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

By Jerome Karabel

Houghton Mifflin, 711 pages, $28

Few notions are as well entrenched in contemporary American culture as that of merit as the legitimate basis for social advancement. Ability and hard work, it is widely held, are prerequisites for success. Though not everyone can get ahead in a land of equal opportunity but limited resources, who can blame high achievers if they do? After all, haven't they earned their place at the top? And don't we all benefit from having the meritorious in positions of authority and power?

The road to success, many would agree, lies in education, and the better the school, the better the prospect for success. Access to elite educational institutions, we are repeatedly told, is based on merit. The stakes in the college-admission process are high: Possessing a degree from Harvard, Princeton or Yale, many believe, all but guarantees professional success.

If there is widespread agreement that admission to elite colleges should rest on merit, sociologist Jerome Karabel argues in his new book "The Chosen," there is no consensus on what, precisely, merit is. Nor has merit been consistently defined over time. In fact, various constituencies have long battled over its very meaning, and the outcome of those struggles has had a decisive impact on who does--and who doesn't--get into top-tier schools.

In his ambitious, sweeping and often compelling study of the admissions policies of Harvard, Princeton and Yale--the Big Three--Karabel meticulously traces the evolution of merit over the late 19th and 20th Centuries. Because merit has never been objectively measured, he argues, different definitions produce different winners and losers in the access game. "The Chosen" is a fine-grained institutional and social history that demonstrates how elite universities like the Big Three guarded their institutional identities and prerogatives by decisively shaping the social composition of student bodies.

In the early 20th Century, professors at the Big Three complained incessantly about low academic standards, the overwhelming dominance of athletics, fraternities and social clubs, and students' low regard for studying. But these were the children of the upper crust--white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who trained at elite boarding schools like Groton, Hotchkiss and Choate. Never questioning that this group would go on to enter America's ruling class, the Big Three sought them out as their natural constituency.

Yet some college leaders pursued a more rigorous curriculum, and admission was ostensibly governed by entrance exams and qualifications. By the 1920s, the drawbacks of academic merit as a key admissions criterion were evident: a small but growing number of Jewish students from Eastern European backgrounds were achieving their way into elite colleges. The " 'Jewish problem' "--or the " 'Hebrew invasion,' " as some at Yale called it--gravely concerned administrators, who believed deeply in Anglo-Saxon superiority and the "preservation of Anglo-Saxon dominance" at their institutions. Viewing Jews as an " 'alien and unwashed element' " and fearing that Jewish students would drive away their Gentile alumni donors and their children, they institutionalized anti-Semitism by imposing quotas on the percentage of Jewish students who could be admitted.

To ensure control over the process, each school redefined "merit" and designed a more subjective admissions process to produce the desired outcome. Lengthy background questionnaires, letters of recommendation, applicant photographs, emphasis on non-academic achievement and face-to-face interviews allowed the Big Three to "screen out 'undesirables.' " Indeed, the country's first admissions offices were established "as a direct response to the 'Jewish problem,' " Karabel writes. Newly emphasized were extra-curricular activities and that intangible known as "character" of the "sturdy, all-round boy," which, presumably, Protestant boys possessed and Jewish boys did not. The adoption of the "character standard," one Harvard administrator admitted in 1922, "would suffice to prevent a 'Jewish inundation.' "

Karabel repeatedly argues that the rhetoric of positive change outpaced change itself. Despite denials and promises to improve, the Big Three did not abandon their Jewish quotas until the 1960s, which, even then, produced alumni grumbling. While visionary educators like Harvard President James Conant proudly promoted a " 'natural aristocracy of talent and virtue' " and an "ideology of meritocracy," his institution remained committed to the preparation of future leaders--" 'men of affairs' " who would dominate the commanding heights of government and industry--not the "cultivation of brilliant scholars."

In practice, this meant balancing the minority of high academic achievers with the larger number of " 'gentlemen' "--alumni children (known as legacy admissions) and other sons of the Protestant elite--in a manner that undermined the meritocratic rhetoric. Their lofty proclamations notwithstanding, Conant and other Big Three presidents "systematically favored the most privileged segments of American society," not just giving "preference to socially elite applicants" but actively soliciting them as well. Through the 1950s they opposed anti-discrimination legislation that would allow state governments to pry into their private admissions policies. As late as the mid-1960s, Karabel concludes, "9 out of 10 admissions decisions" at Harvard "were based on factors other than sheer scholastic brilliance."

The 1960s brought dramatic changes to Big Three admissions policies and hence to the social composition of their student bodies. Not only did they accept more " 'brainy kids,' " once considered less-desirable eggheads and oddballs, but by the decade's end they had gone co-educational, finally admitting a small but rapidly growing number of women. The civil rights revolution, urban race riots and black-student protests also prompted the admission and recruitment of African-American students. Committed to preserving his institution as "a training ground for the leaders of the next generation," Yale President Kingman Brewster and his counterparts acted on a belief they had an obligation to develop future responsible " 'Negro leadership' " by finally admitting more blacks into their freshman classes.