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The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton – A Landmark History of Elite College Merit and American Opportunity
A landmark work of social and cultural history, The Chosen vividly reveals the changing dynamics of power and privilege in America over the past century. Full of colorful characters (including Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, James Bryant Conant, and Kingman Brewster), it shows how the ferocious battles over admissions at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton shaped the American elite and bequeathed to us the peculiar system of college admissions that we have today.
From the bitter anti-Semitism of the 1920s to the rise of the “meritocracy" at midcentury to the debate over affirmative action today, Jerome Karabel sheds surprising new light on the main events and social movements of the twentieth century. No one who reads this remarkable book will ever think about college admissions -- or America -- in the same way again.
From the bitter anti-Semitism of the 1920s to the rise of the “meritocracy" at midcentury to the debate over affirmative action today, Jerome Karabel sheds surprising new light on the main events and social movements of the twentieth century. No one who reads this remarkable book will ever think about college admissions -- or America -- in the same way again.
736 pages, Paperback
First published October 26, 2005
38 people are currently reading
2320 people want to read
About the author
Jerome Karabel
7 books15 followersJerome Karabel (born 1950) is an American sociologist, political and social commentator, and Professor of Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. He has written extensively on American institutions of higher education and on various aspects of social policy and history in the United States, often from a comparative perspective.
Karabel is the author of The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (2005), which received the Distinguished Scholarly Book Award from the American Sociological Association. He is also co-author (with Steven Brint) of The Diverted Dream: Community Colleges and the Promise of Educational Opportunity in America, 1900-1985 (1989), which received the Outstanding Book Award from the American Educational Research Association. His research in the sociology of education explores notions of meritocracy, opportunity, access, and cultural capital in American higher education, and the role of the educational system in legitimating the existing social order.
In The Chosen, Karabel chronicles the admissions policies of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton over the course of the twentieth century, describing how new admissions criteria—including letters of recommendation, athletic and extracurricular achievements, and interviews, in addition to a student’s academic credentials—were first introduced in the 1920s in an effort to limit the number of Jewish students. Such starkly redefined measures of “merit” were institutionalized at these and other elite institutions over time, even as these schools later adapted such admission policies in response to growing demands for greater democratization and diversity during the mid and latter half of the twentieth century.
Karabel’s articles have been published in the American Sociological Review, Harvard Education Review, Theory and Society, Social Forces, and Politics and Society among others. He is also a contributor to publications such as The New York Times, The Huffington Post, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times, and Le Monde Diplomatique.
Karabel holds a BA (1972) and Ph.D. (1977) from Harvard University, and also conducted postgraduate studies at Nuffield College at Oxford University in England and at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris, France. He has been a recipient of grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Education, and the Ford Foundation. In 2009-2010, Karabel was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC, where he was working on a project entitled “American Exceptionalism, Social Well-Being, and the Quality of Life in the United States".
Karabel is the author of The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (2005), which received the Distinguished Scholarly Book Award from the American Sociological Association. He is also co-author (with Steven Brint) of The Diverted Dream: Community Colleges and the Promise of Educational Opportunity in America, 1900-1985 (1989), which received the Outstanding Book Award from the American Educational Research Association. His research in the sociology of education explores notions of meritocracy, opportunity, access, and cultural capital in American higher education, and the role of the educational system in legitimating the existing social order.
In The Chosen, Karabel chronicles the admissions policies of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton over the course of the twentieth century, describing how new admissions criteria—including letters of recommendation, athletic and extracurricular achievements, and interviews, in addition to a student’s academic credentials—were first introduced in the 1920s in an effort to limit the number of Jewish students. Such starkly redefined measures of “merit” were institutionalized at these and other elite institutions over time, even as these schools later adapted such admission policies in response to growing demands for greater democratization and diversity during the mid and latter half of the twentieth century.
Karabel’s articles have been published in the American Sociological Review, Harvard Education Review, Theory and Society, Social Forces, and Politics and Society among others. He is also a contributor to publications such as The New York Times, The Huffington Post, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times, and Le Monde Diplomatique.
Karabel holds a BA (1972) and Ph.D. (1977) from Harvard University, and also conducted postgraduate studies at Nuffield College at Oxford University in England and at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris, France. He has been a recipient of grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Education, and the Ford Foundation. In 2009-2010, Karabel was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC, where he was working on a project entitled “American Exceptionalism, Social Well-Being, and the Quality of Life in the United States".
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September 15, 2015
"It is no exaggeration to say that the current regime in elite college admissions has been far more successful in democratizing anxiety than opportunity."
It's hardest to get in to these universities if you are a totally brilliant middle class white kid unless you are a really rich WASP (of course) as they have diversity quotas to fill. Race being the great American obsession (and often confused with religion) being Jewish can be a minus point as they are over-represented according to some recruiters, this also is beginning to apply to Asians especially those whose family hailed from the Indian subcontinent. It's easier if you are from a really poor and so can be the recipient of a major scholarship, ethnic and disabled, or are a top notch athlete as all these groups contribute to the 'scores' of the universities in being good, all-round representative places. Even if they aren't really. It's easier still if you are Native American or are of other under-represented ethnic minorities even if you don't meet the academic standard. The is positive action. Maybe it will work, or maybe given the rigorous academic standards of the Ivy League schools, they will just fail to keep up. The universities do not have to publicise figures of drop-outs and the areas of society they came from.
If you happen to be at least part Carib Indian, brought up in the islands, a pretty damn good athlete and have American nationality by accident of birth, and even dyslexic (adds points!) you will be considered an absolute prize to the Ivy Leagues seeking to show their diversity. So my Scottish friend's daughter has her pick of the big three when when she graduates from school. But she wants to go to Aberystwyth, in Wales, because her girlfriend is there. Will head win over heart? I doubt it, whose does at 18?
No system is free of bias and without doubt these schools deliberately select for rich white kids, especially the children or relatives of alumni, politicians and notables and the very wealthy who might endow, donate or leave money in a will to them.
A customer of mine is the granddaughter of one of the richest women in the world (she lives locally). She left school at 15 to pursue a career in riding, but that failed and now at 18 she wants to be a vet. She says her problem is that she wouldn't ever be able to do the exams but is ok at assignments and essays. I asked her how she would get into a university and she waved her hand at me vaguely, oh grandma would fix things, maybe give a library or something she joked, being quite self-aware. I hear she started in Glasgow university a couple of weeks ago.
But at least they have sizeable minorities of kids from normal backgrounds these days. Maybe one day selection will be done by computers on grades and various other attributes like social contributions, athleticism, talents and ambitions and have nothing whatsoever to do with the parents' background whether ethnic, religious or economic. One can but hope. After all, who knows where the next great genius or inventor or person that inspires us all will come from? Everyone deserves a chance.
Read 1/1/2005
It's hardest to get in to these universities if you are a totally brilliant middle class white kid unless you are a really rich WASP (of course) as they have diversity quotas to fill. Race being the great American obsession (and often confused with religion) being Jewish can be a minus point as they are over-represented according to some recruiters, this also is beginning to apply to Asians especially those whose family hailed from the Indian subcontinent. It's easier if you are from a really poor and so can be the recipient of a major scholarship, ethnic and disabled, or are a top notch athlete as all these groups contribute to the 'scores' of the universities in being good, all-round representative places. Even if they aren't really. It's easier still if you are Native American or are of other under-represented ethnic minorities even if you don't meet the academic standard. The is positive action. Maybe it will work, or maybe given the rigorous academic standards of the Ivy League schools, they will just fail to keep up. The universities do not have to publicise figures of drop-outs and the areas of society they came from.
If you happen to be at least part Carib Indian, brought up in the islands, a pretty damn good athlete and have American nationality by accident of birth, and even dyslexic (adds points!) you will be considered an absolute prize to the Ivy Leagues seeking to show their diversity. So my Scottish friend's daughter has her pick of the big three when when she graduates from school. But she wants to go to Aberystwyth, in Wales, because her girlfriend is there. Will head win over heart? I doubt it, whose does at 18?
No system is free of bias and without doubt these schools deliberately select for rich white kids, especially the children or relatives of alumni, politicians and notables and the very wealthy who might endow, donate or leave money in a will to them.
A customer of mine is the granddaughter of one of the richest women in the world (she lives locally). She left school at 15 to pursue a career in riding, but that failed and now at 18 she wants to be a vet. She says her problem is that she wouldn't ever be able to do the exams but is ok at assignments and essays. I asked her how she would get into a university and she waved her hand at me vaguely, oh grandma would fix things, maybe give a library or something she joked, being quite self-aware. I hear she started in Glasgow university a couple of weeks ago.
But at least they have sizeable minorities of kids from normal backgrounds these days. Maybe one day selection will be done by computers on grades and various other attributes like social contributions, athleticism, talents and ambitions and have nothing whatsoever to do with the parents' background whether ethnic, religious or economic. One can but hope. After all, who knows where the next great genius or inventor or person that inspires us all will come from? Everyone deserves a chance.
