HS class of 1977 GPA 4.0, no APs offered, Regents degree, all honors classes, valedictorian high school on Long Island, ECs tutor at children’s home, taught after school science program at elementary school, mathletes, majorette, private tutor and babysitter. Don’t remember SAT scores. Perfect score on Math SAT Subject Test.
Applied and accepted at 3 schools that I remember. Scholarships at 2, one I attended gave me 30 hours of credits so got out of a lot of humanities, Cal 1 and 2, and Physics. EE and math double major.
MIT actually had a rep come and knock at my door to talk to me. I was totally not interested because I wanted far away from the east coast and my parents! (Who moved to the town my college was in when I was a Sophomore)
My limits for a college were one that American Airlines flew to regularly, since that is who my dad worked for, and one that gave me a good scholarship.
I remember how much I hated writing scholarship papers my senior year. My parents wouldn’t let me go out until the papers were written and I had to apply for every scholarship under the sun.
I do want to say that what we always say to kids here “the school/your stats don’t make your future, you do” is I think very accurate.
My stats were pretty impressive, and I found MIT relatively easy. I only got one B the entire time I was there, and I never felt overwhelmed with work. But, I’ve always been a bit aimless. I like tackling new challenges, but I don’t really enjoy sticking with anything. I never really found a career that I was willing to stick with, and now I’ve been a stay at home mom for 20 years.
My husband struggled a lot more with his classes, got lots of Bs, a few Cs, and often felt overwhelmed. But he is focused and driven, and loves what he does.
My husband was putting in the work and learning the material really well. He has now had 25 years as a really successful engineer with lots of patents and success in the businesses that he’s in. He has been able to shift subfields multiple times in his career and still have lots of success and contributions to his companies.
I hope high schoolers and college students understand that their stats and their colleges don’t determine their future. I think drive and determination and willingness to work hard and focus on a goal are the most important contributors to actual results in the long run.
University admissions was massively less stressful back then.
There was no student in my high school with straight A’s. There was only one student with an average greater than 90% (I was second overall with an 89.9% average – something that is easy to remember). We did not worry about B’s because all of us got lots of B’s (unless we got C’s instead). We mostly only got A’s in our best subjects (except for a very small handful of strong students, maybe just that one guy). We did no preparation at all of the SAT, but just showed up and took it. It seemed to me that scores on the English part of the regular SAT were a lot lower, perhaps because Canadian English is not quite the same as American English. Only one person in the high school got 700 on the English part of the SAT. The math and science SATs were rather easy, which might be a comment on the relatively quality of math and science education (also math and science should be the same whichever country you are in).
My high school did not offer calculus as an option. I think that precalculus probably had about 12 students in the class. It was by far the smallest class I had ever had.
Our local “very good” public university was McGill, which was a safety for maybe the top 10 students and probably likely for about as many more (and very affordable at the time in-province). I only applied to one other university. The only stressful thing was deciding which to attend after having gotten accepted to both.
ECs were just whatever we wanted to do. No one stressed about having the “right” ECs (McGill didn’t care about ECs, nor did the two universities that later merged to become Concordia). I only became president of the chess club because no one else was willing to do it. I had absolutely no idea what to do as president of the chess club, so I asked for ideas. Then for the better suggestions helped whomever had suggested it to put it into place. It was only years later that I realized that listening is what “leadership” is really about – I sort of fell into this by mistake. Someone suggested that we have a chess knockout tournament. We got $20 from the school and the guy who was the best player in the school and I went out to find an award. We couldn’t afford a fancy chess set for $20, so we bought a copy of a chess book (Modern Chess Openings). He made one bad move when we played so I still have the book. Skiing and hockey were popular sports. I think that the ski club probably included about half the high school.
I think that our world was a lot more local back then.
Speaking for myself and my friend group - we were plenty stressed worrying about college admission. I remember being at a band rehearsal on Ivy Day and there being a huge line at the pay phone with kids lining up to call home to see if the mail had come.
The only thing that stands out to me about my experience is that I had a 3.97 GPA and was #3 of 14 in my graduating class. The top 2 were National Merit Scholars, which by itself seems kind of crazy for such a small class. I ended up with enough scholarships that I don’t even remember applying for, to get my entire COA and books covered plus a refund from my local state school, which also happened to be the only one my parents allowed me to apply to.
When I went to law school the big state U law school had a grid. One side was GPA in UG. The other side was LSAT score. Using the grid I knew that I would definitely be accepted and I was. No essays. No other information needed.
GPA - 3.7. Our school didn’t weight Honors or Gifted classes at all, so your GPA was your GPA.
Top 10% of senior class, but can’t remember exactly what number. I think somewhere in the 50-60s out of a class of 800?
Okay, re-centering scores was interesting (thanks for those links!). Re-centered score is 1520. NMSF. Also took ACT (36) which was pretty unusual at the time on East Coast.
SAT IIs: English, Math, Spanish, US History, Chemistry. Scored from low to high 700s on all of those.
I don’t remember AP courses, maybe that’s why our school pushed so many SAT Subject tests?
ECs: Field Hockey (4 years), Synchronized Swimming (2 years), Crew (2 years), Model UN (4 years), Home Ec Club (4 years), PT job from sophomore year to graduation (McDonald’s until I got my Lifeguarding certification. Lifeguard PT during school year and summer full time from senior year of high school to senior year of college)
Applied to 4 schools. Accepted to 3 (two which were in USNews Top 10 then and still are, as well as my safety), waitlisted at 4th (nowhere near Top 10, lol*). Attended the school with the best financial aid package, which still left me with student loans - now the same school has a “no student loan package” for students/families from my economic background aka poor.
