They went because they were ambitious and often brilliant, and they brought with them a value system at odds with the WASP chivalric code. The Jews were more likely to prize work, scholarship, verbal dexterity, ambition and academic accomplishment.

Of course the old guard detested the rising tide of Jews in their midst. As one Harvard alum wrote to the university's president in 1925: "Naturally, after 25 years, one expects to find many changes, but to find that one's University had become so Hebrewized was a fearful shock. There were Jews to the right of me, Jews to the left of me, in fact they were so obviously everywhere that instead of leaving the Yard with pleasant memories of the past I left with a feeling of utter disgust of the present and grave doubts about the future of my Alma Mater."

But the administrators' reaction was more interesting. The people who ran these schools weren't anti-Semitic reactionaries; they were progressives. They believed in democracy and inclusion. They respected scholarly excellence, embodied by the striving Jews.

Yet on the other hand, they felt that their job was to do more than pump information into the heads of hard-studying brainiacs. They sensed that mediocre students like Roosevelt really did possess a set of virtues that needed to be protected and cherished. Thus, many of the best administrators were torn between protecting the old and including the new.

Karabel's thorough and definitive look at elite college admissions is fascinating because he doesn't just treat his narrative as a civil rights tale, as the story of anti-Semitic and racist institutions slowly giving way to the forces of justice and decency. Instead, he writes, "The history of admissions at the Big Three has thus been, fundamentally, a history of recurrent struggles over the meaning of 'merit.' " As the elite universities confronted each class of applicants, they were really trying to determine which qualities to nurture and reward, and which were most important for democratic citizenship.

The essential conflict throughout these years was between those who wanted to accept more students on the basis of scholarly merit -- intelligence, high test scores and good grades -- and those who sought what you might call leadership skills -- that ineffable combination of charisma, social confidence, decisiveness and the ability, often proved on the athletic field, to be part of a team.

The conflict continues to this day. But as Karabel notes, at any given moment the universities tend to gravitate toward the definition of merit that best helps them preserve their status as prestigious, rich and powerful institutions.