<p>Best thing I could have done to improve my admissions chances would have been to chose different parents, or, failing that, to change my religion (which really was a significant factor).</p>
<p>My mom tells me that when she got her ACT scores back, her counselor called her into his office and suggested that she not even bother to apply to college. She, rather fortunately, did not listen to that gem of advice.</p>
<p>My dad didn’t pick a college until the summer after his senior year, when he apparently went shopping for the school which would give him the highest baseball scholarship – his parents did not contribute to his college education, and he knew he’d need a scholarship to get through.</p>
<p>Mini, c’mon! you got into Williams! :)</p>
<p>I keep hearing about how “easy” it was back then. I had what would still be considered really high SATs and Achievement tests, and rank and GPA, too. I remember every dang number 'cause I still can’t believe it wasn’t enough. (cue violins.)</p>
<p>My ECs stank though ( I worked instead, to help out my widowed mom–no, really). I think needing financial aid was a real bummer to places like Middlebury back then. Anyway, they were my only “reach” school and turned me down. Oh well, I survived it!</p>
<p>I remember not wanting to take more than 1 yr of a lab science in high school. I did not progress in Math beyond Algebra I and Geometry! So even though my class rank wasn’t bad, my choice of colleges was rather limited. I was happy that U of South Carolina accepted me. Today they wouldn’t even look at me!</p>
<p>The funny thing about me being admitted to my alma mater was that I walked into a college that kids stress about today. My GPA was good (at least in '74 it was) at 3.7, and my achievement tests were good (IIRC, 98th percentile), but I hadn’t taken the SAT yet. When I went there, it was “UC Where” – now it’s UC Irvine. I always knew it would be a good college to be from.</p>
<p>My husband’s last serious girlfriend before he met me worked her SAT scores into the conversation when she met his parents for the first time. She was pushing 30 and a PhD candidate at this time. I make him retell me this story every now and then, it slays me.</p>
<p>I remember my SATs, but unlike his former girlfriend I don’t find any occasion to bring them up. My GPA was blemished only by typing, but we had no APs in my school. It’s hard to feel inspired to post to a “what are my chances” thread because I think the answers are largely baloney. Also depressing to remember what a nerd I was. Well, honestly, I still am. My own guidance counselor lobbied very hard for me to go to a state school. She said there were no East Coast schools better. Right.</p>
<p>My parents weren’t college grads, and didn’t know what to suggest. I was a complete slacker/jock in high school: graduated #180 in a class of 360 at a below-average high school. Toward the end of senior year, a math teacher went around the classroom and each student had to say what he/she was going to do after graduation. I said I was going to college, and he chuckled and said, “YOU’LL never make it in college!” Everybody laughed. Not exactly a big ego boost. I went on to get 2 bachelor’s degrees (both with honors) and 2 master’s degrees. I think I felt compelled to get two of each just to prove that teacher wrong.</p>
<p>With all of that education, I was in a good position to counsel my father about college, and he graduated from U of Michigan-Dearborn at age 78. After the graduation ceremony, we went back to my house, and he didn’t want to take off the cap and gown. I never saw anybody so proud to get a degree. I put the tassle from his graduation cap in his urn when we buried his ashes.</p>
<p>Love the SAT recentering, which turned my 770 verbal into the 800 I torment DS with. Of course, the little AP calculus geek turns right around and reminds me of my 570 math.</p>
<p>Didn’t go to college, and the guidance counseling I got was the classic “Take typing. Girls should learn to type”.</p>
<p>I’d like to find him now and…type something on him. Oh yes.</p>
<p>Heli, don’t you love “good advice?” My advice from adults was, “It doesnt’ matter where you go to college. Go to a junior college for two years and then decide if you want to finish.” That’s still pretty fair advice for a kid who has absolutely no idea if they would rather be a surgeon or a welder, but I was up to my eyeballs in political science/IR ECs and KNEW I wanted to go to law school. (OK, I didn’t end up in law school, but I do have a BA in Political Science.) </p>
<p>It was my father who made me take typing. Some of the best advice he ever gave me. Mrs. WashDad did NOT take typing because she wanted to make sure no one would ever try to make her a secretary. Mrs. WashDad has always been very sure of herself.</p>
<p>“Mini, c’mon! you got into Williams!”</p>
<p>Waitlisted. There were 9 students from my high school who applied. Six more qualified than I, all of whom went to Harvard, Yale, or Columbia. But all Jewish, and in those days, alma mater still had a Jew quota, and hadn’t taken a student from my high school (Stuy) in years. I was the only English major. (they pretty much screened out all “New York City premeds”.) This trend would continue at Princeton for another two decades.</p>
<p>It wasn’t easier back then. Admissions rates were roughly the same as they are now. (and that’s true at many prestige colleges.) Within 10 years most of these schools were more diverse than they are today (Princeton had a higher percentage of African-American students in 1971 than in 2006; and in 1981, virtually all of these schools were more economically diverse than they are today, a function of the increasing division between the top 3% of the population and everyone else.)</p>
<p>“I think needing financial aid was a real bummer to places like Middlebury back then. Anyway, they were my only “reach” school and turned me down. Oh well, I survived it!”</p>
<p>At my high school, the guidance counselor used to threaten students with Middlebury, but no one ever actually went. ;)</p>
<p>I went to Princeton in the mid-late 70’s. The statistics back then, or so I was told (although perhaps mini is right, I don’t know) were that they took 25% of their applicants. I went to a small NYC private school, had a B+/A- GPA (I don’t know how to calculate GPA, since we never did it, nor did we have class rank), absolutely no ECs at all, high SAT scores, and 4 APs. Oh, and I was Jewish and pre-med. 