Read 1/1/2005
April 1, 2023
One of the best sources of cocktail-party conversation you may ever encounter (assuming that your fellow partygoers are interested in college, social class, history, sociology, racism or anti-Semitism or sexism, or the American ideal of meritocracy), this long, long book is entirely worth the effort.
Some key moments, in a litany of fascinating and often horrifying ones:
Princeton: The Princeton Director of Admissions in 1939 pulled an African-American kid out of the registration line to tell him not to enroll, for his own good (so argued the director, insisting that he was not racist) (239). With that "accidentally admitted" African-American successfully excluded, Princeton continued its lily-white run: not a single African-American enrolled there in the 20th century until 1945...and even into the '50s, there were several Princeton classes with zero African-American students. That's zero.
Yale: All of NY's, Chicago's, and Philadelphia's public schools together sent a total of 13 students to Yale in 1930, while the exclusive private school St. Paul's sent 24 that year...out of a graduating class of 68 (118). The massive and excellent Bronx High School of Science enrolled 7 of its grads at Yale during the era 1950-54...while Andover sent 275 during that same timeframe (211).
Harvard: Under President Lowell in particular, Harvard was so confident in their presumption that it was appropriate to limit the number of Jews that Lowell presented his quota ideas more or less publically. Yale and Princeton were more circumspect, and ended up limiting the number of Jews more successfully, lacking a backlash, but even Lowell was able to cut the percentage of Jews almost in half from 1925 to 1933 (197). Admissions men and administrators tended to use the word "neurotic" or "disgruntled" as code to describe the Jewish student.
It's a story of prejudice, anti-intellectualism, clubbishness, and unacknowledged privilege -- or rather, privilege disguised as divine right instead of perceived properly as the result of systemic bias. And yet Karabel sources so thoroughly (the hundred pages of end-notes are also full of gems) and covers his topics so broadly and with such academic rigor, this never comes off as polemical. Yes, I'm a Harvard grad, and one who believes that legacies (and athletes) receive much more advantage in admissions than they should -- sorry, My Two Children -- and I loved seeing the embarrassing secrets topple out of the secret files.
It's more properly a story about America, and how we as a nation love our self-mythologization even as we become blind to the fictional and hypocritical elements of it. The colleges' tasks were and are hard, and the stakes were and are high in both practical and symbolic ways; it is Karabel's greatest success that we readers don't despise these schools overall, despite their many crimes against equality, liberty, and fraternity...wait, wrong country. Not far off as a concept, though.
Especially rich topics that the sociologist author mines expertly include the development of co-education in the late '60s and early '70s, the conversion of affirmative action from a set of policies that favored legacies and private school boys to those that favored historically-underrepresented minorities over a very brief and tumultuous period, the quest for "yield", and the power of alumni.
Some of the little moments dinged around in my head for a long time: did you know that the SAT was in use for decades before students were ever allowed to see their own scores, which didn't happen until 1958? (266) That all three of these schools seemed to have a pathological disinclination for valedictorians -- although many were admitted, too -- with bigshots calling them "greasy grinds" who often cared about grades only and "lacked passion" while also being "afraid of life"? (284).
Perhaps most prominent among Karabel's theses is the surprising one that "merit", that term so blithely bandied about nowadays by conservative critics of affirmative action, was initially instituted as the non-academic "diversity criteria" that favored legacies who had private school pedigrees. Diversity was what legacies contributed! Knock me over with a feather. Well, that sure explains why as late as 1946, 82% of alumni sons were admitted to Princeton while during that home's GI Bill wave, admission was offered to only 38% of veterans who had academic abilities that met the school's criteria (239). Harvard and Yale had similar admission percentages. Membership has its privileges.
Because I can't keep myself from saying this, I have to add my two negative/skeptical comments to what is an otherwise unreserved rave for Karabel's book:
1) Style-wise, he falls into the very common expository rut of overusing periodic sentences -- often, he constructs a paragraph that lacks variety, with four or five consecutive compound-complex sentences, each beginning with a participial phrase. Ugh. At least his writing is clear.
2) I was very curious that Karabel did not mention the University of California system and Ward Connerly in his rich discussion of the history of conflict over affirmative action. Karabel is a professor at Cal-Berkeley.
A third thing, which I can gloss over more easily, was the amount of repetition. Many statistics, quotations, and other references were repeated several times -- almost as if it were a hedge against the likelihood that readers would dive into only one segment of the book, and leave the rest untouched. It can be overwhelming, true. But there's a bigger structural issue here as well: in his persistence to shuttle among all three of the Big Three, the author successfully cross-links as necessary...and then repeats when he gets to the section dedicated to the linkee. As I say, I can gloss this because I like the persistence in giving all Three their fair share of attention, but it did get irritating at times.
Any quibble I have with Karabel's style or structure or editing is dwarfed by the irritation engendered by the practices revealed in this mesmerizing history. And yet, it is clear that his non-polemical, thoroughly academic approach recognizes when they mean well and yet are overwhelmed by realpolitik. If we laypeople look at college admissions today and smirk, "If only they listened to me, this could be easily fixed," we're being wildly naive. The task is both crucial and excruciatingly difficult, in ways that Karabel's readers will much, much more thoroughly appreciate.
Some key moments, in a litany of fascinating and often horrifying ones:
Princeton: The Princeton Director of Admissions in 1939 pulled an African-American kid out of the registration line to tell him not to enroll, for his own good (so argued the director, insisting that he was not racist) (239). With that "accidentally admitted" African-American successfully excluded, Princeton continued its lily-white run: not a single African-American enrolled there in the 20th century until 1945...and even into the '50s, there were several Princeton classes with zero African-American students. That's zero.
Yale: All of NY's, Chicago's, and Philadelphia's public schools together sent a total of 13 students to Yale in 1930, while the exclusive private school St. Paul's sent 24 that year...out of a graduating class of 68 (118). The massive and excellent Bronx High School of Science enrolled 7 of its grads at Yale during the era 1950-54...while Andover sent 275 during that same timeframe (211).
Harvard: Under President Lowell in particular, Harvard was so confident in their presumption that it was appropriate to limit the number of Jews that Lowell presented his quota ideas more or less publically. Yale and Princeton were more circumspect, and ended up limiting the number of Jews more successfully, lacking a backlash, but even Lowell was able to cut the percentage of Jews almost in half from 1925 to 1933 (197). Admissions men and administrators tended to use the word "neurotic" or "disgruntled" as code to describe the Jewish student.
It's a story of prejudice, anti-intellectualism, clubbishness, and unacknowledged privilege -- or rather, privilege disguised as divine right instead of perceived properly as the result of systemic bias. And yet Karabel sources so thoroughly (the hundred pages of end-notes are also full of gems) and covers his topics so broadly and with such academic rigor, this never comes off as polemical. Yes, I'm a Harvard grad, and one who believes that legacies (and athletes) receive much more advantage in admissions than they should -- sorry, My Two Children -- and I loved seeing the embarrassing secrets topple out of the secret files.
It's more properly a story about America, and how we as a nation love our self-mythologization even as we become blind to the fictional and hypocritical elements of it. The colleges' tasks were and are hard, and the stakes were and are high in both practical and symbolic ways; it is Karabel's greatest success that we readers don't despise these schools overall, despite their many crimes against equality, liberty, and fraternity...wait, wrong country. Not far off as a concept, though.
Especially rich topics that the sociologist author mines expertly include the development of co-education in the late '60s and early '70s, the conversion of affirmative action from a set of policies that favored legacies and private school boys to those that favored historically-underrepresented minorities over a very brief and tumultuous period, the quest for "yield", and the power of alumni.
Some of the little moments dinged around in my head for a long time: did you know that the SAT was in use for decades before students were ever allowed to see their own scores, which didn't happen until 1958? (266) That all three of these schools seemed to have a pathological disinclination for valedictorians -- although many were admitted, too -- with bigshots calling them "greasy grinds" who often cared about grades only and "lacked passion" while also being "afraid of life"? (284).
Perhaps most prominent among Karabel's theses is the surprising one that "merit", that term so blithely bandied about nowadays by conservative critics of affirmative action, was initially instituted as the non-academic "diversity criteria" that favored legacies who had private school pedigrees. Diversity was what legacies contributed! Knock me over with a feather. Well, that sure explains why as late as 1946, 82% of alumni sons were admitted to Princeton while during that home's GI Bill wave, admission was offered to only 38% of veterans who had academic abilities that met the school's criteria (239). Harvard and Yale had similar admission percentages. Membership has its privileges.
Because I can't keep myself from saying this, I have to add my two negative/skeptical comments to what is an otherwise unreserved rave for Karabel's book:
1) Style-wise, he falls into the very common expository rut of overusing periodic sentences -- often, he constructs a paragraph that lacks variety, with four or five consecutive compound-complex sentences, each beginning with a participial phrase. Ugh. At least his writing is clear.
