@Yan Y LOL :"Alarmed at the increasing enrollment of Jews and other “undesirables,” schools quickly added other requirements intended to weed out these applicants: letters of reference, assessments of “manliness,” personal essays, evidence of extracurriculars.
That was the status quo when James Conant became Harvard’s president in 1933. Colleges were willing to be more inclusive, but only of certain groups and only to a degree."