I drove, by myself, 5 hours to New Orleans to visit Tulane. No cell phone, just a handwritten list of directions. I wonder whether I had to call my mom and tell her I got there OK? I don't remember. I wanted to go to Tulane because my boyfriend went to LSU.
I typed all the applications and my parents were uninvolved…until I shouted downstairs, “We don’t need financial aid, right?” That got mom’s attention, and she filled out that part.
I might have done the essays on a laptop. My dad always loved tech–I remember getting the Apple IIe with two external disk drives for Christmas one year. I do remember that the word processing program didn’t automatically repaginate–if you added a line, you had to manually move ALL the subsequent page breaks.
Tulane didn’t give me any scholarship money, LSU gave me a full ride. But when I opened the Duke envelope and saw that I got in, I cried and said, “I want to go to Duke.” My boyfriend couldn’t believe I was leaving him. My dad was a little bummed that I gave up the full ride. So he had to pay, gasp–$10,000 per year for Duke, including food and dorming!
Tuition/room/board for my private LAC was about $4,800-5K back in my day. NYS Regents scholarship was, IIRC small and my dad let me use it (or the equivalent) as spending money. I am talking 40 years ago, not 20.
My Regents Scholarship was $250 per year for up to 5 years, only good if you went to a college within NY state. I owed $15,000 at graduation, 9.75% interest rate. Back then, though, my checking account paid 5.5% and savings paid 6.5%. I worked as a waiter over the summers and would return to school with about $4000 in my pocket.
When I started at my state university, the tuition was $229/academic quarter for 9 units or more where 12 units were minimum full-time. That is $687/year. At the time, Federal Minimum wage was $3.35/hr. So, it took about 200 hours of labor to make a full year of tuition.
The numbers now are yearly tuition of $12,500 and minimum wage of about $10/hr. So, it takes 1,250 hours to make tuition.
I will point out that Financial Aid did not seem as prevalent back then as it is now.
Think about when that was and consider this. After my Mother passed I had to deal with her effects. Her financial records from 1952 when she was in college showed she worked as a resort waitress during the summer and went back to school in the Fall with $1200 in earnings. That was hers to spend on (presumably sodas, poodle skirts and records). Tuition then was a budget-smashing $40/qtr. The US non-farm median family income was $4,000 at the time.
Same as many others here. I began college in 1978. I applied to three colleges, never worried that I wouldn’t get into one of them, and took the SAT once. The only person who took it more than once was actually our valedictorian -but people looked at her as obsessed because she wasn’t happy with a 1500 out of 1600.
I remember looking at a list of the top 10 journalism schools in the country - I have no idea where it came from - maybe my guidance counselor? I didn’t want to go to Missouri or Iowa, I knew I couldn’t get into Northwestern, so I applied to Syracuse. I also applied to GW and Penn State. I ended up going to Penn State because I couldn’t make up my mind and figured it was silly to have my parents spend more money if they all seemed good to me. (In 1978, PSU was $2500/yr, GW was $5000/yr and Syracuse was $7000/yr - for tuition and room and board.)
I was really interested in going to UCLA (I saw it on a family vacation when I was 16) but my mom wouldn’t let me apply anywhere that far away. And UCLA was cheap then, even considering OOS and transportation. My only absolute requirement was that the school was far enough away that my parents couldn’t just drop by for a visit. lol If PSU hadn’t accepted me to its main campus, I would have gone to one of the other two.
I remember not applying to Boston U because they wanted an essay and I didn’t feel like it. There wasn’t a heck of a lot of thought put into it.
Happened in 1995 and for the most part, it did raise scores.
Only exception was for those whose math scores was somewhere in the mid-700s and up. For them, their math score would actually drop slightly according to a chart placed in my HS college office.
Yea, I think tuition per semester at UG and law school (instate) was about $900/term or so. Dorms and meal plans were another few thousand a term. Remember tho, back then, you could buy a nice house in HI for 5 figures, not 6 or 7 or 8! I did have work study and with merit aid, summer wages, savings, I graduated with virtually no debt from law school.
I believe we wrote a letter to the school asking for an application. I guess I got the address from the guidance counselor. And I think the GC sent in our transcripts and SAT scores. But I swear, I don’t remember ever speaking to a guidance counselor at all or going to their office. LOL.
And of course through the years I lost track of when they started letting everyone know April 1st…is that it? I heard on Valentine’s Day. I don’t think my feet touched the floor the rest of that day. I remember going to a basketball game that evening. I have never been soooooo happy in my life. My dream school and I got to go there.
Application fee at Yale and State Flagship: $10 each in 1970 (I have the cancelled checks from December 1969). COA at Yale that year $4500. At State Flagship $2000. By 2008 they were both more than 10 times as much. I keep a draft of the essay for Yale. Terrible. I assume the final one was better because I made it to the waiting list in the beginning of April. Rejection letter (which I also keep) was dated June 1, 1970.
I have to say…I honestly do not remember how I paid for college. My single mom didn’t contribute a dime. I know I got some loans, And grants. I also worked while in college, sometimes 30 hours a week. My college was about $1500 total for the year…tuition, room, board, the works. But in 1969, that was a lot of money for a single working parent who likely earned less than $6500 a year.
My last year in college, I did get full costs covered through a state funded grant added to my student loan.
I had the type of loan that was forgiven if you taught in a low income area for a certain number of years…I think it was five. I had $1200 total in loans for four years of college. All forgiven because of where I worked.
Oh…and I transferred as a sophomore, and I was NOT eligible for any financial aid that year, for some reason. BUT, my old school ended in May, and the new one started in late September…so I had four full months to work and earn the money to pay…which was very possible back in 1970.
A quick internet search brings the current cost of Yale’s tuition up as $48,800. Accounting for the inflation @ucbalumnus showed, Yale costs just a bit less than twice as much as it did in 1970.
I started college in '71
