I was reading [this article] (http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/03/college-admissions-narcissists/475722/) yesterday, and at one point the author states: "In the early 20th century, as I recounted in part one, the big motivation to look beyond standardized-test scores was to stem the influx of Jewish students." I found this pretty interesting, but part one of the article didn't give any more information.
After doing a bit more research, I found a few more articles that make the same assertion, but don't offer any historical background to it.
So my question is: what's the history behind using standardized testing as a tool of limiting Jewish students to Universities?
Not sure for the answer, but it is actually saying that looking at MORE than standardized scores served the purpose of stemming the influx of Jewish students. In other words, standardized tests as the primary focus led to more Jewish students.
If I am reading that correctly.
The big book on this is Jerome Karabel's the Chosen. Here's one post with a summary of the book and here's another with a longer summary.
The article "The Myth of Meritocracy" that I quoted in one of those comments is a very interesting read--I don't agree one hundred percent with it (I later read that some of its contemporary numbers about Jewish decline have been seriously questioned by others, for instance) but I remember it being a very thought provoking read.
Reasons to look beyond standardized test scores is a way of saying university admissions officers/boards wanted to retain the right to be able to refuse entry to people even if they received a very high score on a test. In the case of Jews, they wanted to be able to limit the number of Jews they admitted to a university (for reasons of good ol' fashioned antisemitsm), even if lots of Jews scored very highly on standardized tests.