Brains v. Bluebloods

Where does U.S. society go to college? During the first 50 years of this century, reports Gene R. Hawes, author of the widely consulted New American Guide to Colleges, almost two-thirds of U.S. society's men attended just three colleges--Yale, Harvard and Princeton. But today, says Hawes in Columbia College Today, society is getting pushed out of the lordly three by a new "aristocracy of the able."

In the 1963 New York Social Register, Hawes counts 7,640 men who attended 44 colleges (excluding colleges with fewer than ten alumni). Of these, 5,402 went to the Big Three schools--2,234 to Yale, 1,746 to Harvard, 1,422 to Princeton. Williams ranks fourth with only 325 alumni, followed by Columbia's 311, Virginia's 160, Cornell's 144, Dartmouth's 115. The list trails off with Vanderbilt and Vermont.

But for society's children, things are changing. Of 691 sons listed in the New York Register as attending 50 colleges, only 370 go to Yale-Harvard-Princeton. The University of Pennsylvania has 44 sons, Trinity 22, Middlebury 20, Virginia 19. Small contingents are scattered among 43 other colleges, from Arizona to Denver to Wisconsin.

The reason for the dispersion is higher standards at the Big Three schools and more scholarships for gifted poor boys. Bright scholars have driven out dull scions. As one result, says Hawes, the country is getting "a new set of socially desirable colleges that has some of the flavor of the old upper-class institutions, but less of their academic rigor." More important, the competition is upgrading society itself. Says Hawes: "It could not be said of any period up through the 1940s that most young members of the upper class had to pursue rigorous intellectual training before they could take responsible stations in life. However, this is all too true today. It seems just as well."

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