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<p>Exactly, down to getting a year of credit on the CLEPs. Well, exactly except, to be honest, I showed up to take the ACT after drinking all night, 18 having just been made the legal drinking age in my state.</p>
<p>Does anyone know if, back in the 70s, there WERE SAT/ACT prep courses or even study guides? It seems like the playing field was pretty equal if no one prepped in any way.</p>
<p>I would like to see statistics of how many in my HS class of 823 finished college. I bet the percentage was pretty small. It was a big deal if you were going AWAY to college (as opposed to not going, or going to “junior college” as it was called then.) I knew exactly two people who went to private schools. One went to Northwestern on a violin scholarship (which impresses me more now than then) and one went to Vanderbilt because everyone in the family went to Vanderbilt. I did know one guy who went to Baylor, but washed out after a year…I’m sure he only got in because his parents had been Baptist missionaries. I think it’s the only year of college he attended. There was a guy who went to the Coast Guard Academy-he was gay and BOY was that the wrong place for him to go. He lasted only a few months and is probably still in therapy 30 years later.</p>
<p>I don’t remember anyone prepping for SATs at all. I took the SAT once, and everyone else I know took it once. I was also completely unfamiliar with the format- with every section I was reading the instructions for the first time! I believe that had I taken it multiple times, my score would have been much higher.</p>
<p>I was a lousy high school student with a great social life- only took math through 10th grade, barely got through regular chemistry and biology. I was good at music- I was in the chorus not to sing but played the piano- the choral director sort of “recruited” me in 9th grade and it was my main activity- I took two choral classes a day to accompany. I was also a paid accompanist for a church and taught lessons. I know I got into college based on my audition. There were several kids from my high school who had MUCH better grades and test scores than I who didn’t get into my college. One of my teachers walked up to me in high school and asked, “How did YOU get into …?” because he had other students far better than I that didn’t.</p>
<p>I did not try in high school, academically. I never studied, and barely did homework. In spite of my crappy hs GPA I ended up doing fine in college calc, stats, econ, accounting, finance, etc. This was a testament to my high school- although I was a B/C student at best, they managed to at least give me the tools to get by. It blows me away to see all the studying and homework kids do nowadays, and see kids with 4.0 GPAs going off to college and struggling. I really don’t understand it.</p>
<p>When I hear people complain about athletes getting a tip, it cracks me up because I know I got a tip being a musician.</p>
<p>doubleposted.</p>
<p>“Does anyone know if, back in the 70s, there WERE SAT/ACT prep courses or even study guides? It seems like the playing field was pretty equal if no one prepped in any way.”</p>
<p>We spent some English classes doing analogies and vocab. with the SAT in mind I’m sure. I always found it mind-numbingly boring. Kaplan started in 1938, but originally prepped for Regents exams, not sure when he started doing SATs. Princeton Review started in 1981.</p>
<p>Fascinating to me to see how many of us did HS in the seventies. I seem “old” compared to my DD’s friends parents. I tested into a top girls catholic school in New York but left after a year for a school that had a “vocational” track. My mothers doing; she’d taught it. With much resistance from the school. I did both the vocational AND the honors/AP track ( one AP, a few honaors), plus every activity I could sign up for. I don’t really remember the academic part, although I do remember being asked by Aviva Gerowitz ( are you out there?) what my class rank was and being told “well that’s good…for you”. What I remember most was the overcrowding. 4 blocks, two hours each grade. My grade had more than a thousand. If you didn’t hurry, you wouldn’t even get a seat on the radiator. Halfway though senior year I visited my sister at her college during homecoming. Went to a GREAT party. Came back and told the school I wanted to leave NOW for college. They said okay, and a month later I was gone…LOT’s of great parties…And I worked as a nurses aid through most of high school and college.</p>
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<p>I seem to recall something in the back of the local bookstore on the shelf next to the study aid for the civil servants test.</p>
<p>I took the LSAT in 1982, and there was a study guide for that.</p>
