This 1960 Life magazine has brief descriptions of various colleges that were probably seen as desirable then. Included is a table showing the colleges with some information like cost of attendance, scholarships, tests required, test scores, applications, and places.
Very interesting to see the relative desirability then vs now, also how the SAT cutoff has changed, etc. Some of the schools listed in that article aren’t really on my radar at all as a West Coaster (Union?). Also interesting which state schools made the cut for that article in 1960. Wondering why Swarthmore isn’t on there, why Sewanee made the cut but not Wash U, and surprised that Rice used to have free tuition.
Rice University’s original charter specified that it be tuition free, but for white students only. In the early 1960s, the school’s governing board wanted to remove both restrictions, and needed to fight a legal battle to do so.
No mention of Rice being for white students only appears in the 1960 Life magazine article, probably because racial segregation was common and commonly supported at the time (even as the legal underpinnings were starting to be chipped away).
@washugrad: For historical context on Union, note that the then-future (and now ex-) NESCAC appeared in the same tier as other future NESCACs Bowdoin, Middlebury and Tufts. Swarthmore appeared in the top tier.
Nice to see my dirt-cheap alma mater on that list. The only way I had heard about Reed was from an uncle who was a professor at Caltech. He gave a rundown of options for me – from coast to coast. Cost at Reed was just about $2,000 my freshman year; I took my very first plane trip when I returned home for the winter break.
@merc81 oh d’oh I totally missed Swarthmore when I looked at the list. Still amused by some of the comments (eg, Rice). So Union was in the NESCAC and left? We might be in the market for a liberal arts type college with an engineering department for my youngest in a couple of years (or maybe he’ll prefer a bigger school but I’m just making mental notes as I learn about places that haven’t been on my radar ).
@washugrad: Yes, Union parted with the NESCACs under a difference of philosophy, and perhaps some controversy, regarding sports. With respect to your son’s academic interests, Union’s new science and engineering building seems to represent an ambitious goal of further developing those departments.
Keep in mind that the SAT conversion tables through the years indicate that a score today would typically be 100+ points lower back then. 70-80 V and 20-40 M.
At least I’m not crazy remembering Lehigh as a top Engineering school. I was surprised when we were searching for my D about 3 years ago and it was way down most rankings.
Interesting that with 2,600 applications, Swarthmore had almost as many as Columbia (3,300) and more than Chicago (1,800). Certainly not the case today.
1960 was a vastly different culture than even the 1980’s. Too many women were not encouraged to go to college and not allowed at so many- there were men’s and women’s colleges. That alone skews results. I know that a decade later things were changing but even in the early 1970’s options for young women were not there and financial need meant not bothering. Information was print only- snail mail, catalogs, newspaper articles so changes took a lot longer to reach people out of an area.
It is an awakening to be 65 and hear from women only five years older- my watershed years did change things. Girls who were not allowed to take HS Chemistry (hey- AP classes were even after my time). I had thought that kind of thinking was late 1940’s when my mother should have taken math and such in college. Women’s Lib was a real force in my HS-college years (as was Vietnam and Civil Rights).
So- those SAT scores (and ACT) were mostly for men. I’ll bet there were disproportionate numbers of high scoring women since so many would not have bothered with it. As above somewhere- there was no test prep, repeat takes back then either. Test were truly a snapshot, not a studio portrait.
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