Harvard Admission Exam (1869) [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Harvard Admission Exam (1869) [pdf]

peterkrantz.com

73 pointsLooveh63 comments

While the point behind posting these entrance exams is often to make a commentary on a decline in education standards, I'd suggest that it really shows nothing of the sort. The exam is, in fact, rather easy and simplistic, and only seems difficult because of different priorities.

The grasp of Latin and Greek required for the language portions is minimal. This is particularly the case because, for the translation portions, all vocabulary is provided, including words that should be instinctively known by anyone with any grasp of the languages (esse in the first question!? καἰ?). Any foreign language test today would be significantly more difficult.

The mathematics section looks intimidating only because it involves dealing with difficult numbers by hand. There are specific techniques that would have been taught to work through such problems efficiently, but teaching them now isn't particularly useful. Conversely, the more conceptual and abstract questions are very simple: asking what a prime number is? Asking why exponents are added under multiplication?

The history and geography section, meanwhile, is mainly concerned with regurgitation of facts covering very narrow sections of the subject. Perhaps the question asking for the difference between Athens and Sparta could allow some deeper discussion, but most do not.

Overall, the test is focused on questions about specific topics requiring memorization rather than questions testing deeper insight and understanding. It's not something that should be looked back on as some product of a better age.

What you're saying is only true if you assume the existence of a modern test-prep mentality. Do the applicants know in advance which facts they will be asked to regurgitate, or do they need to understand a wide variety of material at this level of detail?

Also, I really do not agree that the math sections are easy. Students applying for non-quantitative majors are definitely not required to be able to produce non-trivial geometric proofs like this.

Nearly all of these math problems were covered in my math curriculum between 7 and 11th grades and are really not hard if you have practiced it before. Actually, the only part of this exam I find difficult is geography, because it requires to have memorized many minor facts (something I find nearly useless in the days of Internet). I guess it depends on your country and education system.

I personally found the mathematical section to be a little too easy if possible. Any of the students from the top 10% of my 8th grade class would see those questions and start knocking them off.

To be fair to Harvard, it's never prided itself of being an institution dedicated to the practical application of mathematics or engineering. I suppose it's why I turned down their offer to attend.

How subtle.

I never quite understood why people take pride in what they reject unless it is turning down bribery, refusing to relapse, etc.

It's a shame really, you rejected Harvard but did not go too far away from the place with the attitude.

It's something that I find myself wondering about as well, and the fact that I bring it up suggests that I haven't quite moved past it.

In the undergraduate program that I actually attended, the schools we had turned down was a bit of a badge of honor. A testament if you will, to how much respect we had for the program we were attending - my peers and I turned down some pretty big names to do what we did.

In retrospect however, it reflects our insecurity with that choice. Outside of our selected niche, those names still garner the most prestige, get the best job offers, are in the news most often, etc.

Remember what the purpose of the exam was... They weren't testing your knowledge, they were testing your social class. At the time Harvard was a school for the white upper crust private school elite of the Northeast. This test ensured that they could fill their classes with just those people.

It isn't a perfect meritocracy today, but they've come a long way in being more inclusive.

It's childish to downvote something unwritten that needs saying as important as historical discrimination. Even though the context of society at large was also extremely discriminatory, yet the loss of and failure of not capitalizing on bright minds and talent for any attribute was and is a disgrace. It's unpleasant to say or think about, but it's necessary to be broadly and deeply educated in reality. Also, one could argue SAT, ACT and similar standard tests often reinforces subtle biases along the lines of IQ tests.

Otherwise, the test itself is curious and reasonable for an entrance examination.

(Personal note: My parents refused to take me to interview to private primary schools that required pictures (We couldn't be more WASP) because they were firmly against supporting the inculcated exclusivity of attributes ahead of merit.)

SATs, ACTs, alumni preference and other current admissions policies reinforce biases too, but any admissions standard will. (If it helps to get one into college, wealthy parents will find a way to optimize their kids around it) It's a matter of degree, and in the past, top schools were much worse.

