'Chance' a Parent........

Parents Forum
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<p>Fellow parents: I too would be very unlikely to be admitted to the college I attended way back in the Dark Ages.
So it seems appropriate to again consider setting up our own college - the one done the right way! We called it</p>

<pre><code> CONFIDENTIALA COLLEGE
</code></pre>

<p>And here are the details</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/40031-doodling-day-away.html?highlight=doodling[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/40031-doodling-day-away.html?highlight=doodling&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>I couldn’t get into my college (University of Chicago) even in 1985 with my high school grades (somewhere around 83 with one failed class and 2 65s which were gifts). I had to go to a dinky college for one year (it was AWFUL and shall remain nameless) and then transfer after I brought my average up to a 3.85 during freshman year.</p>

<p>However, I only took the SATs once with no prep whatsoever (never even looked at a prep book) and got a 1300.</p>

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<p>If I’m going to conjure up my 1969 self at my blue-collar, small-city high school, I can’t limit the recitation to grades and scores–context is all:</p>

<p>–four guidance counselors for a student body of 2400–they spent most of their time dealing with the juvenile delinquents and had little time for the few college bound, so they limited us to four applications and pretty much insisted that the state university be included as a safety;</p>

<p>–no USNWR college rankings, no college guides, no college websites, no glossy college marketing materials, just the dry college catalogs that we would have to write away for and, maybe, if the school was close enough to home, a visit comprised of just a self-led meander through the campus and perhaps an interview;</p>

<p>–no AP classes (I had never even heard of them until I got to college);</p>

<p>–no SAT prep courses, not even any prep books other than the short guides the College Board distributed;</p>

<p>–no private college counselors, no books about getting into college, no sample essays online or elsewhere (did we even have essays? I can’t recall), no CC;</p>

<p>–parents who had not attended college themselves and took only a mild interest in the my high school classes (so long as my grades were high, they were satisfied) and less in the selection/application process (though I do remember my dad grousing about the high cost of tuition and telling me that by the time my kids went to college, the cost would be so high that the government would have to pay for everyone’s higher education–hmmm, not exactly);</p>

<p>–only a handful of potential EC’s, and not a single sports opportunity for girls;</p>

<p>–the shiny new Olympia electric typewriter on which I typed my four applications!</p>

<p>Despite all that, I had a happy and successful college career at a school that is now denominated “very selective” and graduated from law school at an Ivy university. I haven’t a clue whether I’d get as far today, but I’m very grateful that I didn’t have to go through the insanity that surrounds the current college selection and application process!</p>

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<p>^^^Agreed…I was blissfully unaware even in 1986 due to attending a fairly rural school, one guidance counselor, etc. </p>

<p>I handwrote my application essay to Penn…yet still, somehow, got in.</p>

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<p>Like MommaJ, what I mainly remember is my cluelessness. There must have been a few guidebooks by 1976, but I remember having no idea how to choose. Some of my friends went to places like Smith and the Coast Guard Academy, but most went to the state universities. </p>

<p>My school’s quality of classes was very spotty (I remember four good teachers, the rest were bonehead boring). I remember desperately wishing someone could teach me to write well. I read good books, and easily recognized that what I could produce was nowhere in the ballpark even for clarity, let alone flair. I was hungering to learn more math. My school was a “good” suburban high school, but there were no AP’s offered back then. I took college classes starting when I was fifteen, but these were severely limited by the quality of the local college. (No online classes back then, no free college lectures on the web.)</p>

<p>So maybe there was less stress back then, but there were also fewer opportunities for a lower middle-class kid searching for academic bliss. So mainly I turned to extracurriculars to fill my time, and provide a little challenge.</p>

<p>Here’s the stats:
GPA 4.0 “hardest”, haha, course load
SAT I 690V, 750M (recentered would be ~750V, 800M)
SAT II, 750 writing, 800 physics, 780 mathII</p>

<p>EC’s:
State level in track (in both 800m and discus) although Title 9 had just passed and women’s sports were both less competitive and less sophisticated back then.
All-state oboe
Lots of music (band, orchestra, community orchestra, school musical, marching band, church music)
Lots of church involvement - youth group, church committee
Lots of volunteering
Teen representative on town recreation committee</p>

<p>Summer programs, travel: Nobody I knew had the money for this stuff.</p>

<p>Employment: None, but I did paint my parents entire house, by myself, the summer I was 15. I also helped build a chimney in a friend’s barn with my dad. Actually, I think I got paid $50 for helping with that.</p>

<p>Awards:
Mostly I was clueless about awards (probably like most kids still are).
Still, I did well on the things that were put in front of me, like the regents scholarship exam, and the precursor to the AMC12, and got some kind of awards for those things for being in the top few in the county.</p>

