The second occasion when I entered a Butler University campus building in the Spring of 1964 was on a sunny Saturday when, along with some of the other eventually college-bound high school juniors from Broad Ripple (and perhaps from some other local high schools), I spent the day inside a classroom in one of Butler University's academic buildings; taking the PSAT class-biased and racially-biased standardized "idiot test" exams.
In the early 1960's, the PSAT tests were standarized tests (purportedly measuring a college-bound high school junior's verbal and mathematics knowledge, aptitude and intelligence), similar to the SAT standardized tests that high school seniors took during their fall terms, in order to have SAT exam results, then required by all the undergraduate colleges, they wished to be submitted in a timely way with their applications for college admission.
The PSAT exam results one scored during the spring of one's junior years were also submitted to the colleges a junior then thought he or she would apply to. But taking the PSAT was seen in the early 1960's more as a way of practicing for the SAT exams one would take in one's senior year. Because, in determining whether or not a college would admit you as a matriculated freshman, it was the SAT scores you had which was used to help finally determine whether a selective college would admit you--not your PSAT scores.
In the Spring of 1964, I had already examined the information about various U.S. colleges and universities contained in the most recent edition of Lovejoy's College Guide and read through the college catalog of Indiana University, which my sister was then attending, before I took the PSAT exams in the academic building on Butler University's campus.
And, at the time I took the PSAT exam in the second semester of my junior year of high school, Indiana University, Columbia College of Columbia University and New York University were the three colleges that I had indicated I wanted my PSAT standardized test results sent to, at that time.
During the late 1950's and early 1960's, I had watched on a fairly regular weekly basis, on every Sunday afternoon/early evening, "The G.E. College Bowl" television show, in which two teams of four undergraduate students from two different colleges or universities competed against each other; to see which college or university undergraduate team could answer correctly and most quickly the various intellectual/academic trivia questions that the show's moderator, Allen Ludden, would read. And, as part of the "G.E. College Bowl" television show, some film footage of campus scenes, of each of the two colleges whose schools were competing that week, were shown for a few minutes to viewers.
So, although there were no youtube videos advertising a particular U.S. college or university's campus visual scenes, in a way that might "sell" the idea to a high school student of applying for admissions to that particular school, available (like there is in the 21st-century), in the Spring of 1964 I did have a little familiarity with how other U.S. college campuses, besides Indiana University's, Butler University's or Queens College's campuses (that I had all personally been to) looked like.
Before the Spring of 1964, I had always associated going to college, after graduating from a public high school, with going away to college and living away from home while attending college; rather than just going to a commuter college for four years, while still living at home with my parents.
So when I looked through Lovejoy's College Guide, in the Spring of 1964, I don't think I even considered reading its description of Butler University; because that college was too close to the neighborhood in which I lived with my parents in Indianapolis; and, in the Spring of 1964, not just commuting when I lived so close to Butler University and, instead living in a Butler U. dormitory, would have made no sense to me. Even if I hadn't already been associating going to college with not being a commuting student.
So, for obvious reasons, if I ended up attending college in Indiana, beginning in the Fall of 1965, Indiana University, with its in-state tuition for Indiana residents, its impressive-looking campus and its longer distance away from the neighborhood in which my parents lived and from where I attended Broad Ripple H.S., was where I was going to apply to. And that was why my PSAT scores were sent to Indiana University in the Spring of 1964.
Another reason why, if I ended up going to college in Indiana, I felt, in the Spring of 1964, that Indiana University was the university I would be applying to, was because many more young people attended a public state "Big Ten" university, like Indiana University, than the number of young people who attended smaller, private liberal colleges like Swarthmore, Oberlin or Antioch, etc. And, already seeing myself as some kind of writer, playwright or possible journalist, whose "thing" was to be an observer of people, who wrote the truth in a way that changed U.S. society in a more democratic direction, it seemed to make more sense for me to go to college where there were a lot of students; and, consequently, a greater variety of individual young people around me than a private small college, with only a limited number of young people to observe, would provide.