2) I was very curious that Karabel did not mention the University of California system and Ward Connerly in his rich discussion of the history of conflict over affirmative action. Karabel is a professor at Cal-Berkeley.
A third thing, which I can gloss over more easily, was the amount of repetition. Many statistics, quotations, and other references were repeated several times -- almost as if it were a hedge against the likelihood that readers would dive into only one segment of the book, and leave the rest untouched. It can be overwhelming, true. But there's a bigger structural issue here as well: in his persistence to shuttle among all three of the Big Three, the author successfully cross-links as necessary...and then repeats when he gets to the section dedicated to the linkee. As I say, I can gloss this because I like the persistence in giving all Three their fair share of attention, but it did get irritating at times.
Any quibble I have with Karabel's style or structure or editing is dwarfed by the irritation engendered by the practices revealed in this mesmerizing history. And yet, it is clear that his non-polemical, thoroughly academic approach recognizes when they mean well and yet are overwhelmed by realpolitik. If we laypeople look at college admissions today and smirk, "If only they listened to me, this could be easily fixed," we're being wildly naive. The task is both crucial and excruciatingly difficult, in ways that Karabel's readers will much, much more thoroughly appreciate.
July 24, 2018
Elite colleges are no different than any other status seeking organization. They do what's necessary to gain/preserve power using the currency of prestige. Contrary to what I was led to believe as a kid, only about 15% of incoming freshman at the Big Three are selected on the basis of academic achievement. Their explicit goal is to select the future political, social and economic leaders of the U.S. The author reveals that this is accomplished by utilizing a definition of "merit" that has evolved to consider things like specific personality traits, legacy status, race and athletic ability pretty much equally as important as one's academic profile.
The book was not very exciting and quite repetitive, but in retrospect very enlightening. It's one of those works that unveil an institution heavily shrouded in prestige so that you can see how things really work. It probably could have been done in half the length though.
The book was not very exciting and quite repetitive, but in retrospect very enlightening. It's one of those works that unveil an institution heavily shrouded in prestige so that you can see how things really work. It probably could have been done in half the length though.
August 28, 2023
Everything you ever wanted to know about admissions at elite Ivies, and maybe more than you really wanted to know. Apart from some snide paragraphs explaining how the academically undistinguished George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were admitted to Yale, it doesn't show its years. There's even an extended discussion of anti-Asian bias in admissions, documented as early as the 1980s as part of a Department of Education investigation into Harvard. The excuse back then was even the same: when you adjust for legacy and athletic status, there's no discrepancy! And sure enough, if you control away enough of the mechanisms of discrimination, you're left with little discrimination.
Karabel understands that a history of Harvard/Yale/Princeton admissions is really a history of the American upper class and its transformation from a loose association of WASPs into the ostensibly meritocratic assembly of various genders, races, religions, and whatnot that it is today. Yet he also understand the paradoxical fact that as these institutions opened their doors to more and more previously excluded groups, they did so by claiming more arbitrary and subjective power to select between students, not less.
The 19th century model of Harvard admissions was to hold entrance exams on campus and at a few high schools and admit those who passed. In practice this was extremely exclusionary. The schools where the exams were held tended to be elite private institutions in and around Boston, plus a handful of public exceptions like Boston Latin. The curriculum tested included Greek and Latin, which normal public high schools didn't teach. But at a high, abstract level, this was a much more open system than the current one. If you passed the exams, you got in — simple as that. There was no cap on annual admissions. Where there was fudging, it was to let in the idiot children of privilege who failed the exams but had family connections. If you passed, you had a ticket in, regardless of background. (If you were a man, of course — though being black or Jewish would not exclude you.)
This was not a system that could survive Harvard becoming a national institution, rather than a Massachusetts one. A Harvard that held reasonable exams (like those after it abolished its Greek and Latin requirements) and held them everywhere could not admit all who passed without ballooning to extraordinary size. More importantly to its leaders, it could not do so without letting Jewish boys, who outperformed their gentile counterparts academically, take up a growing share of the student body.
So the modern system of "character" evaluation, recommendation letters, and personal essays came about as part of Lawrence Lowell's efforts to impose a quota on Harvard's Jewish population; his and his Yale/Princeton counterparts' decision to cap class sizes were similarly motivated (not that Princeton had ever admitted a non-trivial number of Jews to begin with). But establishing the norm that elite admissions could and indeed must account for intangible factors and not be the mechanical result of testing and grades (the way it is in France or Japan) was exactly what allowed these schools to adopt affirmative action in the 1960s and 1970s. They were able to train systems they developed to discriminate against Jews toward discriminating in favor of blacks with remarkable ease. And all the while, these systems allowed legacy and athletic privilege to continue as well, forms of privilege that even existed in the non-selective admissions era.
At times, Karabel's determination to trace the ins and outs of this system's imposition and evolution across the three schools can be repetitive, in part because the schools are really quite similar and made similar decisions at similar times. One weakness of this is a lack of attention to their competitors. MIT and Caltech, easily as academically distinguished as the book's three subjects, barely merit mentions, and Stanford shows up near the end of the book almost as a shock, when it starts beating Yale and Princeton at getting admitted students to enroll. How did it get there? When did the Big Three become a Big Four, or a Big Six, or (depending on how receptive we are to Columbia and Chicago's lobbying pressure) a Big Eight? Is there a way to make a judgment here without coming off as the most pretentious asshole God ever let through the door?
But overall I'm incredibly impressed by the depth of research here, to which the footnotes testify with their references to deep archival files at each school and private letters of college presidents and directors of admission. I love how quantitative it is: whenever Karabel can, he gives a stat from the admissions records to firm up an argument he's making, and in the process reveals he discovered stats I never in a million years would have thought he could access.
I'm not sure I would recommend reading this in full to anyone without some attachment to one of these three schools or, better still, a self-flagellating relationship of guilt and contempt and suspicion and nostalgia and hidden affection toward their alma mater. But for those of us sickos to whom these places mean something, it's quite a ride.
Karabel understands that a history of Harvard/Yale/Princeton admissions is really a history of the American upper class and its transformation from a loose association of WASPs into the ostensibly meritocratic assembly of various genders, races, religions, and whatnot that it is today. Yet he also understand the paradoxical fact that as these institutions opened their doors to more and more previously excluded groups, they did so by claiming more arbitrary and subjective power to select between students, not less.
The 19th century model of Harvard admissions was to hold entrance exams on campus and at a few high schools and admit those who passed. In practice this was extremely exclusionary. The schools where the exams were held tended to be elite private institutions in and around Boston, plus a handful of public exceptions like Boston Latin. The curriculum tested included Greek and Latin, which normal public high schools didn't teach. But at a high, abstract level, this was a much more open system than the current one. If you passed the exams, you got in — simple as that. There was no cap on annual admissions. Where there was fudging, it was to let in the idiot children of privilege who failed the exams but had family connections. If you passed, you had a ticket in, regardless of background. (If you were a man, of course — though being black or Jewish would not exclude you.)
This was not a system that could survive Harvard becoming a national institution, rather than a Massachusetts one. A Harvard that held reasonable exams (like those after it abolished its Greek and Latin requirements) and held them everywhere could not admit all who passed without ballooning to extraordinary size. More importantly to its leaders, it could not do so without letting Jewish boys, who outperformed their gentile counterparts academically, take up a growing share of the student body.
So the modern system of "character" evaluation, recommendation letters, and personal essays came about as part of Lawrence Lowell's efforts to impose a quota on Harvard's Jewish population; his and his Yale/Princeton counterparts' decision to cap class sizes were similarly motivated (not that Princeton had ever admitted a non-trivial number of Jews to begin with). But establishing the norm that elite admissions could and indeed must account for intangible factors and not be the mechanical result of testing and grades (the way it is in France or Japan) was exactly what allowed these schools to adopt affirmative action in the 1960s and 1970s. They were able to train systems they developed to discriminate against Jews toward discriminating in favor of blacks with remarkable ease. And all the while, these systems allowed legacy and athletic privilege to continue as well, forms of privilege that even existed in the non-selective admissions era.
At times, Karabel's determination to trace the ins and outs of this system's imposition and evolution across the three schools can be repetitive, in part because the schools are really quite similar and made similar decisions at similar times. One weakness of this is a lack of attention to their competitors. MIT and Caltech, easily as academically distinguished as the book's three subjects, barely merit mentions, and Stanford shows up near the end of the book almost as a shock, when it starts beating Yale and Princeton at getting admitted students to enroll. How did it get there? When did the Big Three become a Big Four, or a Big Six, or (depending on how receptive we are to Columbia and Chicago's lobbying pressure) a Big Eight? Is there a way to make a judgment here without coming off as the most pretentious asshole God ever let through the door?
