great question! I think I would have applied to same schools (shameless overachiever) and ended up at the same place. I DO think I would have chosen a different major. My degree is in biology because I started pre-med and then pre-PT and well that just made sense. I knew nothing about engineering and I think looking back I should have majored in biomedical engineering. Way more my speed…
I don’t think I would have done anything differently, though, by today’s standards, I might not be admitted.
Seriously. No way wold I have been admitted to BC today!
I sure as heck wouldn’t get national merit today!
Are kids just smarter now, lol?
YES! Both of my kids surpassed my knowledge a long time ago . and NO WAY I’d be admitted if I had to apply now.
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What an interesting question. At the time I had no one to help me, heck I didn’t even realize you could take the SAT more than once. My parents thought I should just go to a community college because college is college. I applied to MIT, Brown, Yale and Rutgers. MIT had a 2 part application process and I only filled out one part, Brown I was rejected for a combined med school undergrad program and Yale I was interviewed and the guy doing the interview said I wouldn’t be able to afford Yale so it was a waste of time and I should focus on instate schools.
I ended up at Rutgers on a full ride. If I was applying again I would pick UCSB, there is no comparing New Brunswick and Santa Barbara.
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WHAT??? This is insane to me! If an admissions person said this today they’d be sued probably. Just wow!
The interviewers are not AOs. Also maybe the FA today is much more generous than 30 years ago. The poor family most likely will get a huge FA at Yale, and become affordable.
If Yale did not give much FA at that time, maybe the interviewer was doing a favor, just like folks at the Chance Me/Match Me prioritizing on family budget for school selection.
I had NO guidance. I would do it MUCH differently. I would have applied only to SLAC –and I wouldn’t have gone where I did (a large public). But if I had the wisdom I have now - I also wouldn’t have messed up much of my senior year.
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My GPA and test scores are on par with D26’s. She definitely has higher rigor. Her main EC is higher impact (recruited athlete). My marching band audition video didn’t carry much admissions weight.
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Given my circumstances at the time, I don’t think there’s any other college path I could have realistically taken. I was a NMF from a family with very limited means, so I was choosing from among schools that offered full tuition NM scholarships; being an obedient rule-follower, I chose the one that my parents clearly favored due its alignment with our religious tradition.
But given the opportunity to choose any school, I would have really fit much better at a smaller school with less Greek life and more life-of-the-mind type students. After seeing D22’s experience at Rice, I’ve thought many times: THAT’S where I should have been.
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I don’t quite feel this way – despite being NMF, I wasn’t nearly as cerebral as my D22 is, nor did I want to work that hard in college.
But oh, I sure do love that she’s relishing every minute at Rice!
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I don’t know if the kids are generally getting smarter, but they’re definitely getting better with earning higher grades/scores, and I don’t need to go back 30 plus years to see the trend. My D22 and D26 went to same high school(7 to 12 and about 150 per class) and there were about 20 students with 4.0 GPA at the end of 8th grade for D22’s class. For D26, there were about 60 students with 4.0, that’s 40%!. How do you explain that with same teachers(no grade inflation) from same district? Aligning with this, number of NMSF were increased from 8 to 16.
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Those are interesting stats! I have no answers. I don’t know the grades in my kids’ classes – but in D22’s class of 137, there was one NMSF, and in D26’s class of 118, there were five. (And the cutoff scores were a good bit higher this year, too.)
I applied to two schools. One was the school my mom worked at. So tuition free! Springfield college. I also applied to Roger Williams (the pull of the beach called me!) but I chose SC for financial reasons. I loved it! I’m still friends with a few classmates.
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Grew up in London. I wanted to go to college in New York City. Applied to one school (what!!) and went to Columbia. Not sure I would get in today. I wouldn’t change a thing. It’s been an adventure.
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Great question. I would 100% go where I went again. I loved it, I knew it was a perfect fit for me within minutes on campus for my visit (I was already excited about it before the visit from research). What I would do differently though, is I would pay far more attention to the rest of my list than I did. The overconfidence I had that I was going to get into my top choice, Ivy League school makes current me shake my head. I gave so little thought to the rest of my list as I never really thought I could end up at any of them. That was foolish even then. I got lucky it didn’t cost me.
If doing it over, Pomona would be high on my list as the Claremont college consortium is something I would have loved. Elon and Morehouse would probably make my list too.
I applied to 4 schools—San Diego State, Chico State, University of the Pacific and University of San Diego. I got into all of them but only considered SDSU and USD. That is because my boyfriend at the time was a year ahead of me and at UCSD (I didn’t have the grades for UCSD).
I went to SDSU and broke up with that boyfriend before the end of my first semester. In hindsight, I hate that I picked a school to follow a boy. I wish someone had told me not to do that, but then, I probably wouldn’t have listened. I was still kind of a mess with academics in college, until I got into my major. I loved being a journalism major, learned to hustle, did a ton of internships, studied abroad and had a good time in college. I think I would have grown more intellectually in a smaller environment with classmates who wanted to study. As it was, I partied too much and ended up on academic probation my first semester sophomore year. That scared me pretty straight and things improved after that. I did make good friends that I am still close to today, so all in all, it worked out for me. But I do wish I’d explored beyond San Diego.
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I think I probably would have applied to mostly the same. I REALLY wanted to get out of my small hometown, so looking at colleges was of real interest to me. I ended up applying to two schools, one early action school that I was accepted to early December and the other an early decision school I found out I think a few weeks later. Both schools were within relatively easy driving distance to home which was important to my parents. I do wonder if I should have tried to go further away, but I was quite happy at the time with my choice. The only other thing in retrospect was if I should have tried to go do a D1 school with a good basketball team, lol! I do love college basketball, so it’d be nice to have an alma mater to support. But the D1 schools I looked at were 100% NOT the right fit, so I think it was still the right decision in the end.
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I LOVE Elon. Visited with both kids. S24 did not like how small it felt. D26 loves everything about it except the location and the fact that kids do not go to the football games/no Gameday culture there. She applied but I am guessing it will not be a strong contender unless something crazy happens. I would be thrilled if she ended up there.
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