The examination at the end of eighth year high school was matriculation which w
as the entrance examination for tertiary studies. Different high schools prepar
ed students for different matriculation. For instance a matriculation (éretségi
) from a reál iskola was accepted by universities except for medicine and theol
ogy, similarly matriculation from a commercial high school (kereskedelmi) was o
f more restricted acceptability. In common with most universities in Europe the
 main emphasis was on the final examinations at the end of three or four years 
of studies and on the doctorate in the case of universities.
When I reached the end of high school in Australia, more particularly in New So
uth Wales, the situation was similar in that only those students continued to f
ifth year who had a chance to go on to tertiary studies. In fact the final exam
ination was called Leaving Certificate and Matriculation.

Regards
Dénes 



----------
From:  E.S. Balogh[SMTP:]
Sent:  Saturday, 22 March 1997 10:09
To:  Multiple recipients of list HUNGARY
Subject:  Entrance exams in the 1920s?

Janos,

        It just occurred to me: I don't think that there was such an animal
in those days as entrance examinations. As far as I know anyone who
matriculated could enter university. The entering freshmen paid their
tuition and they either sank or swam. This was pretty much the case in
Canada when I was an undergraduate there. There were no SAT tests and the
entering freshman needed only a C average or such to enter as freshman at
Carleton University. Except half the freshman class flunked out!! I think
that was the case in Hungary as well before the 1948. Mind you the level was
pretty high because so few people managed to get as far as matriculation. I
am hoping that Magda Zimanyi could do a little research on this in Hungary,
that is, on  scholastic requirements for entering university between the two
world wars.

        A footnote to this from my own family history. My father happened to
graduate from high school in 1919 in Pecs which was under Serbian occupation
at the time. In order for him to enter university in Budapest he had to
cross the demarcation line between Hungary and Yugoslavia. He did cross that
demarcation line a couple of time but eventually he was caught by the Serbs
and jailed for a couple of weeks. After that experience he simply attended
the University of Zagreb for a semester, until the Serbs pulled out of Pecs
and the surrounding areas in Baranya County. Although my father told me
stories about these adventrues, he never mentioned any entrance examinations
either in Zagreb or in Budapest. By the way, he happened to know some
Croatian because as a fourth-grader he attended a Croatian-language school
in Eszek (Osijek) which was about forty kilometers south from the town of
Siklos from where my grandparents lived. Pecs was forty kilometers north.
Except in those days (my father was born in 1901) Croatia and Hungary and
the rest of the Austrian Empire was one country and my grandfather was an
open-minded man who thought that his son could only benefit from studying in
a Croatian-language school for a year. (Or he was a bit eccentric, as my
mother claimed!!) My father's knowledge of Croatian came very handy in
1944-45: he more or less could speak a kind of proto-Slavic--as one of my
professors in the Slavic Languages and Literatures Department at Yale called
a collegue's
Russian/Polish/Belorussian/Ukrainian/Czech/Slovak/Serbo-Croatian
knowledge--with the Russian occupying forces which was certainly to our
advantage. In any case, I very much doubt that the authorities at the
University of Zagreb were at all interested how much Croatian my father
knew. He either passed his exams or he didn't. Those were the days!

        ESB

Eva, you wrote:

>        It just occurred to me: I don't think that there was such an animal
>in those days as entrance examinations. As far as I know anyone who
>matriculated could enter university. The entering freshmen paid their
>tuition and they either sank or swam. This was pretty much the case in
>Canada when I was an undergraduate there. There were no SAT tests and the
>entering freshman needed only a C average or such to enter as freshman at
>Carleton University. Except half the freshman class flunked out!! I think
>that was the case in Hungary as well before the 1948. Mind you the level was
>pretty high because so few people managed to get as far as matriculation. I
>am hoping that Magda Zimanyi could do a little research on this in Hungary,
>that is, on  scholastic requirements for entering university between the two
>world wars.

Telling the truth, I have no clue what was the situation in Hungary before
WWII. None of my grandparents ever made to the "polgari" (high school), let
alone university. From my father's side they were farmers back to the (n+1)th
generation with linearly decreasing amount of land vs. time (my grand-grand-
grand-dad had several hundred 'hold', while my garandfather had only ~20).
So they probably did not value the education high, even though they might have
been able to afford it. From my mother's side they were 'zseller' (pratically
nobodies, they had nothing), my grandpa was a promising student in the
elementary school, but later the family had sligth problem with the 'paying
the tuition' part of the education, so he became an 'iparos', a 'lakatos
mester'. My parents were educated during the 'atkos' (communist time) so
they could not provide any info about pre-WWII situation.

J.Zs

Marina wrote:

>I have personal knowledge of three such Hungarians - who received their
>education in those days in Vienna and in Paris at the Sorbone. The three
>gentlemen were
>room mates during their school years, none of them came from wealth, in fact
>they came from poor families. They worked their way through school. All three
>became physians and made a name for themselfs in the US - no thanks to their
>place of birth. The irony is that today they are considered  a credit to
>their
>place of birth - and on a way they are.

Poor guys, they could study only at Sorbonne and not the ELTE. Probably
they had to work double hard to make up the difference.
Sorry for being sarcastic, but I cannot feel sorry for someone who
eventually had his/her diploma from the Sorbonne.

