I got one as an incoming freshman at Northwestern in 1987. It was a smallish book, with a yearbook type photo of each freshman (some were blank with just a name though) and a place where you could list your hometown and interests. I don’t remember what it was called.
At Fairfield University (started 1982), it was called the “Freshman Record” and it was given out to all incoming freshmen at orientation, but as soon as the upperclassmen showed up, they took copies for the reasons cited above. As did I as a sophomore, and I can still remember the pic of the girl I ended up dating for a while (I first saw her in person, and then learned her name from the book).
They also printed up a directory of all students (no pics) with their home addresses and phone numbers, which I still have as a (presumably useless) keepsake. I wish I had kept the Freshman Records
Interesting difference between Canadian and US universities. None of the Canadian universities I went to had any such book; the only one I got was when I attended a US university.
It appeared to only be a thing in fancy schmantzy private schools. There wasn’t a hint of one at my large state university.
Yes. University of Toronto was IIRC thousands of students (for some reason, 20,000 total all faculties comes to mind), and tuition back then my first year was $680. Admission was by filling out an application form in high school listing your top 3 choices for university. No interviews, no written essays, none of the dreck I hear about US admissions. I think I wrote a SAT-type test, I don’t remember; the key determinant was apparently marks.
The logistics of putting together, publishing and distributing such a “face” book on such a scale would be mind-boggling.
They’d abolished provincial government administered high school final exams several years before I graduated. Back when all graduating high school students took the same final exams, there would be a multi-page spread in the newspapers listing the several hundred top students from across the province, sometimes including year-book sized pictures. This became less relevant when marking was less comparable.