Exeter vs. the Public Schools

The administrative push for more economic and social diversity drastically changed the social and academic fabric of the College.

In 1948, for the first time in Harvard's history, high school students outnumbered preparatory school students.

During those four years, tradition was upended--three fifths of Harvard came from private schools when the Class of 1950 entered, and when it left, three fifths came from public schools.

Harvard's effort south of the Mason-Dixon Line and west of the Appalachians paid off, displacing Harvard's long status as a regional, New England college.

Enrollments from the Pacific region tripled and those from the South nearly doubled.

And the public school boys shared a trait with the veterans--academic success.

While more than 40 percent of students from public schools made Dean's list in those years, only 20 percent of students from private schools did so.

The scholarships and public school recruitment were important to Harvard's administration as they culled the most promising young intellectuals from around the country to maintain Harvard's reputation for intellectual prowess.

"Our scholarship policy opens the door of opportunity at Harvard to those boys of inferior economic status who are at the very top in academic performance but does not reach down very far below the highest level in those terms," said Dean of the Freshman Leighton.

Buck, in his attempts to counterbalance the more introverted, private school "floppy ducklings," as he called them, advocated digging deeper into the public schools and his initiatives have slowly developed into Harvard's present dense web of more than 6,000 actively recruiting alumni.

Yesterday and Today

Despite the advances it made in the late 1940s toward geographical and social diversity, Harvard was still an almost entirely white, Christian school.

The college had only begun to fully integrate Jewish students and offered admission to only a handful of blacks each year.

The imperative for inclusion that began with the Class of 1950 was extended over the next decade as Harvard grew to reflect an ethnically diverse America.

Those first years who wandered Harvard Yard in search of a cot were the largest and most diverse class Harvard had ever taken.

The pressure of so many students brought Harvard to its modern size and shape and the many backgrounds of those students brought Harvard the color of diversity.

The Class of 1950, with a disastrous beginning and an auspicious end, saw Harvard across the half-century and into its modern state.