Letters written by would-be adopters to Arnold Gesell illustrate that the claims of scientific adoption—to decrease uncertainty and increase predictability—were welcomed by well-educated Americans interested in identifying children of normal or superior intelligence. Was is possible to determine, in advance, if any given child would turn out to be college material? This question appeared frequently in Gesell’s files and was especially telling before World War II, when higher education was available to only a small minority of the population. While Gesell and other professionals clearly believed that developmental research could (and should) make adoption safer, these letters suggest that some adopters wanted children to live up to exacting specifications and hoped science might deliver on that promise.