Harvard 1869 entrance exam

The thing I noticed (sorry, LaTeX fan here) was how well they could typeset math and Latin all the way back in 1869! I have to say I'm impressed, and it makes me a bit sad that most of my college exams looked worse (typographically) than a paper produced over a century ago. Look at those goddamn gorgeously even margins, the ligatures, the kerning of the italics, and the protrusion of the hyphens.<p>Hell, this makes the SATs, with its ragged edges and sloppy Times New Roman straight out of MS Word, look like carelessly produced junk.

&#62; What is the reason that when different powers of the same quantity are multiplied together their exponents are added?<p>As a math professor, I think this is a great question. Students learn that math is about manipulating formulas and equations, or about excessive formalities. But being able to explain simple arithmetic facts in clear and plain English is often neglected, and is of the utmost value.

Amazing how curriculum focus has changed--in no small part due to the invention of the computer. These topics have almost nothing to do with what most Harvard students study today. There's been so much new knowledge generated since then...

Original source, complete with context and commentary: <a href="http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/remembering-when-college-was-a-buyers-bazaar/" rel="nofollow">http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/remembering-wh...</a>

Previous discussions<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2426655" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2426655</a><p><a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/glws2/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/glws2/</a>

The Latin and Greek parts aside, even the Geography portion is quite difficult, and I have a degree in Geography.

It seems that, neither then nor now, would I have been accepted to Harvard.

Curious to hear about the 'General Supposition' (in the Greek question for sophomores). Seems like it's really only found in New Testament Greek. Makes the test rather biased towards a particular religion. But perhaps that started to change right around that time with Eliot.<p><i>Charles W. Eliot, president 1869–1909, eliminated the favored position of Christianity from the curriculum while opening it to student self-direction. </i><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University</a>

Same shit happens in Turkey every year. Even the form of the questions are identical. In a sense, people who pass Student Selection and Placement Examination(<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_Selection_and_Placement_System" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_Selection_and_Placement...</a>) in Turkey may be the best matches for their work positions, but only in 1860s.

I'm surprised there's no calculus. Not even a basic derivative. The rest of the exam is certainly difficult to warrant a calculus question.

<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2426655" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2426655</a>

In a way, this reinforces my hypothesis that Latin in traditional Western higher education was never quite so much about Latin itself as it was about gaining a deeper understanding and greater praxis of your native tongue by reading its source code.

The good thing about entrance (seemingly thought-provoking) exams is that , they used to concentrate on the real sciences/ social sciences . And used to test aptitude in these disciplines to ensure that people who pursue them have enough passion to go thru end. And they let leadership skills emerge after acquiring those analytical/ philosophical skills.<p>Rather than in the current education system where very very few people want to proceed working in these pure sciences and majority of them want to become leaders and thanks to Univs of US in which leaders are "annointed" by dishing out MBA's based on GMAT / CAT scores.

does the requirement of Latin strike anyone as a bit elitist? or was Latin really that necessary in order to (presumably) study some Classics?

This looks way harder than the SATs, or rather any standardized test for college admissions that's in use today.

Looks pretty tough... I haven't studied many of these subjects seriously in years. I think its safe to say a high-acheiving school board member[1] would fail handily.<p>[1] See today's links.

I would love to read a blog post where somebody answers all of these to a high enough standard to be admitted in 1869!

&#62; <i>Find cube root of 0.0093 to five places of decimals</i><p>Nice, reminds me of<p>&#62; <i>Find 7th root of 0.9999 to four places of decimals</i><p>:)

The source of the Amazon: Seattle?

Where is the modern history? Where are the questions on governments?<p>Worse, this test doesn't call for much analysis; it's mainly regurgitation of memorized trivia and the most mechanical arithmetical techniques.

The math here is surprisingly weak. I'm not sure about where you guys went to school, but this is fifth grade stuff. Sure, there's a lot of memorization, more classics. But wowzers. No math.