<p>Oh yes, my high school offered a remedial SAT prep course: if you didn’t get above a certain score (can’t remember what it was)… you got pulled out of after-school sports to do after-school SAT prep. I noticed a few years back that the school had an AVERAGE of over 1300 (old SAT) on the SAT… </p>
<p>Our junior year advanced math course (the one that was prep for the AP Calc course) did SAT drill questions EVERY single class… The lowest score of the 18 girls in the class on the Math Level 2 (before calculators) was a 760.</p>
<p>Progressive large suburban high school…class of 1969. Required: 4 years English, 2 years lab science, 3 years history/social studies, 2 years foreign language, 4 years health/PE/Swimming, 2 years math (I would guess that is higher now). Rest were “electives”. We had 8 periods to the school day, with one being lunch…so 7 could be classes. Very few students had study hall. Most were in the musical groups or took other elective courses.</p>
<p>Class of '75 at a large NYC public-- there were over 1000 in my graduating class. I was able to double up on some courses and graduate a semester early. Took 4 years of English, 3 of history, 3 of math, earth science, bio, and chem. Also 4 years of Spanish and one of Italian. I did not work in any manner that could be considered remotely hard and barely recall if I wrote more than a couple of papers in HS. I really had NO EC’s at all. </p>
<p>That being said, I was accepted at an Ivy. There is no way I would be going there now!</p>
<p>How do you people recall your classes like this? I am amazed.</p>
<p>Cal public, decent school, class of '80. I did not even know you were allowed to take the SAT more than once back then- once & no prep was the way to go and I still think it would be better that way!</p>
<p>I know I was on the advanced/honours track, but that wasnothing compared to kids now. I think we hit alg II/trig in grade 10 and there must have been precalc after that, but no calc unless you went to the local JC. I know I took two years of science & English every year, but I also know by 2nd semestre senior year I was down to 4 classes.</p>
<p>Oh, and NO GUIDANCE for college apps- as a varsity athlete and on the dance team I had a few ECs & could have applied for something more interesting, but no GC bothered to tell us anything; just go to the local Cal State and you’ll be fine. One of my best friends, URM, did attend Stanford and a few people went to UCs, but that all came from their families, not the school.</p>
<p>I scandalise in the early 70s by being the first girl in the district to take shop, I still had to take home ec, but I liked shop better, still have a couple of my woodshop projects. One of the teachers was such a jerk about it, I guess I was oblivious to the slights, I went to class to learn, not to be liked by him ;)</p>
<p>MY DH went to a school in a better area and he got into an Ivy, but chose a top UC and thinks that was probably right for him, though I wonder myself if he would have had a more enriching experience elsewhere.</p>
<p>“How do you people recall your classes like this? I am amazed.”</p>
<p>As you might surmise from the “what do you keep” thread, I still have my report cards…</p>
<p>What I can’t remember taking at all was social studies. I remember that American History was required in 11th grade. We took four “mini-courses” that were ridiculous without having a basic background in US History. I took a semester of Government in 12th grade. (Winter of '76…the teacher told us that this guy we’d never heard of named Jimmy Carter was running for president!) But I do not recall taking social studies in 9th or 10th grades. I’m going to have to go home and look at the teachers in the yearbook to see if any of the social studies teachers look familiar!</p>
<p>Oh, yeah, and at my school, the coaches taught drivers ed. When I found out that the schools around here don’t teach driver’s ed, my first thought was “But what do the coaches teach?” Apparently Biology and Geometry.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, I remember taking driver’s ed, too. And I recall debating about Reagan & Anderson in 1980, so I must have had an SS class.</p>
<p>I remember taking US History, and that was about it. We also had to take a class called CPS (Comparative Political Systems), aka “Communism vs. Capitalism”. My teacher was Cuban and he was great. (This was back in the late 70’s.) </p>
<p>I also took an elective class in high school- “Speed Reading” (I wasn’t much for sewing or cooking). It was a joke class- one semester- and
everyone basically got an A in it. The thing is, we did a ton of those RCA cards (if I remember the acronym correctly) which are almost exactly like the type of passages you get on the SAT Reading Comprehension test. And they had us sit in front of machines which would “scroll” reading passages in front of you at differing rates (you kept a chart of your progress and kept increasing- sort of like working out with weights); then we would answer questions about the passage and if we passed, the next time we read, the machine would scroll even faster :eek:.</p>
