[Vanderbilt University Entrance Exam, 1884-85 Term]

Nashville, Tennessee: Southern Methodist Publishing House, 1884
Vanderbilt University Archives

To matriculate at Vanderbilt in the 1880s and 1890s, students were required to take an entrance exam to prove that they could keep pace with college coursework.  To pass the Greek and Latin portions of the exam, nine Chickasaw students attended a prep school in Franklin, Tennessee, a short walk from the Masonic Lodge where Chickasaw leaders negotiated their nation’s first removal treaty with President Andrew Jackson in the summer of 1830.