Remember the old fashioned PAPER college applications we filled out back in OUR day?

Parent Cafe
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  1. I picked up an application to the state school I wanted to attend at the College Fair in September. I think I filled it out right there. I was accepted by early October (a few weeks later). I took the SAT in the 9th grade when a friend's older brother asked if we wanted to go with him (the testing center was at a college 30 miles down the road). I never took it again - it was "good enough". I got a full ride scholarship - valued at $1200 year for tuition, room, board, and books! I think I had to pay "fees" of several hundred dollars. At my college graduation, my parents gave me the $4000 they had saved for my college fund to buy a used car.

Interestingly, I got a lot of mail from Washington and Lee, which went co-ed that year. I don’t remember any other mail. I was not interested in being one of the few females!

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I applied to three schools, one private near home, one state school, one out of state. I have no memory of filling out the applications or getting them. I realized the only affordable choice was the state school, Miami University in Ohio. I do remember getting a lot of mail from colleges after taking the PSAT or the SAT.

I just Googled to see if I could find the tuition and discovered a chart that starts with my junior year in 1980 when tuition and fees were $1,310 per year ($3,754 today). I remember my parents complaining during a tuition hike and see that it was the next year, when tuition rose 36% to $1,780 due to budget cuts. The chart only goes up to 2008, but it’s interesting: http://www.units.miamioh.edu/oir/factbook/FB200809/TuitionFinAid/TuitionFinAid0809A.html

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Paper applications were still around in the mid-'90s when I was applying to colleges.

Considering the extreme academic competition in my HS and the prevailing “Ivy/elite university or bust” among many classmates…especially those in the top half of the class, paper applications wouldn’t have posed much of an obstacle to us applying to 10+ schools if we were permitted to do so by the college office.

This factor was one of the reasons why my HS’s college office had a policy of not allowing us to have more than 8 applications, having our application choices vetted to ensure we had some safeties and matches relative to our stats/ECs, and 1 of those applications must be for a state/local public college systems(SUNY or CUNY).

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Paper applications were still in use when older d applied to schools in 2002-2003. I can still picture the Dartmouth paper application packet. Even I think for younger d who graduated from high school in 2006, some schools were still offering a choice of online or paper.

me I am really old and I recall the file drawer of college catalogues in the high school library. Have no memory of getting the application but I applied to (or considered) several schools in the top file drawer, beginning with the letter A. I grew up in Queens NY and attended a SUNY school that was at the beginning of the alphabet, never visited until my parents dropped me off for freshman year. Everyone in the city had to file an application for the CUNY schools and it was one application. You listed your choices and submitted to one central location and were matched based on your request and your credentials. I remember both the SAT and the achievement tests but for us more importantly was an exam given over 2 days in the beginning of your senior year, the Regents Scholarship exam. It tested actual curriculum content and depending on your score, you were given merit money either Regents Scholarship or lower award for Scholar Incentive. This reduced your tuition amount at SUNY and CUNY which might still have been tuition-free, cannot recall or could be applied I believe to private colleges in NYS. So with all of this unless you were totally academic elite to apply to Ivies or recruited athlete or perhaps went to a Catholic college or some other reason virtually everyone attended either SUNY or CUNY.

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Toward the end of my HS years in the early-mid-'90s, the budget for Regents Scholarships was such few classmates were counting on it.

Especially when we knew older classmates who were receiving printed checks for $0…which caused the local newsmedia to comment on it as a sign of budget cuts and a screwed up bureaucracy with misplaced priorities.

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I applied to four in the early 1980s, all applications hand written in blue pen. Cornell had about a 5" box in the application to write the essay. I tried getting a fifth application to Va Tech, sending postcards to them three times to get an application, but they never sent one. We didn’t even look at costs as a gym teacher’s salary was plenty to afford any college in the country.

The only colleges I considered (except for VT) were within 3 hours drive of our house, and if you looked in our driveway in those days you would know why. We had a 1960 Peugeot and a 1972 Ford LTD, both rusted through.

I only took the SAT once - my reading comprehension score dropped when one of the HS cheerleaders showed up in a tight white sweater and sat next to me, twirling her hair and chewing her pencil through the whole thing. Questions like orbit:apogee = seasons: ?. rue:street = pain: ?.

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@Magnetron - oh that’s right! The analogies and antonyms - and the quantitative comparisons on the math sections… BTW they still have that type of question on the “SCAT” which is the elementary test for kids to try to get into various GT programs.

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You are a young’un magnetron :slight_smile:

NY State Regents money was never a whole lot. But it was better than a kick in the pants.

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I really don’t remember if I would have corrected any mistakes on my applications with wite out, or just by plain crossing them out - either was acceptable back then. I do remember clearly that I wrote them by hand as the paper used for my particular applications was so thick and beautiful, it would not have easily fit into a typewriter (and space was provided). Plus, I had super neat handwriting and probably would have wanted to show it off! My handwriting has really degenerated these days…don’t use it very much, that’s for sure.

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Heck even when my youngest was applying in 2010 Georgetown’s online application (not the Common Application) was so stupidly designed he ended up printing it out and filling it in by hand/using our word processing program to fill out the essay. He didn’t get in so it was moot - but it really reflected negatively on them. It definitely went in the minus box - as in “This college is incompetent at technology.”