<p>Basically, it’s probably one of the most useful classes I’ve ever taken in my life.</p>
<p>I remember my history classes very well. Freshman year they tried to tie it in with our English reading - to mixed success. We did Greeks and read Antigone for example. At some point I and three friends in Latin had scheduling issues and we persuaded the teacher we didn’t need to do Egypt again and we got a little course in the middle ages - it was great. I still remember the Pirenne thesis that the Roman empire didn’t fall when it’s usually said to in 476, but several centuries later as a result of Arab expansion. 10th grade was US history, but I somehow managed to persuade my teacher to let me do the French Revolution instead of the American one. Then in 11th grade we persuaded (catching a theme here?) a teacher to do a year of British history. We were all angophiles and it was a huge amount of fun. We all watched The First Churchills on Masterpiece Theater and read too many Georgette Heyers. Senior year we agitate for AP European history which had never been taught before.</p>
<p>I went to an inner city high school as part of a math-science honors program in NYC and graduated in the mid 70s. It was really like being in a school within a school, similar to what a magnet program would be today, except for the fact that it was a huge HS and drew exclusively from its own district. </p>
<p>We took four years of math up to calculus, four years of science, including an extra year of biology (experimental biology), four years of history, four of English and four years of a language. All except the history and language classes were at a pretty high level, probably comparable to the AP classes the kids take today. English classes were excellent - lots of papers etc. I seem to remember being mixed in with everyone else for the history classes, which were jokes. It’s too bad, because I never really enjoyed history as a result and took no history in college, which I now regret. Language classes were also grouped heterogeneously, but I ended up doing well enough after HS Spanish to place out of a language requirement in college.</p>
<p>I took many electives, everything from economics, to cooking, journalism, rapid writing (shorthand - came in very useful in college for notetaking), speech (public speaking), art and music, and yoga (ahead of my time). </p>
<p>By today’s standards I would have been considered a “joiner” as far as ECs. I was a member of the Math Team (we went to other schools for competitions), the Chemistry Club, worked on the annual school variety show, was a rep to the student union, in a political awareness organization, the honor society and worked on the yearbook and a political campaign or two. No real leadership positions to speak of. </p>
<p>I took the SATs twice and did well on them - almost exactly the same score - each time. I can’t remember why I took the second test. No prep except what we did in our honors English class and maybe going over a few sample questions College Board sent us. I recall that by the time my youngest sibling and cousins took the SATs (six years later and up) prep classes were around and were gaining popularity - so that would be around 1980 and later. Realistically, I think I’d have still have a good shot at the schools that accepted me based on grades and SATs, although the ECs might have looked pretty weak. However, was waitlisted by H, and have no doubt that would NOT have been the case today! </p>
<p>Took some college trips and did interviews, both local alumni ones and on campus. I remember prepping for those in advance which really did help. I only ended up applying to two or three schools, since I got in early at one of my top choices.</p>
<p>Also class of '76, at a large public in NYC (800+ in my class). It was a very competitive school – the top 100 kids were very much aware of grades and ranking and that it was tough to get into competitive schools. I took the SAT twice. Several kids paid big bucks to take SAT prep classes. (Of course, that was back when 600+ was considered a really good score.)</p>
<p>There were very few AP courses, but there were honors classes and some of them were extremely difficult. We had to deal with the Regents (except the year they were canceled – remember that? Such joy.). I prefer the Regents to the finals my daughter took in HS, because they were predictable.</p>
<p>I’d say my workload was heavier than my daughter’s, but that’s more a function of the type of school my daughter went to. Compared to the load some CC parents and kids talk about at large competitive HSs, my workload was light.</p>
<p>The main thing I remember about my guidance counselor is he recommended UPenn for everyone, since he went there.</p>
<p>Wow! Not only a lot of 70’s grads, but several from NYC. Anybody from Queens? Aviva???</p>