*They must have been yield protecting! That’s it…not that it would have been a bad match…they must have worried I’d say no… #stillsalty
Valedictorian of a small rural school in TX, 1470 SAT (pre-1995), NMF. Not sure of GPA exactly, but somewhere in the 98/99 region. My ECs were essentially a list of everything the school offered - 5 or 6 sports, academic competitions, Spanish club, FFA, you name it. State champion in one academic discipline and state qualifier in another, regional finalist in track & field (would’ve been recruitable for D3 if we’d had any idea that such a thing even existed).
As far as I can recall, it never occurred to anyone that this profile might be competitive for admission to highly competitive universities. My family had limited resources, so when an acquaintance told my mom that most universities in Texas (save Rice) offered free tuition for NMF, that information pretty much dictated the terms of my college search. I went to Baylor, which was my parents’ clear preference for me and had been my mom’s dream school once upon a time. In hindsight, I knew even then that Rice was where I would likely find my people, but it was perceived to be a financial burden and wasn’t really an option at the time. Now my own daughter - very much like me in many ways - is at Rice with her people, so I guess things have a way of coming full circle.
Your story resonates a lot with my own. The details aren’t identical, but the message is.
I had a 4.0, highest rigor (calculus and all honors classes where available – I had never heard of AP), and was valedictorian of my class at a small, rural, fairly poor high school. I don’t recall my SAT scores, but I know that I was a commended student based on PSATs and that my verbal score was way higher than most of my classmates at Carnegie Mellon. I would guess that my essays were very good, but everything else was – at most – average excellence territory. I was an overachiever in my own little world, but I wasn’t breaking new ground.
I initially applied and was accepted at three colleges: Johns Hopkins, William & Mary, and (a local school) Allegheny. I kind of freaked out in spring of my senior year because I didn’t like Allegheny and the other two felt too far from home. In April, I called Carnegie Mellon from my guidance counselor’s office and asked if they were still accepting applications. They said that they were to certain programs, so I applied to a program that was still accepting applications and was accepted.
My teachers warned me that college would be hard, so I went in scared and risk-adverse. But I also only got one B in college and it was a philosophy class my first semester. I should have argued more with the TA on some of the grading of my papers! I wish I had had more confidence and known that I was as capable – or more so – than my peers who came from better resourced schools.
All that said, I kind of floundered professionally. I didn’t find anything that excited me like school had, and I also couldn’t figure out how to create my own path because I was used to excelling at a pre-defined one. While I have worked some, I have mostly been a stay-at-home mom since my kids were born.
I have two kids in college now. One is a high achiever and one is struggling. Knowing what I know about myself and what I have seen in others, it isn’t clear to me who will be more successful professionally. They both have qualities that could serve them well after they graduate, so it will be interesting to see how they both make that transition.
ok i’ll play. HS class of '90 from Midwest suburb. GPA 4.6-ish (weighted for 5.0 for honors “As”) with rank of 3 out of ~600. SAT 1370 (prep courses were for rich kids back then so i didn’t get any) and NMSF. State debate runner-up and District champion but floundered at Nationals (0-3 record- yikes!). JV Tennis, Science Olympiad, NHS, 3-4 middling clubs.
Deferred EA from Princeton then rejected during RD cycle, but got into Amherst College, Rice University (with merit scholarship), UMich (honors program with merit scholarship), UVA, and Northwestern. Michigan was my safety back then (rolling admissions so i got in November). I don’t know how anyone can get into T20 schools these days - the competition be fierce.
I was in the top third of myHS class of almost 1200 students. My GPA was about 3.0…I think.
I didn’t even send a college application out until very late. Applied to two small colleges and one public university. I followed the money and went to one of the small colleges for freshman year. The first time I saw the place was on move in day.
I played no sports (way before title IX). I was heavily involved in vocal music, however. Leadership positions, soloist, etc.
After freshman year, I transferred to the public university I had previously been accepted to. I was on a first name basis with the financial aid office staff because I came begging for money every.single.quarter (and somehow they found me money).
I’m quite sure I would be accepted to every place I applied even now. None were particularly highly competitive colleges for admissions.
Had about a 3.5 with only 3 or 4 APs at my school (I took 2 of them) , took Honors English all 4 years - the only honors class available and there were no weighted grades. 12XY on my SAT (don’t remember the last 2 digits). I was probably in the top quarter or top third of my class - only applied to 4 schools and got accepted to all: UC Berkeley, UC Davis, Santa Clara and a 5-year dental program at the University of the Pacific which I ultimately attended (and dropped out of and did bigger things - culminating in law school)! HS class of 1995 - no sports, never worked, played piano, did some volunteering, no student body government, co-president of one club.
Not in 1969 in a suburban Midwest city! The high school had well over 3200 students…and was only grades 10, 11, 12. My 1969 class was the largest ever graduation class.
I’ll add…of the about 1200 students, more than 90% went on to college.
Graduated in 1976. We did not have APs. I don’t know GPA, but I was 5/1000. According to the recentering tables linked above, my 1490 SAT would be equivalent to 1560 now.
Despite all that, I applied to only a few colleges and only one reach, Middlebury, which turned me down. I had almost no ECs because I worked to help support the family, and I needed financial aid. I think that’s what mattered.
I went to a small LAC that gave me a creative writing scholarship. Basically hated it there, transfered after two years to Umichigan’s Honors Program.
Graduated with a 3.86 and Highest Honors in English.
And a boatload of debt between my mom (dad died when I was 14) and me.
I know your reply was to MAmomto4 but
for me, I know my husband is more book smart and it doesn’t bother me much. Common sense is a whole different story.