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I applied to our local in-state flagship U. After 1st semester, I applied to be an exchange student at UOregon and both were short paper applications. Got into both Us with no fuss. Did apply for financial aid at UOregon and got enough to stay there for all 3 years. No such thing as FAFSA at the time, just personal statement and long paper forms. It all worked out. Never took the SAT after JR year in HS and only took the LSAT once. Got into several law schools and chose one that worked out well for me–again I think these were paper apps in 1970s.

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Both my undergrad and grad applications were paper. Applied to 4 for undergrad, visited 3 of the 4 and was accepted to all. My parents did not fill out any financial aid paperwork. Applied to 2 MBA programs, one I could afford and one I couldn’t. Was accepted to both and went to the one i could afford :wink:

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Cobrat… I am much older than you. Back in my day, a Regents Scholarship pretty much covered your entire tuition. DH covered his entire college cost every year by what he made working as a waiter during the summer and school breaks.

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I’m a current high school senior, and it is astounding what you all are saying about the difference in tuition rates. College costs per year being in the low to mid single thousands? That’s virtually unheard of nowadays! Trying to figure out how to pay for college is mind boggling. Would it be incorrect to say that it is harder to work one’s way through school (like on minimum wage jobs) now than it was 30-40 years ago?

This is an awesome thread!

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Yep, we took the SAT once ( no matter what we had been doing the night before) because we had been told that it was an aptitude test that you couldn’t prep for.

I did my applications in ink without really thinking about it ahead of time. One had a box about 5"x5" where we had to insert an essay. So I just picked up my pen and started writing. I was admitted but didn’t get the big money merit scholarship that was the reason I was applying. (Ya think? Full ride for off the cuff essay? )
Got a merit scholarship at another school that brought a mid-level LAC within several hundred of the state school so off I went.

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I went to see the opening of Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan the night before I took the SATs! That was pretty much my only prep and the only time I took the exam. I don’t think I knew you could do it more than once, and I’d certainly never heard of the ACT living on the East Coast.

@albert69 - yes, it was possible to work your way through college 30 or so years ago. It wasn’t easy but it could be done. I remember reading an essay by Anna Quindlen with a (paraphrased) comment I love - she said that when she was growing up, you could work summers and put away money to pay your college tuition. For her kids, the only summer job that would earn them enough money to pay tuition would be as a bank robber!

To put things in context, the school I attended was $5,110 tuition my freshman year. It is now $37,426 (and that’s actually fairly inexpensive compared to its peers). The school my daughter attends (on a significant scholarship) is $42,690 just for tuition. If you compare the cost of computers, or cars, especially given the huge advances in technology, it’s ridiculous. I remember paying $100 for a calculator that did nothing but basic calculations - today you can buy a tablet computer for that amount of money. I’m not sure the value of a college education has gone up commensurate with the cost.

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Back then, high school graduates could support themselves (room and board) with jobs, while having a bit left over for the relatively small costs of tuition and books at an in-state public university, even with no support from parents (i.e. no money from the parents, parents too wealthy to get any financial aid, not even living in the parents’ house).

These days, working one’s way through college with no parental support in this manner is much more difficult if one does not have a large merit scholarship.

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Sure. It’s still priceless.

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@JustOneDad, I guess some would say it should be…

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@bookmama22‌

Not disputing your account. Just saying by the time I was in my later years in HS in the early-mid '90s, the budget for regents scholarships was so low that for recipients, it was little more than a mere formality of an honor. Nice to be able to list it on one’s resume/CV, but no money came with it.

Yet, the Regents Scholarship board somehow decided sending printed checks for $0 was a good use of scarce earmarked funds. An issue which many local NYC area newsmedia editorials of that time were wondering about and criticizing.

Only HS slackers like yours truly would do something like that in my HS or among most neighborhood friends who gave a crap about applying and going off to a respectable/elite college.

Most of the HS kids I was around who were serious about applying to college would write/type their college essays on a separate sheets of paper as “rough drafts” and only submit the final copies after making doubly sure they were writing/typing slowly to avoid crossouts, white-out, etc.

Especially considering cross-outs does tend to give some adults…including HS teachers I’ve had the impression the student wasn’t serious and could care less about the writing task at hand and even neatly applied seamless whiteout or the typing equivalent could flake off even after being dried.

Not only does the latter look really crappy aesthetically, it also renders the attempt to “correct” the mistake meaningless as the flaked off whiteout could reveal the underlying typo or in some cases, poor word choices.

That’s not to say the fears and perceptions derived from experiences with HS teachers or parents who felt such imperfections would cause the adcoms to gaspingly clutch for their smelling salts isn’t necessarily overblown.

After all, yours truly did fill out an application including handwriting essays during a lunch/free period in HS and opted to submit it due to the looming deadline even with ink smudges from using an unexpectedly leaky pen. I wouldn’t be surprised if the adcoms found the ink-smudged application quite memorable, especially after one of them brought it up in a passing friendly conversation after I was admitted.

This was very much a YMMV based on personality* and whether the individual was confident in his/her written communication skills and marketing him/herself or not.

Some classmates dashed off incredibly polished well-written college essays even to tippy-top elites they ended up being admitted to in less than 10 minutes. Others who also had similar college admission outcomes would slave away for weeks.

  • Along with those who weren't confident in the written communication and/or marketing themselves were obsessive perfectionists.