Crafting a Class: College Admissions and Financial Aid, 1955-1994, by Elizabeth A. Duffy and Idana Goldberg (Princeton University Press, 336 pp.; $ 29.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Lauren F. Winner, Kellett Scholar at Clare College, University of Cambridge.

Moms, I am convinced, all attend a class sometime during pregnancy where they learn a few authoritative tales to tell their children. Growing up, all of my friends and I heard slight variations on a small canon of stories, and each of our mothers sought to authenticate the tales by swearing to know the people involved. The story that most frequently passed my mother's lips was the one about the girl who wore a foot-high beehive and never washed her hair until one day when, in the middle of English class, great black bugs started crawling out.

When I was young, My mother also liked to tell a story about my grandmother, the first woman in my family to go to college-she had attended Woman's College, a normal school now known as the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She had, the story went, written Woman's College a letter saying, "I want to come," and they had written back saying, "Fine, come Tuesday." All of my friends heard similar stories growing up, with grandmothers attending institutions ranging from Radcliffe to Brooklyn College; I seem to recall that a version of the same tale even made its way into one of the ubiquitous how-to-apply-to-college-and-get-in guides. Whether my grandmother indeed ever received such a letter from Woman's College, I do not know. What is clear, however, is that college admissions have changed radically since my grandmother matriculated in 1925.

Elizabeth A. Duffy and Idana Goldberg's recent book, which was funded by the Mellon Foundation, ...