Based on the parent questions during college presentations, I’m pretty sure some parents were more worried about the food than the academics. After 3 kids, I got to the point where I wanted to scream that all colleges had meal plans and Johnnie was not going to starve!
I had kids apply in '07, '09, and '15. The biggest differences I saw were in on-line apps and communications and the info being available in portals. That was nice, to see what info the college had, or had not, received for the various parts of the applications. In 2007 all 10 of S1’s schools accepted paper applications. By 2015, I’m not sure any of D’s did.
I can’t exactly remember Gatekeepers, but I obsessively read most of the books of that era for S1. I found most of them interesting and helpful in some regard, especially for kid #1 from a rural school that lacked much of a guidance department.