In addition, because the number of students attending a small private college was so much less than the number of students attending a large state university like Indiana University, I felt, in the Spring of 1964, that at IU I would be more likely to find other students to befriend and less closely noticed or monitored by either less non-conformist classmates or faculty members, than I would probably be if I attended a small private college.
Also, Indiana University had a Big Ten football team and a big football stadium, which most small private colleges lacked; and, in the Spring of 1964, I was still into being an NCAA college football fan who associated the going-away college experience with spending, at least five Saturday afternoons each Fall, sitting in your university's football stadium, with a lot of other students, and rooting for your collegel's football team. Even though, despite being in Broad Ripple High School's marching band, I don't think, by the Spring of 1964, I particularly envisioned myself as someone who would be in in Indiana University's Marching Band while attending there.
Yet, by the Spring of 1964, I also did not particularly want to attend college at a university in which most of the students were in college fraternities and sororities, and where fraternities and sororities dominated campus life. But in the early 1960's, Indiana University was still a university in which student campus life seemed to be dominated by the frat and sorority student members.
When reading through the Lovejoy's College Guide book pages in the Spring of 1964, I can recall generally checking out the information in the book which indicated the percentage of students at each college who were members of fraternities or sororities. Because, by that time, I felt that college fraternities and sororities were inherently undemocratic entities; since they allowed their members to exclude, even in a racially or religiously discriminatory way, anyone they didn't want to let into their social clubs.
So perhaps one reason I then requested that my PSAT exam score results be sent to Columbia and NYU, as well as to Indiana University (despite still then assuming that IU was where I would end up enrolling as a freshman in September of 1965), was because campus life at neither Columbia University nor NYU appeared to be as fraternity and sorority-dominated as Indiana University's campus life then was?
Yet the main reason I think I requested my PSAT exam results also be sent to Columbia College and NYU, as well as to IU, was because, by that time, I think I had then concluded that going away to college in New York City, in the Fall of 1965, would likely turn out to be a more intellectually stimulating, interesting and emotionally satisfying experience for me than just going away to college in Bloomington, Indiana would turn out to be.
In retrospect, there seemed to be two reasons for my conclusion, in the Spring of 1964, that going away to college in New York City might make more sense for me than just going away to college at Indiana University in Bloomington.
The first reason was that, after I began thinking of myself as a possible aspiring playwright in the theater world, it seemed to me that--despite Indiana University's reputation as being a university with an excellent theater arts departnet--it made more sense for me to, if I could, attend college in the city where the most Broadway, off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway theatrical productions were staged in the early 1960's: New York City. Why waste four years, after entering college in the Fall of 1965 before being able to watch live performances of plays in Manhattan and checking-out Manhattan's theater world activity on a regular basis, when, if I was attending Columbia or NYU in New York city, I would be able to begin doing the same thing as early as the Fall of 1965?
The second reason that I concluded, in the Spring of 1964, that applying to two colleges in New York City, like Columbia and NYU, made more sense for me (as a potential alternative to just attending IU) was possibly, in retrospect, that (because I was still then unaware of the history of Palestinian people or Arab people's history) I still did not question the validity of the liberal Zionist ideology I had been indoctrinated with in Hebrew School, prior to my birthday. And, as a member of a family of assimilated Jewish religious background, I then felt it would be more intellectually interesting to attend a college in which a larger percentage of the students would be of assimilated Jewish religious background than the percentage of students of assimilated Jewish religious background that there then was at Indiana University.
When reading through the Lovejoy's College Guide book, my recollection is that in that book there was some indication as to which U.S. universities or colleges had Hillel student chapters with larger number of students. So that may have been where I might have noticed that Columbia and NYU then had a greater percentage of students of assimilated Jewish religious background than did IU, in the early 1960's.
Because Columbia University's liberal arts undergraduate Columbia College catalog seemed to indicate that Columbia College offered more interesting college courses than what the courses that the catalog of NYU's then-uptown undergraduate college in the Bronx offered--and because Columbia also had a college football team, while NYU no longer had a college football team in the early 1960's--Columbia College, not NYU-Uptown was the one I was hoping to get admitted into more in the Spring of 1964, when I had my PSAT exam result scores sent there.
