Well, since the entrance exam would likely be geared toward people graduating high school, wouldn't the entrance questions have to be at that level of educational experience?
From the wiki page, it seems like it was actually one of the first technical unis around: "a new form of higher education to address the challenges posed by rapid advances in science and technology in the mid-19th century that classic institutions were ill-prepared to deal with." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Massachusetts_In...)