But overall I'm incredibly impressed by the depth of research here, to which the footnotes testify with their references to deep archival files at each school and private letters of college presidents and directors of admission. I love how quantitative it is: whenever Karabel can, he gives a stat from the admissions records to firm up an argument he's making, and in the process reveals he discovered stats I never in a million years would have thought he could access.
I'm not sure I would recommend reading this in full to anyone without some attachment to one of these three schools or, better still, a self-flagellating relationship of guilt and contempt and suspicion and nostalgia and hidden affection toward their alma mater. But for those of us sickos to whom these places mean something, it's quite a ride.
October 25, 2023
Unbelievably thoroughly researched
April 7, 2020
Eye-opening with lots of intriguing thoughts and interpretations, but a bit sluggish to get through at points. Meticulously detailed, which sometimes works well and sometimes makes reading feel like wading through knee-deep molasses.
June 18, 2021
The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.
Jerome Karabel
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005
Topic/Focus— Changes in admissions policies at elite institutions, how they’ve changed over time, and why
Chronology— 1900s
Argument— Admissions policies at elite institutions have changed in order to maintain existing power structures, transitioning away from objective criteria and to more “character”-based admissions policies which serve to limit acceptance of underprivileged and already underrepresented groups.
Intervention— Calling into question the creation of elite college admissions policies which are often lauded for promoting diversity came to be by claiming that they originated as a mechanism for maintaining “traditional” demographics of the student bodies at these institutions and still do this today
Sources & archives— student newspapers, yearbooks, Big Three university archives, internal memos, admissions officer documents, Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education materials resulting from recent suit against Harvard, faculty reports
Critiques—See reviews
Notes on Review #1
Talks about the great changes in the types of students admitted to the “Big Three” institutions from the 1900s to present day
Summarizes Karabel’s argument as being that despite ideas to the contrary, these higher education institutions do not open their doors that willingly
The “Big Three” as appealing to the powerful in society and designing admissions policies to fit those cultural ideals
Despite some pressures and changes, admissions practices remain opaque and still fail to bring diverse students to campus at least along some dimensions like socioeconomic status.
Notes on Review #2
The ever-changing meaning and politicization of “merit” and its role in admissions
Talks about the numerous groups that play a role in shaping admissions policies including the media, students, faculty, alumni, and administrators of private schools.
Karabel’s use of student newspapers and yearbooks to perform historical analysis
Cites the most important argument of karabel as being the way that definitions and standards of “merit” have been systematically constructed to discriminate against minority groups
Introduction
Admissions and changes in admissions policies help to provide a lens for the effects of major world events like WW2, the Cold War, etc.
New admissions system defined by inclusion of criteria other than academics
Use of “character” for admissions
Disagreement in admissions policies often reflect disagreements in America at large
Author claims that most disagreements around admissions can be reduced to disagreements over the definition of “merit.”
Ch.1—Elite Education and the Protestant Ethos
Although there was some diversity in the student body at Harvard, student experiences varied considerably along SES lines (14).
The Porcellian as the top of the social hierarchy at Harvard during the time of Roosevelt (16).
Roosevelt’s failure to be elected to the Porcellian as devastating to him (17).
Big Three as football strongholds and as “training grounds for the nation’s leaders” (18).
The Big Three’s student bodies diverging from the path of academic rigor in the late 19th century (21-22).
High tuition and other costs meant that the student body was from primarily wealth backgrounds, essentially old money (24).
An increase in the practice of sending wealthy children to private boarding schools resulted in almost an echochamber where the idea that boys should be molded into “strong, Christian men” was taken up, beginning to be the cultural ideal even outside this small group of elites (30-37).
Big three take on selective admissions policies (38).
Ch.2—The Big Three Before Selective Admissions
Eliot introduced a more relaxed curriculum which contradicted the rigid structure previously advocated for by Roosevelt and Peabody, allowing for electives and hoped to increase the SES diversity of Harvard’s student body.
Eliot as very anti-football, trying to eliminate it.
Eliot’s efforts to diversify the student body created some social rifts which he did not do a lot to fix.
Lowell as almost the opposite of Eliot but did make an effort to help close the growing gap in the student body created by diversification by encouraging students from different backgrounds to live together.
Lowell as very conservative and sometimes harsh in establishing order at Harvard, trying to undo some of the more relaxed policies of Eliot
Big rift between WASPs and Jews (51).
Ch.3—Harvard and the Battle over Restriction
The rise of scientific racism and its proponents’ attempts to establish social policies and immigration reform that reflects their view of a racial hierarchy.
Harvard had a larger Jewish population than many other elite colleges, and as Jewish immigration to the U.S. continued to increase, Lowell makes several attempts to place a de facto quota on admissions of Jews, reflecting similar national restrictions.
Early attempts by Lowell to establish an outright quota failed to pass through committees. Though, the committees did contribute to a great deal of knowledge creation and mechanisms for identifying Jewish students on campus.
In 1926, the admissions committee abandoned previous policies meant to accept Jewish applicants and even established an exact percentage of Hebrew applicants it was willing to accept.
Ch.6—The Reality of Admissions under Conant
While Conant may have been progressive in thought and speech, these qualities did not carry over to his actions.
Policies were established which vocalized a desire to attract scholars based on their abilities, no matter their ability to pay; however, this goal never superseded Harvard’s goal of attracting students from top private boarding schools who could pay full tuition.
The National Scholarship Program did admit several students who went on to perform well at Harvard; however, it discriminated against black and Jewish students, failing to live up to Conant’s professed meritocratic principle.
During wartime, more women were admitted to Radcliffe.
With the passage of the G.I. bill, Harvard admitted its most diverse class while protecting its financial solvency above all else
Official preference for application began being given to legacy students, athletes, and those students who did not need financial aid.
Ch.13—Racial Conflict and the Incorporation of Blacks
As calls for racial equity by black Americans intensified during the Civil Rights Era, the Big Three, despite having a very small black student body, initially saw no need to change their admissions policies.
Recognizing a rise in black leaders and affluence, the Big Three changed their policies to help admit more black students, and eventually other people of color.
This provoked the question of why the practice of gender exclusion remained.
Ch.14—Coeducation and the Struggle for Gender Equality
Social changes like an increased female workforce from several wars meant that more women were going into higher education than ever before.
Connections to the sister college of Radcliffe made Harvard’s transition to coeducation more difficult than Yale’s or Princeton’s. There were many concerns about an increase in the size of the student body, but ultimately the decision was allow women to attend Harvard.
A merger between Radcliffe and Harvard did not equate to a 50/50 split of men and women because of Radcliffe’s smaller application pool; though, sex-blind admissions were implemented.
There were concerns about an increase in women at the Big Three estranging alumni, as the colleges they knew began to look very different.
Opening the door to black students, paved the way for coeducation.
Ch.17—Money, the Market Ethos, and the Struggle for Position
Harvard, Yale, and Princeton faced different problems during the 1980s and 1990s.
Yale dealt with the issue of urban decay in New Haven and a decline in status.
Introduction of concepts of “early decision”
Ch.18—The Battle over Merit
Despite major growth in diversity, there is still a lack of SES diversity at elite institutions.
Unlike the case of affirmative action, admissions policies did not favor students from low or middle-SES backgrounds.
Many interested parties like administrators at feeder schools, coaches, alumni, etc. shape admissions policies.
“These three tasks - the recruitment of the children of the traditional elite, the incorporation of talented members of rising social groups, and the inclusion of a sufficient number of the children of the disenfranchised to maintain the system's legitimacy - have framed the admissions policy of the Big Three” (546)
Stress around college admissions stemming from uncertainty in middle-class families of maintaining position.
Admissions still falls short of a meritocracy
American society encourages “Equality of opportunity over equality of condition” (557).
Jerome Karabel
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005
Topic/Focus— Changes in admissions policies at elite institutions, how they’ve changed over time, and why
Chronology— 1900s
Argument— Admissions policies at elite institutions have changed in order to maintain existing power structures, transitioning away from objective criteria and to more “character”-based admissions policies which serve to limit acceptance of underprivileged and already underrepresented groups.
Intervention— Calling into question the creation of elite college admissions policies which are often lauded for promoting diversity came to be by claiming that they originated as a mechanism for maintaining “traditional” demographics of the student bodies at these institutions and still do this today
Sources & archives— student newspapers, yearbooks, Big Three university archives, internal memos, admissions officer documents, Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education materials resulting from recent suit against Harvard, faculty reports
Critiques—See reviews
Notes on Review #1
Talks about the great changes in the types of students admitted to the “Big Three” institutions from the 1900s to present day
Summarizes Karabel’s argument as being that despite ideas to the contrary, these higher education institutions do not open their doors that willingly
The “Big Three” as appealing to the powerful in society and designing admissions policies to fit those cultural ideals
Despite some pressures and changes, admissions practices remain opaque and still fail to bring diverse students to campus at least along some dimensions like socioeconomic status.
