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

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The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. By Jerome Karabel. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. viii + 711 pp.

A skeptical professor once asked if archival materials existed to document the discriminatory admissions practices of elite colleges and universities; and if yes, could scholars gain access to those documents? The Chosen answers yes to both questions. The respective archives amply document the gap--sometimes chasm--between the public pronouncements of many Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (HYP) authorities, and their prejudices and covert practices during much of the twentieth century.

Marcia Synnott used these records when writing The Half-Opened Door (1979), as did Dan Oren in Joining the Club (1985). Now, Jerome Karabel deepens our understanding of the historical background to today's politically charged debates over admissions policies: the rise of public high schools, the expanded list of subjects acceptable for admission and graduation, and above all the growing diversity of the applicant pool. The Chosen analyzes the effects of the early twentieth-century influx of East European Jews into higher education: a backlash leading to immigration...

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