About a month back, Katie Nash, special-collections librarian and archivist at Elon University, told one of her student assistants to sort through, and flatten, a stack of old maps. The student returned with a random find: a yellowed admissions application to the college from 1922, which looked quite foreign by today’s competitive standards. The student asked if he could upload it to the social-media site Reddit.
"Honestly, I'd never heard of Reddit until he did that," Ms. Nash said. "But then it exploded. We were just sort of like, what is going on here?"
The image has racked up more than 1.1-million views, 3,700 "upvotes," and 1,000 comments. Many gawked at the simplicity of the one-page application, complete with quaint queries like "Is your health good?" and "What county newspaper do you read?"
We, too, were amused by this higher-ed antique, and so we asked Ms. Nash if she could dig up more old applications. Here's what she found, along with our analysis of how the college application has changed over the past century, through the experience of one institution. All images are courtesy of the Carol Grotnes Belk Library Archives and Special Collections, Elon University, Elon, N.C.
Read more at The Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/article/Elon-Colleges-Application/148367/