Notes on Review #2
The ever-changing meaning and politicization of “merit” and its role in admissions
Talks about the numerous groups that play a role in shaping admissions policies including the media, students, faculty, alumni, and administrators of private schools.
Karabel’s use of student newspapers and yearbooks to perform historical analysis
Cites the most important argument of karabel as being the way that definitions and standards of “merit” have been systematically constructed to discriminate against minority groups
Introduction
Admissions and changes in admissions policies help to provide a lens for the effects of major world events like WW2, the Cold War, etc.
New admissions system defined by inclusion of criteria other than academics
Use of “character” for admissions
Disagreement in admissions policies often reflect disagreements in America at large
Author claims that most disagreements around admissions can be reduced to disagreements over the definition of “merit.”
Ch.1—Elite Education and the Protestant Ethos
Although there was some diversity in the student body at Harvard, student experiences varied considerably along SES lines (14).
The Porcellian as the top of the social hierarchy at Harvard during the time of Roosevelt (16).
Roosevelt’s failure to be elected to the Porcellian as devastating to him (17).
Big Three as football strongholds and as “training grounds for the nation’s leaders” (18).
The Big Three’s student bodies diverging from the path of academic rigor in the late 19th century (21-22).
High tuition and other costs meant that the student body was from primarily wealth backgrounds, essentially old money (24).
An increase in the practice of sending wealthy children to private boarding schools resulted in almost an echochamber where the idea that boys should be molded into “strong, Christian men” was taken up, beginning to be the cultural ideal even outside this small group of elites (30-37).
Big three take on selective admissions policies (38).
Ch.2—The Big Three Before Selective Admissions
Eliot introduced a more relaxed curriculum which contradicted the rigid structure previously advocated for by Roosevelt and Peabody, allowing for electives and hoped to increase the SES diversity of Harvard’s student body.
Eliot as very anti-football, trying to eliminate it.
Eliot’s efforts to diversify the student body created some social rifts which he did not do a lot to fix.
Lowell as almost the opposite of Eliot but did make an effort to help close the growing gap in the student body created by diversification by encouraging students from different backgrounds to live together.
Lowell as very conservative and sometimes harsh in establishing order at Harvard, trying to undo some of the more relaxed policies of Eliot
Big rift between WASPs and Jews (51).
Ch.3—Harvard and the Battle over Restriction
The rise of scientific racism and its proponents’ attempts to establish social policies and immigration reform that reflects their view of a racial hierarchy.
Harvard had a larger Jewish population than many other elite colleges, and as Jewish immigration to the U.S. continued to increase, Lowell makes several attempts to place a de facto quota on admissions of Jews, reflecting similar national restrictions.
Early attempts by Lowell to establish an outright quota failed to pass through committees. Though, the committees did contribute to a great deal of knowledge creation and mechanisms for identifying Jewish students on campus.
In 1926, the admissions committee abandoned previous policies meant to accept Jewish applicants and even established an exact percentage of Hebrew applicants it was willing to accept.
Ch.6—The Reality of Admissions under Conant
While Conant may have been progressive in thought and speech, these qualities did not carry over to his actions.
Policies were established which vocalized a desire to attract scholars based on their abilities, no matter their ability to pay; however, this goal never superseded Harvard’s goal of attracting students from top private boarding schools who could pay full tuition.
The National Scholarship Program did admit several students who went on to perform well at Harvard; however, it discriminated against black and Jewish students, failing to live up to Conant’s professed meritocratic principle.
During wartime, more women were admitted to Radcliffe.
With the passage of the G.I. bill, Harvard admitted its most diverse class while protecting its financial solvency above all else
Official preference for application began being given to legacy students, athletes, and those students who did not need financial aid.
Ch.13—Racial Conflict and the Incorporation of Blacks
As calls for racial equity by black Americans intensified during the Civil Rights Era, the Big Three, despite having a very small black student body, initially saw no need to change their admissions policies.
Recognizing a rise in black leaders and affluence, the Big Three changed their policies to help admit more black students, and eventually other people of color.
This provoked the question of why the practice of gender exclusion remained.
Ch.14—Coeducation and the Struggle for Gender Equality
Social changes like an increased female workforce from several wars meant that more women were going into higher education than ever before.
Connections to the sister college of Radcliffe made Harvard’s transition to coeducation more difficult than Yale’s or Princeton’s. There were many concerns about an increase in the size of the student body, but ultimately the decision was allow women to attend Harvard.
A merger between Radcliffe and Harvard did not equate to a 50/50 split of men and women because of Radcliffe’s smaller application pool; though, sex-blind admissions were implemented.
There were concerns about an increase in women at the Big Three estranging alumni, as the colleges they knew began to look very different.
Opening the door to black students, paved the way for coeducation.
Ch.17—Money, the Market Ethos, and the Struggle for Position
Harvard, Yale, and Princeton faced different problems during the 1980s and 1990s.
Yale dealt with the issue of urban decay in New Haven and a decline in status.
Introduction of concepts of “early decision”
Ch.18—The Battle over Merit
Despite major growth in diversity, there is still a lack of SES diversity at elite institutions.
Unlike the case of affirmative action, admissions policies did not favor students from low or middle-SES backgrounds.
Many interested parties like administrators at feeder schools, coaches, alumni, etc. shape admissions policies.
“These three tasks - the recruitment of the children of the traditional elite, the incorporation of talented members of rising social groups, and the inclusion of a sufficient number of the children of the disenfranchised to maintain the system's legitimacy - have framed the admissions policy of the Big Three” (546)
Stress around college admissions stemming from uncertainty in middle-class families of maintaining position.
Admissions still falls short of a meritocracy
American society encourages “Equality of opportunity over equality of condition” (557).
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 2, 2016
My spouse finally finished reading aloud this epic examination of the admissions policies and practices of the top three Ivies during the past century. A fascinating (and appalling) examination of how the anti-semitism of the administrations of each college shaped many of the admissions policies we take for granted today (too many smart Jewish boys were applying in the early decades of the century; to keep their numbers down, the colleges started adding interviews, SAT scores, extracurricular activities, and recommendation letters to the admissions mix). Heartening, though, to read about the movements in the 60s and 70s to protest racial exclusions (esp. at our alma mater, Yale). Although disheartening to see how pushback from alumni in the 80s and 90s undercut many of the more radical changes of mid-century. The final chapter was particularly interesting; I didn't know that the man who coined the term "meritocracy" thought of it as a dystopian rather than a liberating construct, in large part because those at the top of the privilege heap get to define what "merit" is. Merit currently includes not only academic achievement, but being a child of an alum; having athletic abilities that have little to do with academic potential; and, after a long and difficult struggle, being a member of an American racial minority. As the author notes, working class kids are the ones who are currently the least likely to benefit from the current admissions system.
Far too many statistics make this book about 2/3 longer than it needs to be. But anyone interested about race, class, and "merit" play into the admissions game should find this worth the slog (or should check out the recent New Yorker article that summarizes many of Karabel's findings).
Far too many statistics make this book about 2/3 longer than it needs to be. But anyone interested about race, class, and "merit" play into the admissions game should find this worth the slog (or should check out the recent New Yorker article that summarizes many of Karabel's findings).
January 7, 2013
Meticulous historical account of how exclusive Universities developed discretionary admissions policies to, first, restrict the merit-based entry of ethnic Jews. They discovered that this discretionary power suited the needs of the administrators. Unlike merit based admissions exams for which "undesirables" can theoretically study, discretion allows universities to change the admissions criteria and, most importantly, to obscure how they make admissions decisions. These elite Unis use that power to protect their role in the reproduction of power. They concede marginally, as in the case of admitting black students, only when the political and social pressure to do so demands it. Even then those changes are marginal, controlled and constantly renegotiated. If you want to figure out how it is that almost every President of the United States as gone to these three schools, this is a good place to understand the importance of privileged institutions to the social structure. Be warned, it's a history book. It's dense and long but well-researched and worth it.
March 5, 2012
This is a remarkable book. Karabel investigates how and why Harvard, Yale and Princeton "have always been heavily overrepresented in the American elite." The word 'access' - particularly in the context of debates about 'widening access' - is controversal and complex. Karabel gives a history to these debates, probing the nature of 'merit' through university selection processes. He probes the many definitions of merit since 1900, with particular attention to the distinctions between merit and meritocracy.
This is an outstanding book that shows how - even with good intentions - the structures of inequality are pepetuated through university admission processes.
This is an outstanding book that shows how - even with good intentions - the structures of inequality are pepetuated through university admission processes.
July 12, 2025
“The Chosen” was a very informative book. Harvard, Yale and Princeton are arguably the three most prestigious Ivy League Universities. Many believe that if you are accepted at any of them, you must be a genius. This is not always the case.
In the early 1900s, admission to these universities was based on the results of an admission test at the end of high school. The high school graduation rate in the early 1900s was less than 10% of the population. Those who took the admission test were the sons of the well-connected affluent, elite WASP families and most of them were students in private boarding schools. Those with the highest scores were admitted.
