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Today's high school grads wouldn't do well because their education covers entirely different topics. They don't learn Latin and Ancient Greek, and history and g

Today's high school grads wouldn't do well because their education covers entirely different topics. They don't learn Latin and Ancient Greek, and history and geography don't focus almost entirely on Ancient Greece and Rome (unlike 7/9 of the questions on that section of the test). The math section has some hard wanky arithmetic and by-hand computations using logarithms. Modern students would struggle because that hasn't been a focus of math education since the invention of the calculator. Your average physics professor would struggle with that because no one needs to do that stuff by hand any more. A modern Harvard applicant would ace that algebra section. The geometry section is 50/50 - there's still plenty of geometry in modern education but it no longer involves memorising Euclid. On the other hand there's no calculus/analysis which is probably the biggest focus of higher-level high school math - something an applicant of that era would be flummoxed because it wasn't part of classical math education. There's also a complete dearth of any of the natural sciences which was again neglected in a classical education. I'm telling you that that's not an intrinsically difficult exam, it just covers areas that were the focus of an upper class classical education of the time. You're confusing a different educational focus with intrinsic difficulty. If your math education up to the age of 18 was 90% long-form manual computations and memorising Euclid's Elements you'd ace that section too.

somenameforme 3y ago
You can't just take what you know about modern education and retrofit it into the past. The system was just so ridiculously different. To start with the overwhelming majority of people, low and high class alike, had very limited formal education. I tried to find a list of Harvard graduates of the era to demonstrate this, but the best I could come up with is this [1] list of Harvard presidents who all tended to be distinguished graduates themselves. It's quite unfortunate, because these are ostensibly the cream of the crop - which kind of plays into your class stuff, but I think even this sample also works to largely reject it. In any case it's quite interesting to read their bios! For instance check out guys like Thomas Hill [2]. He had very minimal formal education, yet was a sponge for knowledge, and learned what was necessary to achieve - and achieve he did. Another is Jared Sparks [3]. Educated in common schools (which most certainly were not teaching Latin/Greek and other advanced topics) before he went to work at a variety of trades and then (presumably after saving up some money) attended a private school at the age 20+, before finally making his way to Harvard. Basically it's not like you just went to school, graduated, and then applied with the knowledge you'd gained - at least not in general. In a world where education was optional, those who pursued it tended to do so out of passion and from that passion exceptional competence also tended to emerge. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_Harvard_University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_Harvard_Universit... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hill_(clergyman) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hill_(clergyman) [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Sparks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Sparks

somenameforme 3y ago

You can't just take what you know about modern education and retrofit it into the past. The system was just so ridiculously different. To start with the overwhelming majority of people, low and high class alike, had very limited formal education. I tried to find a list of Harvard graduates of the era to demonstrate this, but the best I could come up with is this [1] list of Harvard presidents who all tended to be distinguished graduates themselves. It's quite unfortunate, because these are ostensibly the cream of the crop - which kind of plays into your class stuff, but I think even this sample also works to largely reject it. In any case it's quite interesting to read their bios! For instance check out guys like Thomas Hill [2]. He had very minimal formal education, yet was a sponge for knowledge, and learned what was necessary to achieve - and achieve he did. Another is Jared Sparks [3]. Educated in common schools (which most certainly were not teaching Latin/Greek and other advanced topics) before he went to work at a variety of trades and then (presumably after saving up some money) attended a private school at the age 20+, before finally making his way to Harvard. Basically it's not like you just went to school, graduated, and then applied with the knowledge you'd gained - at least not in general. In a world where education was optional, those who pursued it tended to do so out of passion and from that passion exceptional competence also tended to emerge. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_Harvard_University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_Harvard_Universit... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hill_(clergyman) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hill_(clergyman) [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Sparks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Sparks