Yale’s classrooms were full of men. Then the first female undergrads enrolled.

In April 1969, Barbara Wagner was waiting to learn whether she had been admitted to Yale when the New York Times Magazine published a juicy dive into the 268-year-old university’s plan for selecting its first female undergraduates. The author had gained access to a sampling of admissions files from the thousands of women vying to become “pioneers of their sex” as members of Yale’s first co-ed class.

He described the women as “the female versions of Nietzsche’s Uebermensch.” Superheros.

Wagner would become one of them. She packed her bags for New Haven that fall, joining a class of 230 female freshmen — picked from a pool of 2,847 women — and 1,029 male applicants.

“We felt the pressure, but we also felt the opportunity,” Wagner told The Washington Post. “We had to prove ourselves and show that they didn’t make a mistake.”