Dr. Seelye emphasized the fact that this college was to give women "an education as high and thorough and complete as that which young men receive in Harvard, Yale, and Amherst." "I believe," he said, "this is the only female college that insists upon substantially the same requisites for admission which have been found practicable and essential in male colleges." He disapproved of a preparatory department, and other colleges for women have wisely followed the standard and example of Smith. Secondary schools have seen the necessity of a higher fitting for their students, that they may enter our best colleges. Greek and the higher mathematics were made an essential part of the course. To this, exception was taken; and Dr. Seelye was frequently asked, "What use have young women of Greek?" He answered, "A study of Greek brings us into communion with the best scholarship and the acutest intellects of all European countries.... It would simply justify its place in our college curriculum upon the relation which it has had, and ever must have, to the growth of the human intellect." Dr. Seelye favored the teaching of music and art, but not to the exclusion of other things, unless one had special gifts along those lines. "Musical entertainments," he said, "have generally been the grand parade-ground of female boarding-schools. All of us are familiar with the many wearisome hours which young ladies ordinarily are required to spend at the piano,--time enough to master most of the sciences and languages; and all of us are familiar with the remark, heard so frequently after school-days are over, 'I cannot play; I am out of practice.'" President Seelye had to meet all sorts of objections to higher education for women. When he told a friend that Greek was to be studied in Smith College, the friend replied, "Nonsense! girls cannot bear such a strain;" "and yet his own daughters," says Dr. Seelye, "were going, with no remonstrance from him, night after night, through the round of parties and fashionable amusements in a great city. We question whether any greater expenditure of physical force is necessary to master Greek than to endure ordinary fashionable amusements. Woman's health is endangered far more by balls and parties than by schools. For one ruined by over-study, we can point to a hundred ruined by dainties and dances." Another said to President Seelye, "Think of a wife who forced you to talk perpetually about metaphysics, or to listen to Greek and Latin quotations!" This would be much more agreeable conversation to some men than to hear about dress and servants and gossip. When Smith College was opened in 1875, there were many applicants; but with requirements for admission the same as at Harvard, Yale, Brown, and Amherst, only fifteen could pass the examinations. The next year eighteen were accepted.