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4.2.12 WC: 191694 SAT scores, there would be little diversity,” he explained. He too apparently believed in the “Yiddisher (and Asian) Kup” theory.) I did not come close to having an 82 average, but fortunately there was also a test that an applicant with non-qualifying grades could take. Unfortunately, a high score alone on the test did not get you in: you needed a combined score—test plus grade average—to make the cut. With my low average, I needed a near perfect score to make it. Otherwise I would have to go to night school and work during the day. I did very well on the test and was admitted. I also won a New York State Regents Scholarship which paid me $1,400 to go to college. (I put the money in an interest bearing account that paid for my first year at law school.) The state scholarship was based entirely on a single, highly competitive exam. High schools took great pride in how many state scholarships their students won. The relevant statistic that helped rank the schools was the percentage of those who won, based on the number of students who took the exam. My high school was obsessed with doing well in the state scholarship competition, so it limited those who could take the exam to students with grade points over 80, in order to inflate the percentage of winners. I did not qualify, but I knew I could do well on a state-wide competitive exam that was graded by outsiders, not by my teachers who were predisposed against me. So I pleaded with Rabbi Zuroff to take the exam. He refused, telling me I would never win and my taking it would just bring down the percentage. Not satisfied with his answer, I filed a petition with the New York Regents—my first of many petitions. To everyone’s surprise, the Regents ruled in my favor and the school was ordered to let me, and everyone else, take the exam. Two of us, who had averages below 80, along with 4 or 5 others, won the scholarship. My principal’s first reaction was that I must have cheated, but a check of the seating chart showed that I was not sitting near anyone else who won. So off I went to Brooklyn College, with money in my bank account. It was a turning point for me academically, professionally, religiously and existentially. Before I turn to my college and law school years, which were quite successful, I want to speculate for a moment as to why, despite the unsuccessful nature of my early teen years, I am so focused on them as so formative to my later life. Several years ago, Zhe New York Times Magazine asked me to reflect back on my teen years for a column entitled About Men. The assignment got me to wonder why I am so obsessed with nostalgia from that particular period in my life. This is part of what I wrote: I'M ENTERING THAT AGE WHEN songs from the hit parades of my adolescence bring tears of nostalgia. I'm a sucker for memorabilia of the 1950's. My house is cluttered with toys I've recently bought - chintzy replicas of vintage Chevys and Thunderbirds, overpriced miniature jukeboxes that play "Rock Around the Clock," anything reminiscent of the 1955 world champion Brooklyn Dodgers (a redundancy to any aficionado, because there are no other world champion Brooklyn Dodgers). I rush to see any Woody Allen film that has even a remote connection to the time and place we both grew up in (another redundancy - everything Woody Allen does has a strong connection to Brooklyn in the 50's). I drag my family to Neil Simon plays through 36 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017123