As the wave of immigration in the early 1920s took hold, there were many more students in the cities of Boston, New Haven and New York who were very smart and very motivated and wanted to gain admission to these elite universities. Many of those students were Jewish and many of them attended rigorous public schools such as the Bronx High School of Science and Stuyvesant High School in New York. Antisemitism was rampant during this time, but universities did not want to openly established quotas for Jewish students. They also did not want their enrollment to include what they saw as “too many Jews.” Instead, they developed admissions standards that no longer solely considered academic achievement but also included more subjective criteria such as leadership, personality, character, personal interviews, and social desirability. This was a deliberate effort to solve what the universities referred to as “the Jewish problem.” (This book was published in 2005, but the same thing occurred in recent years when large numbers of highly qualified Asian students applied to these three universities.) In time, admissions offices decided to use geographic diversity criteria as well to reduce the percentage of Jewish students. Knowing that most of the Jewish students lived in the Middle Atlantic States, universities established guidelines for the percentage of admissions offers to other areas of the country where the Jewish population was low.
The goal of these universities was to include those who were brainiacs (of course) as well as those who were bright but also showed promise to be the future leaders of government and industry as well as athletes. From the early 20th century on, university admissions balanced the influence of the “paying guests” (students who did not need financial aid and often attended private boarding school), sons of well-connected businessmen and politicians, children of alumni, while also admitting athletes who would bring a positive spirit to the campus, despite their having a somewhat lower level of academic achievement. As you read the book, it’s very obvious that there are multiple academic admission standards depending on the group to which an applicant belongs.
There are also chapters about the controversies over the admission of women to the Ivy League and admission of African American students after the Civil Rights movement grew in the 1960s.
The three universities always competed with each other for the best applicants and at some point decided to increase their yield on offers of admissions by establishing “early action” and later “early decision” applications. Early action did not require a candidate to enroll if accepted, so shortly afterwards early decision, where an early offer of acceptance required the candidate to enroll was instituted. This accomplished two goals for the universities, higher yields on offers of admission and enrolling students who they referred to as “paying guests.” Few students who needed financial aid could afford the risk of committing to enroll when they did not know how much financial aid they might be awarded.
There is so much interesting information in this book and this review barely touches the surface. The following NY Times review might also be of interest.
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/bo...
In the early 1900s, admission to these universities was based on the results of an admission test at the end of high school. The high school graduation rate in the early 1900s was less than 10% of the population. Those who took the admission test were the sons of the well-connected affluent, elite WASP families and most of them were students in private boarding schools. Those with the highest scores were admitted.
As the wave of immigration in the early 1920s took hold, there were many more students in the cities of Boston, New Haven and New York who were very smart and very motivated and wanted to gain admission to these elite universities. Many of those students were Jewish and many of them attended rigorous public schools such as the Bronx High School of Science and Stuyvesant High School in New York. Antisemitism was rampant during this time, but universities did not want to openly established quotas for Jewish students. They also did not want their enrollment to include what they saw as “too many Jews.” Instead, they developed admissions standards that no longer solely considered academic achievement but also included more subjective criteria such as leadership, personality, character, personal interviews, and social desirability. This was a deliberate effort to solve what the universities referred to as “the Jewish problem.” (This book was published in 2005, but the same thing occurred in recent years when large numbers of highly qualified Asian students applied to these three universities.) In time, admissions offices decided to use geographic diversity criteria as well to reduce the percentage of Jewish students. Knowing that most of the Jewish students lived in the Middle Atlantic States, universities established guidelines for the percentage of admissions offers to other areas of the country where the Jewish population was low.
The goal of these universities was to include those who were brainiacs (of course) as well as those who were bright but also showed promise to be the future leaders of government and industry as well as athletes. From the early 20th century on, university admissions balanced the influence of the “paying guests” (students who did not need financial aid and often attended private boarding school), sons of well-connected businessmen and politicians, children of alumni, while also admitting athletes who would bring a positive spirit to the campus, despite their having a somewhat lower level of academic achievement. As you read the book, it’s very obvious that there are multiple academic admission standards depending on the group to which an applicant belongs.
There are also chapters about the controversies over the admission of women to the Ivy League and admission of African American students after the Civil Rights movement grew in the 1960s.
The three universities always competed with each other for the best applicants and at some point decided to increase their yield on offers of admissions by establishing “early action” and later “early decision” applications. Early action did not require a candidate to enroll if accepted, so shortly afterwards early decision, where an early offer of acceptance required the candidate to enroll was instituted. This accomplished two goals for the universities, higher yields on offers of admission and enrolling students who they referred to as “paying guests.” Few students who needed financial aid could afford the risk of committing to enroll when they did not know how much financial aid they might be awarded.
There is so much interesting information in this book and this review barely touches the surface. The following NY Times review might also be of interest.
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/bo...
March 12, 2024
The first 3/5 of this book was...not fun to read. It ran around in circles, revealing essentially the same thing over and over again, changing nothing but a couple names and dates. Perhaps that's gratuitous to the fact that history repeated itself over and over again in various institutions from the late 19th century to the mid 20th century. That being said, there's no way the author actually thinks we're going to remember each of the approximately 90 million names he tosses our way, so I don't see the point of dragging it on (and on, and on, and on) rather than just covering the important bits in broad strokes.
That being said, the final section of the book, which covered from 1965 on, made up for the rest of it, being genuinely interesting and far less repetitive. The final chapter of The Chosen was the highlight of the book - far from being a regurgitation of the previous 540 pages or so, the epilogue smoothly tied together the rest of the book and outlined a series of guidelines for how to improve the admissions system (i.e. the author didn't toss out an issue and then shrug and walk away as I expected).
A few quotes from the epilogue I particularly appreciated:
"It is no exaggeration to say that the current regime in elite college admissions has been far more successful in democratizing anxiety than opportunity."
"Those who are able to define 'merit' will almost invariably poses more of it, and those with greater resources - cultural, economic and social - will generally be able too ensure that this educational system will deem their children more meritorious."
"Having learned that 'the best way to defeat opposition is to win over its leaders,'England's ruling class recognized that this meant 'appropriating and educating the ball children of the lower classes.'"
That being said, the final section of the book, which covered from 1965 on, made up for the rest of it, being genuinely interesting and far less repetitive. The final chapter of The Chosen was the highlight of the book - far from being a regurgitation of the previous 540 pages or so, the epilogue smoothly tied together the rest of the book and outlined a series of guidelines for how to improve the admissions system (i.e. the author didn't toss out an issue and then shrug and walk away as I expected).
A few quotes from the epilogue I particularly appreciated:
"It is no exaggeration to say that the current regime in elite college admissions has been far more successful in democratizing anxiety than opportunity."
"Those who are able to define 'merit' will almost invariably poses more of it, and those with greater resources - cultural, economic and social - will generally be able too ensure that this educational system will deem their children more meritorious."
"Having learned that 'the best way to defeat opposition is to win over its leaders,'England's ruling class recognized that this meant 'appropriating and educating the ball children of the lower classes.'"
October 10, 2022
Waaay too long. I swear he could have pared off a hundred pages just by including a few graphs. So many sentences read like “In year N, only x% of students at [college] were [adjective or noun], while in year N+3, y% were.” Over and over again. There’s also a big effect of “such-and-such happened at Harvard,” and in the next chapter “and the same basic thing happened at Yale”.
It was sort of shocking how anti-semitic all three of HYP were for the first 50-ish years of the 20th century. I mean, I sort of knew that, but to see it all there in black and white. Over and over again. Does Harvard really still have a house named after Lowell? Kind of surprising these days.
It was thoroughly researched, but gee, I sure wish he had found a way to cut it down by 30% or so. (Graphs, I’m telling you.)
The basic story is that things were pretty static for the first 50 years, then things changed suddenly in the 60s, and they’ve been pretty static since. He spent a surprisingly short time on 1975-2005. It really does seem like nothing happened. I wonder if there’s anything since the publication of this book.
It was refreshing to take a chapter off to discuss the Bakke case (and others related), just to read something different.
He built up the “dirty bicker” at Princeton in 1958, but the story itself sort of fizzled.
It was sort of shocking how anti-semitic all three of HYP were for the first 50-ish years of the 20th century. I mean, I sort of knew that, but to see it all there in black and white. Over and over again. Does Harvard really still have a house named after Lowell? Kind of surprising these days.
It was thoroughly researched, but gee, I sure wish he had found a way to cut it down by 30% or so. (Graphs, I’m telling you.)
The basic story is that things were pretty static for the first 50 years, then things changed suddenly in the 60s, and they’ve been pretty static since. He spent a surprisingly short time on 1975-2005. It really does seem like nothing happened. I wonder if there’s anything since the publication of this book.
It was refreshing to take a chapter off to discuss the Bakke case (and others related), just to read something different.
