We Are ISU: Snapshot of Student Life

                 



Introduction       Back to 1869-1898       1899-1928       1929-1958       1959-1988       1989-2019

black and white image of rows of students taking a test


Entrance exams

Before standardized testing became common practice, Iowa State administered its own entrance examinations. The following questions are sample questions that were included in the 1876/1877 Biennial Report.1 Students were required to correctly answer 75 percent of the questions in a variety of subjects in order to secure admission to the freshman class. How well would you have fared?

 

Grammar:

Name and define the parts of speech in the following sentence: 

Lives of great men will remind us, 

We can make our lives sublime.

 

Arithmetic:

Find the greatest common divisor of 16520, 8673 and 7021.

Divide 1 acre, 3 sq. yds., 5 sq. ft. by 9.

Find interest on $1825.35 for 2 years, 11 months and 17 days at 9.5 per cent.

Find the cube root of 65.003 to three decimal places.

 

Geography:

Bound Illinois, Virginia and Louisiana and name their principal cities.

Name the countries of South America and give their capitals.

On a voyage from San Francisco to Yeddo, through what waters would you pass?