<p>Applied to: MIT, Stanford, Univ of Michigan, Antioch (?), Ohio University honors program.</p>

<p>I needed a lot of money. Mainly interested in math, physics, philosophy (I thought).</p>

<p>So, who accepted me, who offered me money, and where did I go?</p>

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<p>Geomom,</p>

<p>I think your numbers are amazing, and your ECs are actually not bad either. It would help to know what state you were from, but, I would chance you as admitted at all of your colleges.<br>
I would think that you got the most money from your home state school (UM?), but also could have gotten a good award from the honors program at OU.</p>

<p>I am going to guess you went to Ohio University, honors program. Let’s see what other people think.</p>

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<p>O.K., this seems like fun! Me, 1986:
Large public high school in Nor Cal (448 in graduating class)
3.9ish average (think I only got one B, 4th in the class)
1250 combined SAT under old system, don’t remember the individual scores (and no prep course, those were for “dummies”!)
No AP courses offered, but I took the French and English Language AP tests
School didn’t offer Calculus (Algebra II was as high as it went!), so I and about 4 other students took Calculus our senior year at the local CC
Did independent study French my senior year, because I was a year ahead in French
National Honor Society, French Club, played violin in orchestra, pretty good pianist, but not Carnegie Hall good (sent a tape in to the colleges), danced ballet, tap, and jazz about 10 ours a week, high school musicals, but never a lead
worked about 10 hours a week at a Hallmark store</p>

<p>Applied to: Harvard, Yale, Williams, Stanford, UC Berkeley (but back then, you just applied to the University of California and ranked your choices–Berkeley was my first choice, followed by UCLA and then UC Davis)</p>

<p>In this day and age, I don’t think I would get into ANY of these schools!
So, where did I get in?</p>

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<p>My predictions for bcnmom (i.e. guesses…)</p>

<p>Harvard-waitlist, then rejected. Same today.
Yale-admitted…possibly even today (artsy…)
Williams-admitted (today too)
Stanford-admitted (rejected today)
UC Berkeley-admitted (waitlist today…then rejected)</p>

<p>The hard part in retro-chancing is the nuances in an application, and the essays…also, being from the east, i am not sure what the situation was on the west in 1986…although that is my hs grad year as well !</p>

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<p>Three more tidbits:</p>

<p>My home state was New York. </p>

<p>I refused to contact any track coaches and seek an athletic scholarship, so the track stuff really was just an EC, and not a hook.</p>

<p>I actually remember one essay was about meeting, though church, a guy who was in political exile from South Africa for protesting apartheid, who was an international athlete, and gave up not just living there, but representing his country athletically.</p>

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<p>geomom, I think they all accepted you.</p>

<p>I was at an advantage because my Dad was a GC in a neighboring blue collar city. He dealt mostly with the work study kids, and I don’t know how many of his kids went to colleges. But he found out about the summer program I attended, it was the first year of the program, and so I got the info and was the only one from my HS to apply. Most of the kids were from the richer towns and I could see the difference in their education. However, I felt I was adequately prepared at Cornell. I took a calc placement test when I got there and placed out of 1st sem calc and nothing else. It was good to repeat chem, physics, etc and at least start with some review before jumping into the unknown.</p>

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<p>retro-chancing, like that term CDK :)</p>

<p>Looking at bcnmom, I don’t know how heavily SATs were weighted back then, but I’d say yes for UCB, Williams, and Stanford, don’t have a guess on Yale, and since I haven’t rejected anyone yet I’ll ding you at Harvard.</p>

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<p>CDK and jackief,</p>

<p>OK, you’re right, I was accepted everywhere, with from good aid to full-ride plus pocket change at OU. But when it came down to where to go… </p>

<p>I visited MIT, Stanford and OU, and well, I just liked MIT best. At Ohio, I thought the honors program kids looked down on the rest of the college, and were kind of intellectually pretentious. (In retrospect, I think I would have thrived there, but first impressions are so powerful.)</p>

<p>At Stanford, I was dazzled by the sunshine, and the wealth! And the academic possibilities! But I met a couple of students who seemed jaded, and not happy, and I remember thinking, “What is wrong with these people, they have everything, they live in Valhalla, and they’re not grateful and ecstatic?” I think there was a bit of a socio-economic mismatch. (In retrospect, I think I would have been happy there, too.)</p>

<p>At MIT, the students were smart, down to earth, approachable, funny. Sign me up.</p>

<p>I wonder though, with all the emphasis on diversity, is it still as hard for a middle-class kid from an average suburb to feel comfortable at an elite school?</p>

