I remember reading an article in ... I believe it was the New Republic ... that said that the "holistic admissions process" of today, with the essays, activities, etc. supplanted the earlier more test-scores / grades-centric approach at the Ivy League precisely in an attempt to admit fewer Jews.
I remember reading an article . . . that said that the "holistic admissions process" of today, with the essays, activities, etc. supplanted the earlier . . . approach at the Ivy League precisely in an attempt to admit fewer Jews.
The much-cited article on the subject is by Malcolm Gladwell, and was first published in the New Yorker.
The article is a review of a book by Jerome Karable, which gives many details of the history of admission policies at selective United States universities.
SAM disappeared at MIT due to reasons specific to the chapter; it got overrun with non-frat members living there, and various other weirdness in the 1970s, and the house voted to leave the fraternity, then become an MIT co-ed independent living group, Fenway House. It sort of became the GLBT place at some point too, and was generally both small (15-30 students) and weird.
I lived there as an undergrad in the 1990s. The most famous alum is probably Lori Berenson, who was held by the Peruvian government for years for (maybe inadvertently) supporting a terrorist organization.
I'm pretty sure that SAM (a Jewish frat?) was gone by the 80s at MIT, as a calibration point.
Edit: I was a little confused, he was turned away from Columbia for being Jewish. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_quota