He built up the “dirty bicker” at Princeton in 1958, but the story itself sort of fizzled.
April 26, 2022
Overly long, sad, and well researched, this book explains how it is that the elite universities, while claiming to select for quality, intelligence, and hard work manage to keep accepting, overwhelmingly the unexceptional sons and daughters of the power elite families. This was written before the current scandals of buying athletic recommendations, and fixed test scores, and fixed interview scores, but the general direction is the same, even if the techniques are different. In this book the schools largely rely on "leadership" evidence as a way to keep out Jewish students. Currently the idea has broadened to keeping out Jews and Chinese, but life is what it is. Besides, as in the old joke, it's the only game in town.
November 15, 2024
Fucking finally.
Initially started for Jewish heritage month last year, I'm happy to announce that I've finally completed this epic of college admissions horror just in time for this year's Jewish heritage month, and a perfect way to kickstart my Jewish/API readathon. Whew.
Make no mistake: this is a long and slow book. But what it lacks in easy readability, it more than makes up in immense information—and the shattering of any illusion that the Ivy League is built on any kind of fairness.
I mean. Please. At least read a few chapters from here if you can. If nothing else, you'll really be able to grasp just how messed up the system is in the USA, and how critical it is to fight class disparities right here, right now.
Initially started for Jewish heritage month last year, I'm happy to announce that I've finally completed this epic of college admissions horror just in time for this year's Jewish heritage month, and a perfect way to kickstart my Jewish/API readathon. Whew.
Make no mistake: this is a long and slow book. But what it lacks in easy readability, it more than makes up in immense information—and the shattering of any illusion that the Ivy League is built on any kind of fairness.
I mean. Please. At least read a few chapters from here if you can. If nothing else, you'll really be able to grasp just how messed up the system is in the USA, and how critical it is to fight class disparities right here, right now.
March 9, 2017
Sometimes the right kind of view of a small part of something can illuminate the rest. This magisterial history of admissions at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton is also a history of class in America, the concept and implementation of meritocracy, ethnic divisions, educational thought, and probably more things I haven't thought of. It's especially appealing for Big Three alumni, but it's worth reading if you are interested in any of those things. I try to give 5 stars sparingly, but this book deserves them.
Read
February 8, 2021No rating because I didn't read the whole thing--I was only assigned the first two parts for class. :-)
This is pretty thick and very dry at times, but the actual content is fascinating if you can plow through. I was surprised to learn how so many of today's more subjective college admissions practices were born out of pure bigotry--the desire to keep Jewish folx out, to figure out who the "manly men" were and weed out LGBTQ folx, and I wouldn't be surprised if this extends to other marginalized identities in the third part. I am making a note to come back to this and finish up one day.
This is pretty thick and very dry at times, but the actual content is fascinating if you can plow through. I was surprised to learn how so many of today's more subjective college admissions practices were born out of pure bigotry--the desire to keep Jewish folx out, to figure out who the "manly men" were and weed out LGBTQ folx, and I wouldn't be surprised if this extends to other marginalized identities in the third part. I am making a note to come back to this and finish up one day.
October 18, 2023
Whew. I haven't read a book this thick since like middle school. AND I haven't been this enraptured by a work of nonfiction in a while as well - definitely my admissions/higher ed history nerdity, but this book is just a page-turner with the insane shit these schools were up to for most of the 20th century, and what undergirds literally all of selective admissions (hint: it's anti-semitism and more). Crazy. I will be quoting this book for ages to come.
October 7, 2018
I've learned so much about the college process from this book. It's an extremely comprehensive text on the development of the admissions process as we know it, complete with reflections on how "meritocracy" functions.
Also, it gave someone an inferiority complex about his level of intellectual curiosity, so I'm living.
Also, it gave someone an inferiority complex about his level of intellectual curiosity, so I'm living.
Read
December 26, 2025DNF bc it’s actually gargantuan and I started at a very hectic time in my life. But what I did read I really enjoyed: a well-researched retelling of biographical narratives that present the racist and xenophobic origins of the ivies (harvard, princeton, & yale specifically). Hopefully I can pick this back up sometime
October 5, 2022
See Petra review
March 4, 2024
Research: 5
Conclusions: 2
Conclusions: 2
February 22, 2025
Meaningful. The history of discrimination is far deeper than I’d appreciated. This needs to be mainlined into any conversations about higher ed reform.
December 27, 2025
“The Jewish Question” he mentions this on virtually every page of the book. 250 pages in…we get it. You were obsessed with Jewish entrance in Ivy League schools. Get over it.
January 19, 2009
A 560-page history (not including several hundred pages of footnotes) of the admissions process of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, starting with the early 20th century. It is really a study of sociology in the US, and how views have changed regarding race, religion, gender, and other differentiators. It also explains how we ended up with the existing admissions process of those schools, and subsequently all American colleges and universities in general. This book covers anti-Semitism, sexism, the shortcomings of the GI Bill post-WW II, the Civil Rights movement and affirmative action, the decline of the east coast private schools and the traditional WASP upper class, how immigration demographics changed the make-up of the entering classes, etc. However, the crux of the book doesn't come until the end...that regardless of how people are categorized, the ones that are increasingly less represented at these schools are poor people. In other words, although the schools may admit a percentage of minorities, there is substantial evidence that the most underrepresented group are those that are socioeconomically deprived. The schools completely lack any kind of class diversity. Another major point is whether the schools should admit those that are representative of the existing leaders in society (by race, wealth, etc) or to strategize who are the future leaders. The book also shows that over the hundred+ years highlighted, there is still overwhelming preference for legacies (ie, keep the alumni happy so that they continue to give money to the school), athletes, and defined minorities. If you do not fall into at least one of those three categories, you will have a much more difficult time getting into college. Also, there is still strong preference for the "paying customers" (students not needing financial aid).
As a point of reference, I looked up the schools of a few Ivy alumni to get a feel for how these schools were when they were there. Here's a few that I found on Wikipedia (the Cheny ref was in the book)...
Barack Obama - Columbia (tranfer) '83, Harvard Law '91
Hillary Clinton - Wellesley '69, Yale Law '73
Bill Clinton - Georgetown '68, Yale Law '73
George Bush (Jr) - Yale '68, Harvard MBA ??? (daddy went to Yale and was a superstar academically, as well as sports and "leadership")
Cheney - got into Yale via nepotism, kicked out freshman year for poor grades
So, I have a few complaints about what the book doesn't cover. Although there is brief discussion about the increase in the number of students seeking financial aid, there is absolutely no discussion about how that is increasingly less linked to the affluence of the parents (ie, rich families that make their kids pay for their own education). As someone that has done college scholarship interviews, this is increasingly a major issue. There is also little discussion about the increase of tuition over time, and how the cost at these three schools compares to non-Ivy or other Ivy schools. I was also disappointed at the complete lack of discussion of the changing demographics in graduate schools, because what is happening at the undergraduate level is substantially different than at the graduate level.
And, as a woman, I was definitely pissed off about why those schools started admitting women. They literally used women as a recruitment tool. In other words, the initial reason why women got in the door was to prevent men from going to other schools that were co-ed.
This is a remarkable book, and although it took me an unusually long time to read it, I really enjoyed it.
As a point of reference, I looked up the schools of a few Ivy alumni to get a feel for how these schools were when they were there. Here's a few that I found on Wikipedia (the Cheny ref was in the book)...
Barack Obama - Columbia (tranfer) '83, Harvard Law '91
Hillary Clinton - Wellesley '69, Yale Law '73
Bill Clinton - Georgetown '68, Yale Law '73
George Bush (Jr) - Yale '68, Harvard MBA ??? (daddy went to Yale and was a superstar academically, as well as sports and "leadership")
Cheney - got into Yale via nepotism, kicked out freshman year for poor grades
So, I have a few complaints about what the book doesn't cover. Although there is brief discussion about the increase in the number of students seeking financial aid, there is absolutely no discussion about how that is increasingly less linked to the affluence of the parents (ie, rich families that make their kids pay for their own education). As someone that has done college scholarship interviews, this is increasingly a major issue. There is also little discussion about the increase of tuition over time, and how the cost at these three schools compares to non-Ivy or other Ivy schools. I was also disappointed at the complete lack of discussion of the changing demographics in graduate schools, because what is happening at the undergraduate level is substantially different than at the graduate level.
And, as a woman, I was definitely pissed off about why those schools started admitting women. They literally used women as a recruitment tool. In other words, the initial reason why women got in the door was to prevent men from going to other schools that were co-ed.
This is a remarkable book, and although it took me an unusually long time to read it, I really enjoyed it.
