As late as 1952, the mean SAT verbal score (now known as the Critical Reading score) of incoming Harvard freshmen was just 583, above the national mean but nothing to write home about.10 Then came the revolution. By 1960, the average SAT verbal score among incoming Harvard freshmen had jumped to 678. The progenitors of the revolution were aware of how momentous the shift had been. William J. Bender, Harvard’s dean of admissions, summed up the preceding eight years. “The figures,” he wrote, “report the greatest change in Harvard admissions, and thus in the Harvard student body, in a short
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