And the girl had her own ideas about the kind of college she meant
to attend. It must be a real college. Mt. Holyoke she rejected
because it was a young ladies' seminary, and Elmira and Vassar
fell under the same suspicion, in her mind, although they were
nominally colleges. She chose Michigan, the strongest of the
coeducational colleges, and she entered only two years after its
doors were opened to women.

She did not enter in triumph, however; the academy at Windsor,
New York, where she had gone to school after her father became
a physician, was good at supplying "general knowledge" but "poorly
equipped for preparing pupils for college", and Doctor Freeman's
daughter failed to pass her entrance examinations for Michigan
University. President Angell tells the story sympathetically in
"The Life", as follows:

"In 1872, when Alice Freeman presented herself at my office,
accompanied by her father, to apply for admission to the university,
she was a simple, modest girl of seventeen. She had pursued her
studies in the little academy at Windsor. Her teacher regarded
her as a child of much promise, precocious, possessed of a bright,
alert mind, of great industry, of quick sympathies, and of an
instinctive desire to be helpful to others. Her preparation for
college had been meager, and both she and her father were doubtful
of her ability to pass the required examinations. The doubts were
not without foundation. The examiners, on inspecting her work,
were inclined to decide that she ought to do more preparatory work
before they could accept her. Meantime I had had not a little
conversation with her and her father, and had been impressed with
her high intelligence. At my request the examiners decided to