Standards (1890-1920)
Admissions Testing
In the nineteenth century, testing was the primary means to ascertain whether or not a student was prepared for and should be admitted to an institution of higher education. Because institutions offered their own tests over certain subject matter, there was no standard or uniform system of college admissions tests or requirements for entry.
Test-taking, therefore, was specific to each institution. However, there were some general patterns that test-takers experienced. These patterns changed as bodies like the College Board emerged.
Accounts of College Entrance Examinations
(Taken from Harold S. Weschler, "Eastern Standard Time: High School-College Collaboration and Admission to College, 1880-1930")
"Let's begin with three desks. At the first sits a young man preparing for the entrance exams of a local New England college in the 1840s. The student works under the tutelage of a minister recently graduated from that college. Armed with knowledge of the precise entrance requirements of the college, and with the minister's awareness of which professors might ask what questions at the oral entrance exam, the young man ... appears at the college a few days before classes begin with a letter attesting to his good character from his minister. Facultymembers then ask him to recite from specified chapters of Greek and Latin classics. All is over in less than an hour; other candidates are waiting, and the faculty examiners wish to dispose of this necessary evil as quickly as possible. The student is admitted into the college proper, or into the school's preparatory department; few candidates are rejected outright since colleges are tuition-dependent."
"The second desk is located in a public high school classroom in an East Coast city in 1910. The young white man or woman ... sitting at that desk is one of many students taking the first of 11 demanding, written entrance exams which were, most likely, constructed by the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB) and administered over several days in June. The high school has geared its curriculum toward these tests and devoted much of the senior year to intensive review. The colleges the student is considering are all members of the College Entrance Examination Board; these colleges agreed to accept the result, though each might set a different passing grade. The student receives the grades during the summer and enrolls at the chosen college in the fall."
"The third desk is one of hundreds in a gymnasium in another eastern high school. It is 1930 and proctors have handed out copied of the Scholastic Aptitude Test to the candidates at the desk. No essays here. The student answers multiple-choice questions designed to assess their potential for college work, not their specific accomplishments in high school. The scores for the verbal and mathematical sections of the exam - the report uses an admittedly odd scale ranging from 200 to 800 - tell colleges how close the students came to the national mean of all other test-takers. Students, in turn, may learn about their chances for admission by comparing their scores to the average scores of students admitted to the colleges of their choice in prior years."