The link isn't loading for me, so here's HN's discussion on a Harvard entrance exam from 1869: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3312240

It's probably the same one; the one linked here is stamped "1899" because that's the year it was entered into the Harvard library, but the date "July, 1869" is clearly visible on the bottom of every single page. The original poster wasn't paying attention.

Thanks. We added that to the title.

Yeah, I thought I remembered seeing this before.

I learned Latin in high school, and I learned from an old moving picture and from some old CEO who was one of the few who went to college in his time where he picked to major in Latin and math, that Latin had a far more mainstream role in academia, such that it could propel one to a CEO position of a really big company and that it could be used as one of the basis of a college entrance exam.

Latin gave me the ability to form a third brain and be able to dissect the English language and multiple other languages quite mathematically and systematically. I think it might be the key to unlocking the comprehension part of artificial intelligence.

I also think that because Latin has become so distant now from mainstream academia has in an essence made our language too simple and rough, lacking poetry and love, and even intelligence. The dialogues from old movies seem alien to us.

If we were to reintroduce Latin, I think society's language skills would improve and thereby communication would improve.

Auxilium! Non possum surgere et decidi. - Last words of Beowulf :)

Probably something more like 'Ekhjelpe! Ek hefi ratað eða get ek ei standa'.

Latin gave you a third brain and it will be the key to artificial intelligence?

> Latin (...) will be the key to artificial intelligence?

Deus ex machina. We knew that for hundreds of years. ;).

I took an intro Latin course in university, and while I didn't get as much out of it as you did, it did give me a great appreciation for understanding the roots of words, and why they mean what they mean.

Wouldn't you get most of that understanding anyway if you took French, Spanish, or another Romance language? Albeit with the added benefit of ability to communicate with a whole new sphere of people?

Not dissing on Latin per se, but other than maybe interest in studying classics, I don't see why one would choose Latin over a living language that can be used in the 'real world'.

That's just the classic false attachment of Latin constructs to English usage. French, Italian etc. obviously derive from Latin while the Germanic languages do not, much to the disgrace of the self professed enlightened classes for the last several hundred years.

I don't mean to defend the Latin crowd here, but your argument is flawed.

It's true that English historically comes from the Germanic side of the tree -- starting with Old Frisian with later Old Norse influences. However, the last millennium has been a long process of romancification:

* post-Hastings, all of the English ruling class spoke Norman French for centuries

* the Latin church, which was for a long time the main source of literate people

* a heavy dose of classics in school meant that the educated classes would consciously turn to Latin (and to a lesser extent Greek) when coining new words and phrases

You're right that English is Germanic by heritage. However modern English vocabulary is probably as close to French than anything else. Knowing some rudimentary Latin does let you decipher a lot of etymologies.

Most of the application of Latinate concepts (those systems you mention) to English grammar are pretty faulty. It's what led us down the path to people complaining about split infinitives, and all that nonsense up with which I refuse to put. It leads to situations that are akin to someone trying really hard to write a Java program in Ruby.

Which isn't to say that learning Latin doesn't improve grammar skills, or push you toward thinking more analytically about language. My argument, though, would be that learning any second language will give you pretty much the same benefit.

5 on AP Latin, here.

Right. It's amazing how many people don't realize English is a Germanic language and that despite the fact we absorbed a lot of Romance words from Norman French and other places, we still have a Germanic grammar. (For one thing, our adjectives go before our nouns, not after: We have a "red dog", not a "perro rojo".)

Latin is not magical. While your idea is old enough to be mostly quaint and charming, the fact of the matter is that it's completely unrealistic. Not only that; it's already been tried, although using Sanskrit, not Latin. You've basically rediscovered a bad idea from the 80ies

I suspect that a lot of the "Latin helps you with English" meme comes from the coming together of a couple of things:

1. Some schools wanting to teach Latin at least in part simply because it was part of a classical Western curriculum

but 2. Wanting to justify that inclusion based on more modern practical concerns than it just being something properly educated people learn.

Nothing against Latin or classical Western liberal arts. But the idea that Latin uniquely helps with English is sort of silly.