There is no way I’d get into Princeton today.</p>
<p>“Take typing. Girls should learn to type”.</p>
<p>Wow - this struck a chord with me. Like Mrs. Washdad, I refused to take typing for the same reason, and was glad I did. When my H and I graduated with the same major, he would get interviews for executive-in-training positions and get asked where he wanted to be in 5-10 years. I would get called in for secretary-switchboard operator-teaching positions and asked how many words I could type a minute. There was this unspoken assumption that I would only be in the workforce a few years, then drop out, get married and have a family. </p>
<p>But to answer the question originally posted, I’m sure I could have gotten into a higher caliber university than I attended, had I known there were other options. However, I received a fantastic education at my state university and have no regrets.</p>
<p>"Oh, and I was Jewish and pre-med. "</p>
<p>My apologies. I did mean to write "those from NYC “public schools”. (There wasn’t any from Stuy in more than two decades, 1600 SATs, A averages, and all.)</p>
<p>(Data that Interesteddad posted indicates that almost all of these schools were easier in the late 70s/early 80s than in the early 70s, mostly as a result of school-age population changes.)</p>
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<p>Wow. That’s pretty amazing (and disheartening). I’ve read “The Chosen”, and feel that I was at Princeton during a brief ‘golden age’ for Jewish students. There seemed to be a lot of us, and the blonde girls in their Fair Isle sweaters and boys with topsiders and no socks were viewed as anachronisms from another age. As you point out, things have changed a lot since then.</p>
<p>thanks, Mini. I couldn’t get into your safety school. :(</p>
<p>Wasn’t my safety school. No one ever got in, but it may be because no one ever applied. NYU was the safety, in those days, for those who couldn’t get into City College (and could afford it). My “safety” was GW (which is now considered much more desirable than it was then. The DC location was considered a real negative, NO ONE went to Georgetown since St. John’s and Fordham were considered so much better.)</p>
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<p>As are so many other schools. My safety was Wellesley. If a girl from my school didn’t get into any colleges (we were only allowed to apply to 3, or at most, 4) our headmistress would call Barnard and an acceptance was immediately forthcoming.</p>
<p>Put me with the bunch who probably wouldn’t get into my alma mater now on accounta my not having more than a couple of ECs (about the usual number for those days), no community service (almost nobody did back then) and not showing a lot of passion for much except studying a lot. That’s why I was a BBNSWRK (bright but not so well-rounded kid), the kind of student colleges were looking for back in them thar days.</p>
<p>This is a no-brainer: Forget EC’s and community service - my grade point average was a full point below what’s needed to get into UC Berkeley these days. Back then a high enough SAT score was an auto-admit.</p>
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<p>My high school had the same relationship with Vassar.</p>
<p>I’d never get into Harvard. My SAT scores were fine - especially recentered. But I was a B+/A- student. My main EC was doing the Gold Award (only I don’t think it was called that then) for Girl Scouts. I wrote my essay about the project we did. At school I did modern dance (badly, but I loved it), worked on the newspaper and yearbook (but only as a senior) and played recorders with friends. We all had great community service thanks to the school’s Wed. program which sent us all out into the community.</p>