Watching the funny Holderness Family video on college admissions got me thinking it would be fun to share our old stats when we were young. While the video was funny there were really quite a few truths to the thing. Also, I remember that windbreaker being in all the stores
Here is mine:
GPA 4.0 - no weighted, unweighted, APs or Honors back then. Just a whole lot of required classes and some fun electives
Rank 2 but class was pretty small
Varsity XC and track all 4 years
ECs: Honor Society, VP of science club, spanish club, ski club and drama club - I think I joined all the clubs for field trips and to be in the yearbook multiple times
Part time job
Volunteered as a youth soccer coach even though I had never played in my life.
Here is the kicker. Only applied to one school. Was admitted and attended that school.
4.0 GPA, top 5% of my class, strong ACT, 6 APs (edited to add that in), super active with multiple school bands, leadership positions, hospital volunteer, school clubs, and a PT job. I applied to 7 schools and had 1 rejection, 1 WL, 5 admits. Not sure it was really that different than my D’s experience 30 years later.
Graduated in '89 with a 3.36 GPA at an excellent public school in the northeast, pretty sure that was good enough for top quarter of my class. I took the strongest schedule available. Varsity swimming and track all four years. Qualified for state in both sports. No other ECs other than a summer job.
I ended up at what is now a top-10 LAC with those mediocre stats. However, I didn’t get in to ANY of the other colleges I applied to which included W&M, F&M, Colorado College, Hamilton, and Colgate. I’m sure it was due to my low GPA!! I had friends who went to Georgetown, Trinity, Brandeis, McGill, Colby, Skidmore and many other great schools who didn’t take any advanced classes. Not sure that would ever happen today.
As a minor tangent, my friend posted an obituary for his mom (she was in her 80’s when she died) and it said she was valedictorian of her high school class with a 3.8 GPA. Just wow! Really speaks to grade inflation.
Class of 94
GPA just below 4.0, no APs
32 ACT
NMF #4 of 41
ECs were average
I think I applied to just one school because I met the adcom at a college fair and she was really enthusiastic, probably because I was NMF, which I didn’t really understand at the time. I might have applied to one other, but only had eyes for the one I attended, a small private 2 hours from home.
My kids only applied to safeties, so their experience was not much different than mine.
Okay, I’ll play. I don’t remember my GPA, maybe around 93-94 but I was ranked #7 in a class of 180 at a mid performing HS where most kids going to college went to SUNY schools, class of 1986 (My friend who was the valedictorian went to SUNY Albany). I took 2 AP classes, all that was offered at my public school. Math through Calculus. SAT 1280. Basic EC’s like sports (not recruited or even very competitive), community service, orchestra, summer jobs. Accepted to BU, Tufts, Holy Cross, Barnard. WL at BC. Denied at Yale. Accepted and attended Wesleyan. I had friends with similar or lower stats who attended Johns Hopkins, Colgate, BC, Vassar, a couple Cornell, one BS/MD at BU. Just a completely different world today in all ways.
The most interesting part of this exercise comes after looking at my own kids in comparison, and not just their stats, but their characters and personal qualities. They are brighter, more engaged, better informed, funnier, more motivated, more confident and just so much more together and prepared than I was.
I went to a selective STEM boarding school in a low-representation state, co 96. GPA 4.0, 36 ACT/1560ish SAT I think, NMF, school didn’t rank but my guidance counselor probably said I was one of the top in my class. School didn’t label classes as AP or Honors (all classes were considered college level) but I had 5s on the both parts of the Physics C test and on the Calc BC at the end of my junior year. I had published an electronics/math research paper, it was not impressive though! I had done a few selective summer research programs. Volunteer hours for my school, math/engineering competition team (no impressive results) & was in a student Bible club, but no other ECs.
I applied to 4 schools & got into all: UM Rolla (now called MS&T) & CWRU (got into both with full scholarships), Cornell (accepted but couldn’t afford), & MIT (where I attended). I only applied to MIT because my school made me but attending was the best experience of my life.
I think I’d still have a decent chance of getting in. My husband on the other hand…
4.0 from rural upstate NY, 1420 SAT (higher math lower English) (using ucbalumnus’s charts this would be a modern 1520 so not so low), ECs varsity soccer & wrestling (but it was a tiny school, so anyone who wanted to play with varsity) plus lots of jobs. He applied to 3: Naval Academy (rejected), his backups MIT & U of Rochester (admitted to both).
We joke that, not only would he have no chance today, but we don’t know how he got in 30 years ago. His great grandmother was one of the first women to take classes MIT, though, so maybe that was a plus in his column?
Graduated HS in 1995. My mom had a great plan to forget about APs and stick to regular-level classes but get easy A’s. Did very little work in HS and ended up in the ivy league.
Late 70’s grad from a very good high school. 3.97 & I think 7 out of 520. Very good SAT but can’t remember what it was. I ran track & played volleyball a couple years, played basketball one year, focused on my job once I was old enough to work. We didn’t have honors or AP classes, although I did have a newly implemented English class that I think may have been AP Lit (we paid to take it. It was through Syracuse U, and we could get college credit - but no national exam). I applied to one school, because it was the only affordable option other than the college down the road a couple miles. It was actually a difficult school to get into. Got accepted, attended, graduated. No debt, no regret.
Graduated High School in 1977 in Brooklyn. I was salutatorian (class of over 900 students). Had probably a 95 GPA. Details - school newspaper, yearbook, captain of the math team (we were not a very good team), math club, photography club, philosophy club, student council member, 4 or 5 on Calculus AP, Regents degree, honors math classes (only subject they offered honors in), 4 years of science (no APs offered - bio, chem, physics, earth science.), can’t remember SAT score (think 720 in Math), and 4 years of french.
In general, nobody went away to college from my High School. Lots of kids commuted to CUNY, NYU, or PACE. I only applied to Brooklyn College, my father’s alma mater and my sister was already there. It was the time of guaranteed CUNY admissions. We had no money and I got a BEOG grant (precursor to the PELL grants?) Of course, I got in.
HS class of 1984. Can’t remember my class rank but around the top 20%. Super strong in the humanities - not so much in math. Was a NM semi finalist. I think my SAT was in the low 1400s - lopsided, though, with 800 in English. 2 AP (as a senior - our school only offered 3 or 4 and only to seniors). Basic ECs - track, literary magazine, yearbook and that was it. Applied to 6 - accepted to Colby, Holy Cross, Middlebury and UMass Amherst; rejected Harvard and Tufts.
Back then, it was much more possible to self-support on a high school graduate job while living on one’s own (i.e. not living with parents), and college tuition and books were much lower (almost trivial at an in-state public university).
