NYTimes' "The Choice" blog has an interesting piece titled "Remembering When College Was a Buyer's Bazaar" which contrasts university admissions policies and practices between the late 1800s to now. For example, did you know that top universities such as Harvard and Columbia used to advertise for students right up to opening day and offered entrance exams the weekend before classes started to give students every chance of taking and passing them? And that Harvard even downplayed the difficulty of its entrance exam in advertisements, noting that of the 210 applicants who took its test in June 1869, 185 were admitted? (Don't ask me about my own college application process. Suffice it to say, I was deferred, wait-listed, then rejected from my top choice...