September 6, 2013
This is a very, very, very long history of the admission policies of the "Big Three" Ivy League schools. Karabel did a respectable amount of digging into the archives of these schools and certainly deserves credit for his research. Much of the correspondence he unearthed had never been looked at by anyone from the outside world before, and his reproductions of parts of those works here deserves praise. The overall theme of so much of our country's public policy having been shaped by institutions that at their core are mainly country clubs to provide networking opportunities for rich peoples' children is also trenchant, and probably the most interesting of Karabel's many threads - especially when he's talking about the relationship between the top Ivies and very public, historically important families such as the Roosevelts.
However, this book is still not as interesting as it should be, mostly because Karabel is a much better researcher than he is a writer. His tone is just pedantic enough to be soporific if read for long periods of time, and though the book is very long each paragraph by itself conveys very little information. On top of this, Karabel also frequently gets off-topic explaining contextual US history of the time in excruciating detail, and using way more examples than are necessary or prudent (do we really need several pages of primary sources quoted in detail to establish that America in the 1920's hated Jews, when half that amount gets the point across?). He also seems to feel the need to explain for pages the entire background of every person who bore even a trivial bit of responsibility for setting admissions policy at these institutions, which makes it easy for the reader to get buried in names. The presentation of facts can be disorienting, and often jumps around in history several times in the same chapter, e.g. by saying "Charles Eliot would be opposing Lowell past the age of ninety" in one place, "Charles Eliot died at age 92" in another, and "Charles Eliot opposed Lowell at the age of ninety" in a third. Karabel also assumes familiarity with important personages that even a well-educated reader outside of a particular discipline may not be familiar with (e.g. Felix Frankfurter), and often repeats major points from chapter to chapter without reference to having made them before. For all these reasons and more, his writing can only be described as very inefficient, which makes getting the pertinent facts out of this book much more tedious than it needed to be.
It's a shame, because the level of research here is first-rate, and could've made a really good read with a better writer (because it's both unfair and unrealistic to ask a modern editor to fix a work of this length). Unfortunately, there's so much unnecessary air in Karabel's writing that this book really could've been 40% shorter and still conveyed the same information more effectively. For that reason, it's not really something I can recommend unless you're really, really, REALLY interested in the subject matter and patient enough to extract the pertinent details from the incredibly vast but very shallow sea of information presented here.
However, this book is still not as interesting as it should be, mostly because Karabel is a much better researcher than he is a writer. His tone is just pedantic enough to be soporific if read for long periods of time, and though the book is very long each paragraph by itself conveys very little information. On top of this, Karabel also frequently gets off-topic explaining contextual US history of the time in excruciating detail, and using way more examples than are necessary or prudent (do we really need several pages of primary sources quoted in detail to establish that America in the 1920's hated Jews, when half that amount gets the point across?). He also seems to feel the need to explain for pages the entire background of every person who bore even a trivial bit of responsibility for setting admissions policy at these institutions, which makes it easy for the reader to get buried in names. The presentation of facts can be disorienting, and often jumps around in history several times in the same chapter, e.g. by saying "Charles Eliot would be opposing Lowell past the age of ninety" in one place, "Charles Eliot died at age 92" in another, and "Charles Eliot opposed Lowell at the age of ninety" in a third. Karabel also assumes familiarity with important personages that even a well-educated reader outside of a particular discipline may not be familiar with (e.g. Felix Frankfurter), and often repeats major points from chapter to chapter without reference to having made them before. For all these reasons and more, his writing can only be described as very inefficient, which makes getting the pertinent facts out of this book much more tedious than it needed to be.
It's a shame, because the level of research here is first-rate, and could've made a really good read with a better writer (because it's both unfair and unrealistic to ask a modern editor to fix a work of this length). Unfortunately, there's so much unnecessary air in Karabel's writing that this book really could've been 40% shorter and still conveyed the same information more effectively. For that reason, it's not really something I can recommend unless you're really, really, REALLY interested in the subject matter and patient enough to extract the pertinent details from the incredibly vast but very shallow sea of information presented here.
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February 12, 2016I have just started it and am about 50 pages into it. My initial reaction is that I'm not sure it was a good decision to read this. It is very ponderous reading. The author keep talking about elite people who are chosen based on things other than merit and yet is very vague about what he means by that - doesn't describe exactly what he means by lack of merit and give specific examples. However as I get into it more perhaps it will improve. He has now begun examining education at Princeton, Harvard, and Yale (which he says will be the focus of his book) beginning about 1900. He has some interesting comments about the educational philosophies of the various college presidents and apparently is going to provide comment and critique on how they work out so I hope the book will improve.
July 28 - this is a long, long book. I have been reading it for over a month and am now at about page 400. The book goes over the colleges' use of quotas for Jews and quotes some anti-Semitic remarks on the part of college presidents and others. It continued through the period when women were admitted and is now going over the Bakke case. It has some interesting comments but is rather hard to get through.
August 7 - finally finished reading it - now I have to decide whether I want to read the 100 pages of footnotes.
-I started reading the footnotes but was unable to finish before the book was due. I renewed it twice and that's the limit. The footnotes were pretty interesting.
July 28 - this is a long, long book. I have been reading it for over a month and am now at about page 400. The book goes over the colleges' use of quotas for Jews and quotes some anti-Semitic remarks on the part of college presidents and others. It continued through the period when women were admitted and is now going over the Bakke case. It has some interesting comments but is rather hard to get through.
August 7 - finally finished reading it - now I have to decide whether I want to read the 100 pages of footnotes.
-I started reading the footnotes but was unable to finish before the book was due. I renewed it twice and that's the limit. The footnotes were pretty interesting.
July 7, 2016
This book should be required reading for anyone in the college admission field, whether a college admission officer or a college counselor on the high school side. (I think college presidents should read it, too.) It's an eye-opener in every way, turning over the rocks of the Big Three's admission practices to discover the maggots and worms beneath. Karabel's history is meticulous and well-presented. Anyone who thinks there was once a golden age of college admission where "merit" was the only defining factor should read this book.
Reading some of the letters where those in charge of admission discuss "grinds" and "undesirables" or even wish that Armenian genocide had been more effective is enough to give you chills. And of course, like any good history, it gives you some perspective on the way today's college admission system operates.
I've been thinking about this book since the recent controversies over buildings and schools at these institutions named for Woodrow Wilson, Calhoun, and others who were racists--perhaps, given the racist pasts of the institutions themselves, they should change their own names. (Not gonna happen, I know, but no one is pure.)
A terrific book I keep close at hand.
Reading some of the letters where those in charge of admission discuss "grinds" and "undesirables" or even wish that Armenian genocide had been more effective is enough to give you chills. And of course, like any good history, it gives you some perspective on the way today's college admission system operates.
I've been thinking about this book since the recent controversies over buildings and schools at these institutions named for Woodrow Wilson, Calhoun, and others who were racists--perhaps, given the racist pasts of the institutions themselves, they should change their own names. (Not gonna happen, I know, but no one is pure.)
A terrific book I keep close at hand.
March 31, 2016
The Chosen looks at the 'Big Three' (Harvard, Yale, and Princeton) and the admissions process for the respective institutions. The most interesting aspect of the book is how each of the universities have adapted and changed due to the social expectations of the general US populous. Beginning as institutions for White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestants (WASPs) with priority given almost exclusively to private preparatory boarding schools, the social changes begin to take off while looking at the various leaders of the colleges as the primary focus for change. It was very eye opening to learn about the extremely anti-Semitic guidelines of admissions in the 1920s up through World War II. Also covered is the racism towards all minorities, prejudice towards women, the battle over Affirmative Action, and the adoption of need, sex, and race-blind admissions policies. The major flaw that I found was the constant use of various names of individuals from various institutions that were randomly and briefly covered. It became very difficult to keep track of who was at which university and what their particular view points and contributions were. Overall, this book was a very dense, but interesting read.
July 10, 2010
In The Chosen Jerome Karabel has compiled a comprehensive and riveting account of the hidden causes for American education as we know it today. Why do we have to write essays? Why is the SAT so important? Why do you always feel like a poodle on display throughout interviews in musty admissions offices? Because Harvard, Yale and Princeton did it...that's why.
Questions about access to education, the value of education and the quest to retain the power of those who had already received their education come through in page after page of well woven history. The characters are dynamic engaging figures and the events can be, at times, shocking.
Unfortunately, there's a lot of events, and a lot of characters. And if you're reading this book in addition to several hundred other pages of literary theory throughout your graduate school career you're really not going to pick up the book with real enthusiasm at the end of the night. It had to go back to the library, and sad as I was to not finish it, I feel that it is worth reading, no matter how much you read of it.
Questions about access to education, the value of education and the quest to retain the power of those who had already received their education come through in page after page of well woven history. The characters are dynamic engaging figures and the events can be, at times, shocking.
Unfortunately, there's a lot of events, and a lot of characters. And if you're reading this book in addition to several hundred other pages of literary theory throughout your graduate school career you're really not going to pick up the book with real enthusiasm at the end of the night. It had to go back to the library, and sad as I was to not finish it, I feel that it is worth reading, no matter how much you read of it.
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