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<p>Geomom I think you’d have a good chance at all those schools then and today. If you were from our school you wouldn’t get into Stanford unless those sports are of interest to them. I don’t know enough about sports to judge. (They have a history of only accepting sports stars and legacies.) MIT now would love your ECs, don’t know if they were as interested in well-roundedness then, but I can’t imagine that they had too many young women with scores like yours. I’d give you better than even chances there now, and sure bet then. I assume you were in everywhere else.</p>

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<p>bcnmom, hard to know what to do with those scores. I do have a friend who got into Yale via the waitlist with a 1300, and someone who was rejected back then with a 1500. (She was a Yale legacy but wanted to go to Swarthmore and I think she subtly sabotaged her application.) On the other hand I think the schools ought to have been impressed by your going beyond the school offerings. So my guesses:</p>

<p>Waitlist: Harvard, Yale
In: Stanford, Williams, Berkeley</p>

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<p>Wow, wish you all had been on the admissions committees back then! So…
got into Stanford and Berkeley, waitlisted at Williams, and dinged by Harvard and Yale. Went to Stanford and loved it. Happy ending, I guess!</p>

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<p>Stats:
Graduated in the mid-80s
GPA A - valedictorian - very small class of 14 at a pretty non-competitive college-prep school (parents worked there, so we went for free)
SAT I 730V, 750M
SAT II, 750 writing, 720 chemistry, 700 mathII, 750 Math I
Did my senior year at a local college as had nothing left to take at my high school (dual enrollment) - GPA 3.95
Did trig junior year by MAIL (no one else was taking math past algebra 2, so that was the highest level offered by the school) - very frustrating, I am very impressed with today’s distance ed options, but back then it was a major pain</p>

<p>ECs:
not many offered besides a few sports and yearbook, but I started a school foreign language magazine that did quite well (I took Spanish and French)
worked 20 h/week senior year in the FinAid Office of the college I was attending (work-study)
flute (had not been able to tell my parents I had no interest in the instrument when I received one for my birthday between 9th & 10th grades)
college newspaper staff member</p>

<p>Summer programs/employment:
volunteer at local library -summer after 9th
summer math program -summer after 10th
Fin Aid office job -summer after 12th (see above- and I’m not sure, but I seem to remember I started summer before 12th - I remember having a pass to zip to the head of all registration lines since they needed me working registration)
babysitting</p>

<p>Other:
grew up overseas (4 different countries, moved back to US year I started 9th)
NM scholarship
RPI and Bausch and Lomb medals
pretty much all the academic awards at my school
1 of 2 incoming students to get a named scholarship at the college I attended in 12th grade (they were hoping I’d stay for 4 years, although they knew the plan from the start)</p>

<p>Applied:
Havard, Yale, Cornell, MIT, Mt. Holyoke, Wellesley, Georgetown (legacy), Harvey Mudd
Had great interview for Harvard, at the end of which I told the interviewer her school was not my first choice (perhaps not too tactful, but she asked a direct question…)</p>

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<p>eg1,</p>

<p>Started a foreign language magazine?!! That is so, so cool.
Worked on college newspaper staff, and had a job…</p>

<p>I’m guessing you got in everywhere!</p>

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<p>Stats:
1971
Grades very erratic, but courses all honors or accelerated or AP, so weighted GPA was an A- and put me in the top 20% of class of 240 at wealthy suburban CT high school that sent kids to lots of Ivies and other good colleges. 2 APs. 8th and 9th grade at British boarding school.
SATs V 773, M 700 (Don’t recall SAT II scores precisely, but I think they were in 690-mid 700 range. Also don’t know what my SATs would have been if recentered.) National Merit Finalist (in those days it was a separate test).
Sports: none
ECs: lots of theater, including summer productions, literary mag and newspaper staff, environmental activism
Summer job after jr & sr year.</p>

<p>Applied to Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, Wheaton, Yale</p>

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<p>Nope - waitlisted at Harvard (fortunately). I had my heart set on MIT, and finaid packages made everything pretty even. College decisions caused one of the two major blow-ups I had with my dad (the other was about getting married). He wanted H or Y. If I had gotten into Harvard, well…things would have been very ugly at my house. As it was, he was disappointed, but after I’d been there a while, he became an MIT fan too.</p>

<p>I’m guessing Consolation got in everywhere - way more ECs than anyone I went to school with.</p>

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<p>Ha ha, I just realized I wrote “1986” as my graduation year. Wishful thinking? I graduated high school in 1982, college in 1986. Not sure if those 4 years made much of a difference. Seems the last 10 is when is started getting so crazy, no?</p>