Admission to Princeton in the early years was based entirely on a knowledge of Latin and Greek, but by 1760 entering freshmen were required also to understand the principal rules of "vulgar arithmetic." The president of the College personally examined each applicant and determined whether or not he should be admitted. Early one morning in the 1790s, Titus Hutchinson, who had come down from Vermont, called at Tusculum to apply for admission, and after morning prayers and breakfast with President Witherspoon, was grilled by him in Latin and Greek and admitted, with the understanding that he was to occupy the coming vacation with the studies in which he was behind. (Hutchinson graduated with honors in 1794 and later became chief justice of Vermont.)

Population was thinner then, and so was the proportion seeking a college education. Writing to a trustee in 1803, Chemistry Professor John Maclean, Sr., ended his letter: "We got another student today." Thirty years later his son, Vice-president John Maclean, Jr., received a visit from James Moffat, a twenty-two-year-old immigrant printer from Scotland sent to see him by a mutual friend, and after an hour's conversation about Latin and Greek, informed the young man, who had been unaware of what was transpiring, that he had been admitted to the junior class. (Moffat gave the valedictory at graduation in 1835 and was later professor of classics in the College and the father of five Princeton-educated sons.)

Oral entrance examinations continued until well past the middle of the nineteenth century, when they began to be superseded by written examinations, first given only in Princeton, and after 1888 also at strategic points across the country. With the founding of the College Entrance Examination Board in 1900, Princeton honored the board's examinations as well as its own, and after 1915 required them of all applicants.

The great increase in the number of applicants for admission to American colleges following the First World War led the trustees in 1922 to adopt a policy of limited enrollment and selective admission in order to preserve the essential features of Princeton's residential life and to maintain its standards of individual instruction. At the same time they created the office of director of admission, subsequently occupied by Radcliffe Heermance, 1922-1950; C. William Edwards '36, 1950-1962; E. Alden Dunham HI '53, 1962-1966; John T. Osander '57, 1966-1971; Timothy C. Callard '63, 1971-1978; and James W. Wickenden, Jr. '61, 1978-.

During his twenty-eight years as first admission director, Radcliffe Heermance pioneered in the development of selective admission procedures, established close relationships with secondary schools in all parts of the country, and helped guide and develop the College Entrance Examination Board, of which he was chairman from 1933 to 1936. Another pioneer during the formative years of selective admission was Psychology Professor Carl C. Brigham, who did innovative work in aptitude testing and was later chiefly responsible for the development of the College Board's Scholastic Aptitude Test, first given in 1926.

In the 1930s Princeton adopted a special plan of admission without examination for students of exceptional achievement and promise in the Far West and South, where school programs did not fit them specifically for College Board examinations. Thanks to this program and the missionary efforts of nation-wide Alumni Schools Committees, the geographical distribution of members of freshman classes was substant