Personally Latin helped me with English mostly because my Latin classes were the only place I ever got any formal instruction in English grammar.

English might be German, French, etc. influenced, but it's nowhere as straightforward as German. Also, it is no surprise that it's about as difficult to learn as a foreign language as Xhosa.

Quidquid latine dictum, altum videtur.

There's nothing special about latin.

If you teach people the grammar of a language throroughly, and expose them to all sorts of historic, philosophical and poetic writings, they will also learn some abstract thinking.

For most foreign languages, it's considered more useful to be able to do trifling things like buy food, find shelter, or write business letters.

Romans had some of these woes, but their empire-building efforts and the ensuing plundering and enslaving of half of Europe (and a corresponding part of Northern Africa) allowed them to employ philosophers and poets that were not caught up in the rat race that most such people in the 19th and 20th Century were subjected to.

> Latin gave me the ability to ... be able to dissect the English language and multiple other languages quite mathematically and systematically

A formal study of linguistics will do a much better job of this than a study of Latin (of course, there's no reason one can't do both).

> If we were to reintroduce Latin, I think society's language skills would improve and thereby communication would improve.

Do society's language skills need improving? I realise you haven't said this, but there is a common myth that somehow language use is deteriorating, when actually it's just changing. This, of course, is nothing new [1].

[1] http://grammar.about.com/od/readingsonlanguage/a/The-Endless...

I respectfully disagree. I had Latin in school for 7 years and while I didn't learn as much as I should have, I know enough to discuss about. Latin, as all other languages, wasn't designed, it grew organically. As such, it has many annoying inconsistencies and I don't feel that they add much to the language.

Why do you feel Latin might be part of the key to artificial intelligence?

> Latin, as all other languages, wasn't designed

To be fair, some languages were designed, such as Volapük, Esperanto, Ido, Lojban, Klingon, Sindarin, Verdurian, and other, less-known examples.

But it's not like they influence any big parts of culture as opposed to Latin which influences pretty much everything since then.

By that measure, learning English is more important than learning Latin, and learning Sumerian is more important still.

Mandarin and Simplified Chinese is a popular course these days, even in some high schools. If you want something different from the way Westerners think about writing, grammar, and spoken language, and a different body of literature, there it is. And it's more useful in practical ways.

I was lucky enough to go to a private school where Latin/Logic/Rhetoric/Greek were taught as core subjects and I've also found Latin incredibly helpful in my life. I found learning French and Spanish to be quite easy and reading medical documentation comes fairly intuitively. For those of European descent (at least a large chunk of what we call Europe today), Latin is an incredibly important part of our culture and history and helps link us with an incredibly rich past. I would say for pleasure and knowledge, study any language that saw such developments in medical practice, art and naval/military sciences. I'd assume that Sino-Tibetan language groups have a similarly rich history and learning one of those languages would be of equal benefit.

Cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Bu8vLoK...

EDIT: more readable version on the web-archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20121119004827/http://www.peterkr...

That second link is much better. Thanks

Ah, ha! finally a question I can answer. History #8, compare Athens and Sparta

That one's Athens and this ... is ... oh wrong forum

It is interesting to see that much has happened in Mathematics since 1869. All questions are extremely easy. No real functional analysis. Trivial algebra. Some fairly easy calculus.

The Latin/Greek section is also very easy as everything is provided. When I was a teenager my Latin exams were much more demanding.

The historical section is interesting as it focuses a lot on antic times. It is difficult to judge the difficulty of the question without knowing what was expected.

If anything, this test shows that today standards are much much higher than 1869 standards and I'm not surprised.

Historical trends have shown that abstract and critical reasoning (what could be termed IQ) has improved over time. [0] Also, remember the context. This exam was for a very small portion of the wealthiest and highest educated elite. That small subset could learn the historical antiquity if they wanted. (And perhaps they still do at Boston Latin) What's amazing is how far the exam's math has been surpassed by broad subsets of today's society.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

The test goes into classics and is succinct, whereas today the hazing rituals are pedantic.

