There’s a lot to sort through in those books, including what’s changed and what hasn’t. Critical text work is no longer controversial, but it was back then, even if Potok overplays it. And yes, in the 1950s, it would not be unheard of for a charedi family to send an “out of the box” son to YU.
It's not so much that I think that it's IMPOSSIBLE that what happens in the book could have happened- but it feels implausible, and per the dictum of Dirk Gently, that makes it feel more wrong. The rebbe is a rebbe, not just a "charedi family," and Danny going to Hirsch College is depicted...
...as at least somewhat usual rather than as a major and difficult concession to an out of the box kid, if I recall correctly (but it's been a decade since I read the book so I might not). And again, if the expected time-period analog is the Malach, would the Malach send his kid to YU?!
I also draw as a comparison on R Shraga Feivel Mendelowitz, whose initial model was to draw kids from MTA to public night school for HS and full day beis midrash learning- surely the rebbe would send his kid to CCNY over YU, on the principle from Europe that secular schools are Jewish-value neutral
Again, it's not that it's impossible so much as that it feels very very deeply improbable in a historical context
Then again, Potok actually went to YU in that time period so maybe he really did know sons of rebbes there! From my research of the school's history at that time I'd be surprised but hey who knows
It’s a very idiosyncratic blend of real and imagined personalities and institutions. (referring to the YU analogue as the Hirsch school no doubt offended people on both sides of the Heights, fr’instance). For me, they need to be taken on their own terms, not as roman a clefs, despite the shout outs.
Oh of course, and I'm not criticizing the book, which I liked. But it was mentioned as illustrative about interwar/WWII/postwar American Judaism and so I was just trying to point out that it only kind of is.