A recent thread discussed stats from decades ago when you applied to college, and which colleges you applied to and were accepted to. If you instead attended HS in the 2020s and were applying today, how would this change? Which colleges would you likely apply to? Or would you apply to college at all? Which colleges would you be likely to attend?
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I’d definitely be looking at LACs and would be applying to a number of open curriculum schools. Hamilton would be my top choice.
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I’m hard pressed to change a thing about undergrad since that’s where I met my H. Taking that out of the equation, I think in retrospect I would have done better in a smaller, less competitive environment. Bucknell and Colgate were on my original college list and I wonder if I would have stuck with pre-med at a school like that, or not.
Schools that I loved when we toured with our D - Northwestern, Michigan, and Lehigh. None were on my radar as a kid and I loved all three schools.
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While I had a good college experience at a mid-sized midwest campus I think I would have thrived and loved a smaller private school in a small but vibrant midwest town. The me today sure would prefer that!
I don’t think going states away from home would have ever been my bag.
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I think I’d head south this time; I hated trekking through the snow to classes. If money wasn’t an option, maybe Vanderbilt, Georgia Tech or Wake Forest. Shhhh, don’t tell DH 
I worked 3 jobs in college, so I didn’t have the whole “college experience;” not sure if I’d like it, but it would be interesting to try.
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Assuming the same relative level of grades, test scores and EC’s, I probably would still apply to HYP and add S (my parent’s income level adjusted for inflation would still have yielded enough FA for those schools to be affordable), but I would also include some LAC’s which I had not considered. The state flagship would still be my safety.
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I went to IU-Bloomington and I wouldn’t change a thing….except study a lot more and not goof around as much.
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I am such a different person than I was back then. I can’t even begin to remember my old self enough to know what I would have done then if I knew what I know now. But I have a great life, which began in college (where I met my H), so I am cool with saying I wouldn’t do it differently.
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I loved my college experience at San Diego State and wouldn’t change anything except like @conmama I would study a bit more and not enjoy quite so many parties!
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I’d happily do Michigan and East Quad all over again. Those years were magic. It was pure joy learning at that excellent university immersed in Ann Arbor, the best college town in the country IMO. (What were you thinking, son?)
I ended up in college accidentally (dropped out of beauty school “temporarily” to solve my BF’s roommate gap second semester of her freshman year), so I was spared the process of choosing colleges to apply to. I certainly would NOT want to experience that torture today.
Same here.
I was the opposite. I studied, did not party, and never missed a single class. Maybe I’d loosen up a bit on a re-do. Or not, given how I am.
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My college decision was the first time I truly felt I had received a divine message to go there. So that’s how I selected the college I went to, and I absolutely loved my experience there. (I was going to take some SAT IIs (or maybe it was my 2nd time taking the SAT) and didn’t have time to drop off a college app on the way to the testing site, so was going to do it afterwards. During the test, I somehow got a sense that I was supposed to go to a particular midwestern flagship, and my college search ended there, much to one of my parent’s dismay. The completed app was never mailed off, nor were any other subsequent apps.)
That being said, though, if I was going to redo the college search, St. Olaf would probably make my list because everything I’ve heard about it makes it sound so delightful. But knowing everything I was able to experience in college, including the breadth of activities and variety of fields to study and everything else, I really can’t imagine a better experience than the one I had.
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I don’t think I would change a thing. I had an AFROTC scholarship that paid for any college I wanted to go to. Colleges were much easier to get into back in the Dark Ages, that’s for sure. But going to a smaller liberal arts school (Seattle University) and UW for ROTC, allowing me to live at home was perfect. The only school that I could imagine going to other than that would be the USAFA, but would I even want to work that hard?
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Virginia Tech still would have been appropriate for me. Big public university, in-state rates. Engineering. But I wish I had studied abroad. I don’t think I even knew that was a thing.
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I loved both of my college experiences - first at my local cc, then transferring to a medium size university in the midwest.
But I would definitely apply to my HS “dream school” University of Illinois. In the 2020’s I would have the benefit of the internet and knowing that financial aid would be available.
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Gosh, I wish I hadn’t been such a slacker. Life would have been so much easier finding a job. Ironically, when I did find “the job”, I was there 28 years and definitely not a slacker. It was a sweatshop. I remember one yearend, after 30 days without a day off, going into the bathroom stall and having a good frustrated cry.
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If all else was equal, I would have picked UDel again. I did not have great grades in HS or a strong SAT score, but crushed college academically, met my husband in a frat house basement, and had a great time!
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If I had the same HS GPA (somewhat less than 4.0 unweighted, but around 4.0 UC-weighted), probably would shift the application list “downward” to “less selective” schools (some of which are more selective now than some of the “more selective” schools were decades ago) and probably would apply to more.
If I had a HS GPA that was higher due to grade inflation, greater availability of honors/AP courses, etc. that differed between then and now, probably would apply to a similar list, but extended with additional “less selective” schools added for likely/safety.
I had a NM-worthy PSAT back then, and greater awareness of NM scholarships now may have at least led to looking into them, especially since college list prices are much higher now (adjusted for general inflation). However, the frequent noise of bigotry politics in some parts of the country could have made some of the NM scholarship schools less attractive as a person of a visible minority group.
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One thing I think I would have liked to do is study abroad for a semester or so. I didn’t even know that existed, and didn’t know anyone who did it. Then again, maybe nobody did that 40 years ago! I really wish I would have pushed my kids more to do this, especially my younger one, but he never could find the right time to do it. He regrets that.
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Was just talking to my husband about this very question. We met in college so I wouldn’t change that, but reading about programs like W&M’s joint degree with St Andrews, I wish I had done something crazier than a small LAC.
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I loved my SLAC, but I would take off my East Coast blinders and apply to Pomona, Scripps, Pitzer, Occidental, Kenyon, Oberlin, Macalester, and Carleton.
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