people making these decisions seem not to have been particularly anti-semitic; they seem instead to have felt that admitting more than some percentage of Jews (~15%) would 'destroy' their college's ability to raise money and be where the 'right sort' would go.

The book tells its story very well, with massive documentation. I would have liked more about how the Irish and Italians fared (they seem not to have faced very much organized discrimination?), and the sections late in the book on women, blacks and Asian-Americans were useful but not as thorough. There were many fascinating and some horrifying characters and amazing stories about these colleges. It was not stressed enough, I think, that there were other universities which did see their role as educating academically motivated students. MIT, for example, was during this era all about educating the working-class and immigrants for useful technical and scientific careers.

Anybody who wants to understand how admission to the Ivy League and other elite colleges got the way it is, and how these three evolved at last into a bit more of real universities rather than social clubs, would find this book fascinating. It's also of interest to anyone interested in fathoming one aspect of antisemitism in the U.S. during this period. It is long, even if the back notes are more or less ignored, but a fascinating read.