ABSTRACT
The term Big Three, originated in the mid-1880s as a newspaper headliner's sobriquet for the country's three best football teams. Until World War II, each of the Big Three was known for the particular kind of man it produced. As of 1916, the Big Three mutually agreed to discontinue June entrance examinations and to "offer one identical paper in each subject" through the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB). Harvard had the most Catholic and Jewish alumni and, hence, donors, because it was the first of the Big Three to cut ties with its sectarian past. Although officials at the Big Three may have kept an occasional count of Catholic students, their numbers did continue to increase slightly, even after quotas were imposed on Jewish applicants. Collegiate anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism arose in part from and were sustained by the Big Three's dependency on private preparatory schools for a large proportion of their undergraduates.
