>
>I think that more recent scholarship on college matriculations has pushed
>the age toward something more like 16 or 17, but perhaps someone with more
>knowledge about university education can speak to this question.
One could of course go through Joseph Foster's Alumni Oxonienses and John
and J. A. Venn's Alumni Cantabrigienses and work out statistics for
average age upon matriculation. Something like 16 or 17 sounds like a
more plausible average than 14. But certainly there was no statutory
minimum age for matriculation. One can plenty of examples of boys
matriculating as early as 12, and there is no visible evidence that these
were rare child geniuses or regarded as unusual, and no doubt one could
also find examples of men matriculating in their 20's. Then too, some men
did not get around to matriculating for some time after their arrival at
university, as a form of fee-dodging. The upshot is that if would
nothing more than pure conjecture to use date of matriculation as
evidence for date of birth.
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