An interesting read about the application process during the early days of Harvard and the Ivy League schools.

A stroll through classified ads from more than a century ago shows that college was once a buyer’s bazaar for qualified students, and universities rolled out the welcome mat and reached out for the students they coveted.

Top-drawer universities like Harvard and Columbia advertised for students steadily through August and September right up to opening day and offered entrance exams the weekend before classes resumed to give students every chance of taking and passing them.

Harvard even played down the difficulty of its entrance exam in ads, reprinted above, that it placed in The New York Times in September 1870, noting that of the 210 candidates who took its test the June before, “185 were admitted.”

In other words, nearly seven out of eight candidates who sat for the exam made the cut, a statistic that few selective colleges these days would pay money to broadcast.

Entrance to Law School, Harvard University c1900. (Source)

In an ad hovering over a pitch for cured hams on Oct. 7, 1871, Columbia Law School assured applicants that (unlike some rivals) its graduates were “admitted to the bar without further examination.”

Harvard Law opted instead to drop the names of distinguished faculty members in ads it ran from 1868 to 1871. And Yale Law School, one of the most sought-after law schools on the planet, ran ads in August 1868, a time when its own future within Yale University was rocky, regaling students with reasons to consider New Haven.

They included “access to library without extra charge,” eight weeks of fall vacation, three weeks of spring vacation and a two-week recess “embracing Christmas and New Year.” And, the ad noted, “students can enter or leave at any time.”

Image of Harvard football team 1890 via IvyGate.