>So lets not kid ourselfs and call it what it was - discrimination on a large
>scale.

Yes, I agree. And it is not an excuse if there was/is discrimination in other
countries. 'A lopasra nem mentseg az, hogy mas is lop! Az csak azt jelenti, hog
y
masoknak is szegyenkezniuk kell.'

J.Zs

In a message dated 97-03-22 03:52:55 EST, 
(Janos Zsargo) writes:

<< Poor guys, they could study only at Sorbonne and not the ELTE. Probably
 they had to work double hard to make up the difference.
 Sorry for being sarcastic, but I cannot feel sorry for someone who
 eventually had his/her diploma from the Sorbonne. >>

Oh Janos - you are exasperating ( and I mean that in the nicest possible
way)! Nem erted a gondolatotot! Let me try to explain it to you.

Imagine this: You are a vibrant, happy fellow growing up in a small Hungarian
village - your ancestors generations before even adopted the name of your
village as your last name. You are steeped in your culture (Hungarian), doing
pretty good
in school and working hard to help your father deliver bread every morning
before school - he is the local baker. Your father dreams of a better future
for his children.
When the time comes though, you find out that you can't enroll in any of the
universities in *your own* country. But why? What have I done? Am I
inferrior?
I am Hungarian! What do you mean that I am not? etc.  - You are a second
class citizen - if that.

Can you understand the feeling of shock - can you appreciate how this may
affects ones psyche? Think: your parents are casting you aside - you are not
part of the family any longer.

The bakers son from  .....falva is 92 years old today - yeah, graduated from
the Sorbone and other places. A man of letters. The memories are fading
into a golden pond - but you see he really never wanted to go to the Sorbone,
never wanted to leave his family or go too far from his village. He has his
motto
written in Hungarian hanging on the wall of his study: "A hala az nem szo
hanem tett" (Gratefulness are not words but deeds).
He still thinks he is Hungarian.

Yours truly, Marina

Dear Fellow-listmembers,

Here's another posting from the Habsburg list with Hungarian relevance.
Again, any leads or suggestions should be sent to the original poster
directly, at his own e-mail address, unless anyone has a burning desire
to start a discussion thread on Hungarian humanism in the sixteenth century
on the list!

Sincerely,

Hugh Agnew

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Date:    Wed, 19 Mar 1997 11:05:43 -0500
From:    Darin Hayton >

To all:

   I have begun to work on the Hungarian born humanist Johannes Sambucus
(1531-84).  He spent time in Italy, France, Germany, and at the courts of
Maximilian II and Rudolf II.

   I am at the point of collecting all of the information on him that I
can find.  If anybody has any suggestions, I would be very grateful to
hear them.

   Thanks in advance.

Darin Hayton
History and Philosophy of Science
University of Notre Dame

In article >,  (Nick Semenov)
writes:

>I need a translation of the following. Hope it is Hungarian:
>
>Kellene nekem egu csomay vecepapir.
>
>Thanks in advance.   Matter of life or death.
>
>


I guess it can become a "matter of life or death"(?) if you are
out of toilet paper. Oh, get a life!

But just in case if you are for real, it means:
I need a roll of toilet paper.

On Sat, 22 Mar 1997, Marina E. Pflieger wrote:

> In article >,  (Nick Semenov)
> writes:
>
> >I need a translation of the following. Hope it is Hungarian:
> >
> >Kellene nekem egu csomay vecepapir.
> >
> >Thanks in advance.   Matter of life or death.
> >
> >
> 
>
> I guess it can become a "matter of life or death"(?) if you are
> out of toilet paper. Oh, get a life!
>
> But just in case if you are for real, it means:
> I need a roll of toilet paper.
>
Be nice, maybe they had the laptop in the stall, and found that the stuff
that passes for vecepapir in Eastern Europe was gone. I larned very
quickly to carry a few rolls in the backpack when I traveled. :-)

Enough "stalling", must return to grading papers (some of which would make
great vecepapir).

Darren

Richard,
I just checked at Amazon's, they have it for $29.95 +S&H:
$4.00+$1.95, which adds up to 35.90 (?)
You can order from them through the Internet, their URL is:
<http://www.amazon.com>;
Udv: Dominus

Richard Corson > wrote:
>I am looking for  Eclipse of the Crescent Moon,
>by Geza Gardonyi.

 on Mar 21 14:46:09 EST 1997 in HUNGARY #948:

>        I have a few correction to Ferenc Novak's piece on the so-called
>numberus clausus in the United States.
>
>>Yes, this is how it works.  My Alma Mater (another Ivy school) also sets
>>informal quotas to ensure a "balanced" class, and to preclude any given
group
>>from being overrepresented.  (Except for children of alumni.)
>
>        I don't know about Ferenc's alma mater but at Yale they don't want
>to have "heritage children"--that is the sons and daughters of alumni--to be
>overrepresented either. And, by the way, I few considerations I left out
>from my earlier piece: they don't want too many students from private
>schools either. Also, admission is not depended on financial aid.

Same there.  And I didn't mean legacies are "overrepresented", whatever that
means.  What I intended to say was that their "quota" is higher; their
chances of being accepted are about double that of the general applicant
pool.  Quite possibly Yale also follows a similar practice.

Ferenc

P.S.  Can anyone tell me in what year the Numerus Clausus laws  were passed?