When Stanley Kaplan applied to five medical schools in the late 1930s, he did not think he would have trouble getting in. He was second in his class at City College of New York and had won the college’s award for excellence in natural sciences. He was rejected by all five schools.

Talking to friends who did get into medical school, he discovered that Jewish students from private universities such as Harvard and Columbia had been accepted, as had non-Jewish friends at City College. “Soon I made the connection: I was Jewish and I attended a public college,” he wrote. “I had a double whammy against me.”