How did Harvard gain its reputation and prestige?

Schmaltz
Wed, 04 Aug 2010 02:26:08 +0000

I think we’d all agree that a college can get at least some notariety from being merely larger than other colleges. Earlier in this thread, I mentioned that 100-150 yrs ago, what are now the Ivies were some of the bigger colleges in the country. I have a World Book encyclopedia from 1965 that lists the total enrollment (grad and undergrad) of all colleges in the US. Here are some examples:

Harvard 12,413
Yale 8,364
Columbia 24,000
Penn 18,347
Cornell 12,687

Texas A&M 8,100
UMass-Amherst 7,223
Kansas 11,434
Georgia 12,247
Florida 13,826

Now keep in mind that this is in 1965, AFTER the state schools ballooned after WWII. So pre-WWII, there were probably few state schools in the country that had as many students as the larger Ivies…meaning that not only weren’t there any schools that could match the [future] Ivy schools’ history and wealth, there weren’t many that could even match them for sheer size.