People forget the importance of the unwritten history of academia's cultural separation until modern times: how exclusive and unreachable universities once were, and that one's primary qualifications were less academic (hence photographs and interviews) and would be viewed today as enormously discriminatory (and today, illegal). It's important to recount this unpleasant fact to not fall into those traps or adopt new or subtle shades of them if unostensible diversity is a primary virtue.

Faster/working download of what I think is the same document.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvarde...

reposted on openrev.org - let's see if we can answer all the questions

http://www.openrev.org/paper/harvard-university-entrance-exa...

Looks like I'm community college material after all.

Honestly though, we never touched Latin during my high school days, such a shame.

Math question 7, what are the sub-units of pounds? Is it something like pence?

Shillings. there were 20 in a pound, and 12 pence in a shilling, for 240 pence/pound. the d signifies pennies.

Just another example of things we have mercifully forgotten. See Isaac Asimov's "Forget It" essay http://www.kkbooks.net/ScienceFiction/Asimov37/27283.html (on a similarly antiquated math textbook).

I think it's interesting that one of his major examples of useless, forgettable knowledge is essentially arithmetic with bases other than 10, which is back in style for grades as early as elementary school and often advanced on this very site as an important skill for children to learn (for some reason—I don't really get why).

For one thing, there's simply the utility of other bases in programming although I imagine this utility is less widespread than when a greater percentage of programmers were working at lower levels.

More broadly, I gather we're having another iteration of attempting to teach mathematical principles rather than rote calculation. Or, to put it cynically in the words of Tom Lehrer speaking about New Math: "The important thing is to understand what you're doing, not to get the right answer." Personally, I'm somewhat torn and it definitely depends on the individual.

What I see here is this: In 1869, as for centuries before, we valued learning that expresses and enables a grasp of over 2000 years of Western culture. In 2015, we barely value the culture of two hundred years ago. I'm innately conservative, I think, and that serious a change in our values worries me.

Could a piece of this simply be that in the 1860's the US hadn't really surpassed the grandeur Greek and Roman empires at their peak, but now we have?

I'm not sure "grandeur" is a word I'd use to describe the United States. Glitter, perhaps, and certainly bustle, but I don't see much grandeur in our lives. I think it's both interesting and relevant that the word "pompous" could once describe a positive trait; frequently, Handel's music was praised for its pompous solemnity.

You could argue the same for the Greek and Roman empires at their height too.

That depends on what you consider their height: the height of their power, or the height of their culture — which I would argue happened at different times.

Not really, I'd say that in either case my original point still stands.

Why does such a change in our values worry you? I don't follow what 'conservative' means here. Unless there's something tangibly better about learning this stuff than what we're learning today, I don't see why it should be in our curriculum.

It's not like we don't teach people about ancient history, right? If anything it seems more healthy that we do not wastefully teach relatively useless languages to all our students. It feels to me like Latin was emphasized in the 1800s by historical accident, and that it is progress that it has faded out of the curriculum.

More generally you use phrases like "as for centuries before" as if that's a positive quality, which doesn't seem like a substantial argument to me.

Conservative, in this case, means what it means in every case where it has a meaning: preferring not to change without a good reason. A practice having survived for centuries is not necessarily a good thing, but it at least indicates that many generations of people found it valuable, and suggests to the conservative that it might be better preserved than abandoned. I think an understanding of this difference in our outlook would probably answer the rest of your questions.

In 1869, if you were white, upper-crust, and Our Kind, you had a shot at Harvard.

Otherwise, get back to your manual labor, peon. We don't take you your type around here.

I see what you're getting at. We open an old test that emphasizes the ability to absorb the wisdom and learning of the past (among its other properties). Then we read a Hacker News comment thread that dismisses the test in various tried-and-true ways: it's just classism, it's primitive, people were dumber then, and so on. The test is by no means serious evidence for academic or intellectual decline or otherwise, but one thing is clear: in yesteryear, educated people honored the yesteryear. Today, we don't.

That's an excellent restatement of my view, yes. Thank you for reading it thoughtfully.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com