Bell Curve

668 Notes to pages 3540 Notes to pages 40-45 669which accounts for the high percentages of students shown as going to collegein the 1920s. If the estimates had been based on the proportion of the18eyear-olds who have been graduating from high school since the 1970s,those proportions would have been much smaller. The shape of the curve,however, would be essentially unchanged (because the IQ distribution ofstudents who did not complete high school was so close to the distributionof those who did; see Finch 1946).7. Another excellent database from the same period, a nationally representativesample tested with the Preliminary SAT in 1960 and followed up ayear later, confirms results from Project TALENT, a large, nationally representativesample of high school ~ouths taken in 1960 (Seibel 1962).Among those who scored in the bottom quartile, for example, only 11 percentwent to college; of those in the top quartile, 79 percent went to cullege;of those in the top 5 percent, more than 95 percent went to college.8. These data are taken from Project TALENT in 1960.9. From the NLSY, described in the introduction to Part 11.10. The test was Form A of the Otis. Brigham 1932, Table XVIII, p. 336.11. The schools are Brown, Bryn Mawr, Columbia, Haward, Mount Holyoke,Princeton, Radcliffe, Smith, University of Pennsylvania (with separatemeans for men and women), Vassar, Wellesley, Williams, and Yale.12. Learned and Wood 1938.13. Not including the University of Pennsylvania, one of the elite schools.14. Between the earliest SAT and 1964, the SAT had divided into a verbaland a math score. It is a moot question whether the modem overall SATor the verbal SAT is more comparable to the original SAT. In the comparisonsbeing made here, we rely on the Educational Testing Service normstudies, which enable us to place an SAT value on the national 18-year-oldcohort, not just the cohort who takes the test. We explain the norm studiesin Chapter 18.15. This is not the usual SAT distribution, which is ordinarily restricted tocollege-bound seniors, but rather shows the distribution for a nationallyrepresentative sample of all high school seniors, based on the norm studiesmentioned in note 14. It is restricted to persons still in high school anddoes not include the 34 percent of 18-year-olds who were not.16. We know how high the scores were for many schools as of the early 1960s.We know Harvard's scores in the early 1950s. We can further be confidentthat no school was much more selective than Harvard as of 1952 (with thepossible exception of science students going to Cal Tech and MIT). Thereforemeans for virtually all of the other schools as of 1952 had to be nearor below Harvard's, and the dramatic changes for the other elite schoolshad to be occurring in the same comparatively brief period of time concentratedin the 1950s.17. Bender 1960, p. 6.18. This percentage is derived from 1960 data reported by Bender 1960, p. 15,regarding the median family income of candidates who applied for scholarshipaid, were denied, but came to Harvard anyway. Total costs at Har+vard in 1960 represented 21 percent of that median.19. The families for whom a year at Haward represented less than 20 percentof their income constituted approximately 5.8 percent of families in 1950and 5.5 percent of families in 1950. Estimated from U.S. Bureau of theCensus 1975, G-1-15.20. The faculty's views were expressed in Faculty of Arts and Sciences 1960.21. Bender 1960,p. 31.22. For an analysis of the ascriptive qualities that Harvard continued to use foradmissions choices in the 1980s, see Karen 1991.23. The increase in applications to Harvard had been just as rapid from 1952to 1958, when the size of the birth cohorts was virtually constant, as in1959 and 1960, when they started to increase.24. For an analysis of forces driving more recent increases in applications, seeClotfelter 1990 and Cook and Frank 1992.25. Cook and Frank 1992.26. Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, and Cal Tech were in the top sevenin all three decades. Columbia and Chicago were the other two in the1960s, Yale and Comell in the 1970s and 1980s. Cook and Frank 1992,Table 3.27. Cook and Frank 1992, Table 4. The list of "most competitive" consists ofthe thirty-three schools named by Bawon's in its 1980 list. The Cook andFrank analysis generally suggests that the concentration of top students ina few schools may have plateaued during the 1970s, then resumed again inthe 1980s.28. U.S. News €4 Wmld Report, October 15, 1990, pp. 116-134. It is not necessaryto insist that this ranking is precisely accurate. It is enough that itincludes all the schools that most people would name if they were askedto list the nation's top schools, and the method for arriving at the list offifty seems reasonable.29. The College Board ethnic and race breakdowns for 199 1, available by requestfrom the College Board. There is also reason to believe that an extremelyhigh proportion of high school students in each senior class whohave the potential to score in the high 600s and the 700s on the SAT actuallytake the test. See Murray and Herrnstein 1992.30. See Chapter 18 for where the SAT population resides in the national context.31. These represent normal distributions based on estimates drawn from theLearned data that the mean IQ of Pennsylvania graduates in 1930 was ap-