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Entrance Exam for Admission to Harvard College from 1869
I have typed up the Harvard Entrance Exam from 1869. Of the 210 candidates who took this test, 185 were admitted. In those days very few young people attended high school, and those who did, intended to go to college, and so they did study such preparatory subjects as Greek and Latin.
Algebra from the 1869 Harvard Admissions Exam
Its headings are: Translate into Latin, Latin Grammar, Greek Grammar, Greek Composition, History and Geography, Arithmetic, Logarithms and Trigonometry, Albebra, and Plane Geometry. Some of the topics are: Gyges, Coriolanus, Ephesus, Scipio, the Manilian Law, Elision, the construction in Object-Clauses after verbs of striving, Xenophon, Gryllus, Leonidas, Pausanias, Lysander, Pharsalia, Philippi, Actium, Athens, Sparta, Pericles, prime numbers, logarithms, Binomial Theorem, Cosines, Secants, radii, polygons. Here is a link where you can download the PDF of the Harvard Admissions Exam of 1869 here.