When Boston College opened in 1863, it was designed to serve the children of Boston Catholics and Irish immigrants. After facing opposition from the anti-immigrant Nativist movement, the school’s charter provided that no student could be refused admission or denied any honors or degrees because of their religious opinions. The school’s classical curriculum was designed to teach boys ranging in age from around fourteen years to about twenty-one years old. The class years were given names such as "Grammar" or "Rhetoric", rather than "freshman" and "sophomore". Later on, Boston College split from Boston College High School, aligning the student age-range of the college with that of most university-level institutions.

In the twentieth century, Boston College’s student body slowly changed. Boston College began as a school designed to serve the local population, which shifted slowly during the first half of the twentieth century, and in the 1950s began to change significantly. In 1959, the school’s increasing selectivity and growing national reputation is evidenced from the year’s admissions statistics: a class of 1,350 freshman was enrolled from 4,300 applicants, and the number of students living on campus had risen to a record 670, 300 of whom were freshmen.

As a result of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s, the Boston College administration and student body pushed for a greater representation of minority students on campus. In the late 1960s, the University established the Black Studies Program. The Black Talent Program offered scholarship to African American students, including 47 new freshmen who entered in 1968.

Although women had been students in the Education, Nursing, and Social Work schools since the early twentieth century, in 1970 Boston College became fully co-educational. The diversity of the Boston College population continued to increase as the representation of women and minority students within the student body grew steadily throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. Continuing the trend towards national and international recognition begun in the 1950s, in the twenty-first century Boston College students hail from nearly all of the United States and over 50 countries.

Sources:

“Boston College Fact & Figures,” Boston College, accessed June 4th, 2013, http://www.bc.edu/about/bc-facts.html

Donovan, Charles F., S.J., Dunigan, David R., S.J., and FitzGerald, Paul A., S.J. History of Boston College: From the Beginnings to 1990. Chestnut Hill, MA: The University Press of Boston College, 1990.

O’Connor, Thomas H. Ascending the Heights: A Brief History of Boston College from Its Founding to 2008, Chestnut Hill: Linden Lane Press at Boston College, 2008.