Lyman Hotchkiss Bagg wrote that "up until as recent a date as 1860, Keys had great difficulty in making up its crowd, rarely being able to secure the full fifteen upon the night of giving out its elections."

Regarding the tomb's distinctive appearance, Pinnell noted that "19th-century artists' studios commonly had exotic orientalia lying about to suggest that the painter was sophisticated, well traveled, and in touch with mysterious powers; Hunt's Scroll and Key is one instance in which the trope got turned into a building.

[10] Scroll and Key taps annually a delegation of fifteen, composed of men and women of the junior class, to serve the following year.

Membership is offered to a diverse group of highly accomplished juniors, specifically those who have "achieved in any field, academic, extra-curricular, or personal".

[11] Delegations frequently include editors of the Yale Daily News and other publications, artists and musicians, social and political activists, athletes of distinction, entrepreneurs, and high-achieving scholars.