For the first two centuries of American academia, there was no competition to get into college.

Scott Alexander has some of the best research on the widest variety of topics with some of the most informed and insightful commenters. From Increasingly Competitive College Admissions: Much More Than You Wanted to Know by Scott Alexander.

For the first two centuries of American academia, there was no competition to get into college. . . . Harvard admitted anyone who was fluent in Latin and Greek. The 1642 Harvard admission requirements said:

When any schollar is able to read Tully [Cicero] or such like classicall Latine Authore ex tempore & make and speake true Latin in verse and prose, suo (ut auint) Marte, and decline perfectly the paradigmes of Nounes and Verbes in the Greek tongue, then may hee bee admitted into the Colledge, nor shall any claim admission before such qualifications.

Latin fluency sounds impressive to modern ears, like the sort of test that would limit admission to only the classiest of aristocrat-scholars. But knowledge of classical languages in early Massachussetts was shockingly high, even among barely-literate farmers. In 1647, in between starving and fighting off Indian attacks, the state passed a law that every town of at least 100 families must have a school that taught Latin and Greek (it was called The Old Deluder Satan Law, because Puritans). Even rural families without access to these schools often taught classical languages to their own children. Mary Baker Eddy, who grew up in early 19th-century rural New Hampshire, wrote that:

My father was taught to believe that my brain was too large for my body and so kept me much out of school, but I gained book-knowledge with far less labor than is usually requisite. At ten years of age I was as familiar with Lindley Murray’s Grammar as with the Westminster Catechism; and the latter I had to repeat every Sunday. My favorite studies were natural philosophy, logic, and moral science. From my brother Albert I received lessons in the ancient tongues, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. My brother studied Hebrew during his college vacations.

I have a post from a few years ago about the multilingualism of our early presidents - Theodore Roosevelt, author of forty books.
Twelve of our first 44 presidents spoke either Greek or Latin or both.

I knew of course that Latin and Greek were mainstays of a gentlemen's education but I am not sure I realized the extent to which, if these fellows are representative, that they used it and maintained fluency through life.

So Thomas Jefferson takes the medal for most number of foreign languages with five. Martin van Buren is the only President for whom English was not his native tongue. Theodore Roosevelt was the most prolific author. And impressive in its own, somewhat sad, way is Andrew Johnson. His accomplishment? Learned to read at age sixteen. He married at sixteen and his wife helped teach him.

In another example of the pervasiveness of multilingualism, particularly Greek and/or Latin in the 18th and 19th centuries, another post, The fakir pointed to a small wooden platter, making signs for us to examine it. It relates an incident from The Great Mutiny in India in 1857. The small British forces were widely scattered across the subcontinent. Cut off from one another and at risk of being defeated in detail, it was critical for the British commanders to communicate with one another but the countryside was controlled by the rebels. They resorted to all sorts of stratagems.

One such account, recorded by Frederick Roberts, who was there.

Some excitement was caused on reaching camp by the appearance of a fakir seated under a tree close to where our tents were pitched. The man was evidently under a vow of silence, which Hindu devotees make as a penance for sin, or to earn a title to more than a fair share of happiness in a future life. On our addressing him, the fakir pointed to a small wooden platter, making signs for us to examine it. The platter had quite recently been used for mixing food in, and at first there seemed to be nothing unusual about it. On closer inspection, however, we discovered that a detachable square wood had been let in at the bottom, on removing which a hollow became visible, and in it lay a small folded paper, that proved to be a note from General Havelock, written in the Greek character, containing the information that he was on his way to the relief of the Lucknow garrison, and begging any commander into whose hands the communication might fall to push on as fast as possible to his assistance, as he sorely needed reinforcements, having few men and no carriage to speak of.

An example of the enormous role contingency plays in the paths of history. A small hidden message sent from a beleaguered general out into the immense wilds of India, coded in Greek on the assumption that it would be understood by any British officer, and hidden in a dish. How would one estimate the odds that that would have actually worked and the message have gotten through. And yet it did.