ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses admission to the old time American college, admissions policies, and entrance requirements. The mechanism of selective admission evolved only after World War I. Throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth most American colleges admitted students on the basis of straightforward, published entrance requirements. Similarly, they determined the mastery level for college admission by balancing these needs with a desire to maintain a certain quality of education. The twentieth century practices of limiting enrollment to a fraction of the academically qualified candidates and of rejecting some students with superior academic qualifications in favor of others with more desirable nonacademic attributes were inconceivable to the old time college president. Such luxuries were reserved for the modern college and university. The process of centralization and bureaucratization of decision-making placed a premium on the growth of knowledge, leading in the late nineteenth century to increased status for the professions (including the academic profession).
