You would think that would be memorable receiving a poem.
I take it you let your girls know not to do that 
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Ok Iāll playā¦
Early 90s Valedictorian of my public HS in a city inNC, 450 some kids, 1/3 didnt go to any college and the class started at 600 but 150 or so dropped out over the years. I was the only one with a 4.0Uw. The salutatorian had 2 Bs two semesters of math. She went to Davidson, as did the #4 . #3 was rejected legacy to Duke but got into Dartmouth. Most of the rest of top kids went to UNC. I went to Duke and they also let in the #5 (who couldnt afford it because she wasnāt poor enough to get the need based aid I got), and the lower ranked star musician(who went to Duke). I was a pell grant kid and as such had grants to replace all loans at Duke due to their policy for NC folks. I applied to Unc and was a Morehead finalist, also got in to JHU and the Nwestern BS-MD program. Both of those schools had terrible financial aid with piles of loans. Got in everywhere, including Rensselaer with a partial merit due to being the school Medal winner, and a room/board/tuition merit scholarship to UNC as a finalist, but my parents still let me go to Duke since it came within their affordability (under 10k a yr all in). I do not remember my exact SAT now but with D21 we found a conversion table for %iles and mine would be low 1500s today, so less than D23 by a lot . I do remember verbal was just under Dukeās 75th %ile and math was over: I looked it up when I was making my decision. I did get the National Merit Scholarship but no one stacked aid so it didnāt cut down my parents cost further, which was quite disappointing at the time. I took max APs(four) and got a 5 on BC calc&Chem, 4 on english and 3 on computer science. The colleges only saw the 3 as that was my only junior AP!
DH did ED to Duke from New Jersey public as a first-gen, and got in but then got senioritis and got a nasty-gram about letting his AP calc grade slip to a C in the spring. He did well on the exam but he still remembers the fear of that note! He was the highest ranked boy in his HS of 200ish, but 3-4 girls were higher, was conductor of band and an eagle scout, and had a slightly lower SAT than I did but more APs(5) with better scores except math. So basically our kids are smarter /better resumes than us and yet had had to do much more to get where they are (Duke & Penn)
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This is so true. I think there has been a change even in the 10 years since my oldest was applying and youngest.
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Interesting that smart is fixed. I would say that all members of my family are equally smart in different ways. Cannot imagine saying that one of my kids was smarter or prettier. Just kind of gross.
To tell the truth I am pretty amazed just how accomplished some of you were. Here I was thinking it is just kids these days that do all the things 
That being said I bet I have one of the most embarrassing stories from a club I was in. It was ski club and I really wasnāt that great of a skier. Anyhow, my friend and I were going up on the chair lift and for some reason I didnāt push off enough at the exit and the chair lift picked me back up. So many crazy thoughts went through my head as I was getting higher and higher in the air and about to be going back down to the bottom of the hill. In that brief moment I decided I had to exit or I would be teased the rest of the trip. So I jumped. I must have been a good 10-15 feet above the ground. Luckily the snow was pretty soft but boy were the people behind me scared I had broken a leg or something. 
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That sounds familiar.
I applied to just two schools, mainly because my mother insisted that I attend a Catholic college not too far from home. There were a few other options but none appealed, and I only applied to the second school as a back up because I wanted desperately to leave home.
Iām impressed that so many of you recall your stats. I do not; that was about 50 years ago. My SAT (or maybe it was the PSAT) was good enough for me to get a Natāl. Merit scholarship. I received word of it after Iād started my freshman year, since I left high school following my junior year of high school. Again, I was just eager to leave home and that was a socially acceptable way to do so. When I learned about the NMS, I camped out by the office of the VP/Financial Aid until he arranged for an academic scholarship.
My ECs werenāt anything special - yearbook sales/ads, school TV news, French club, honor society, and Quill & Scroll are the ones I recall. Iāve read about some impressive things that high school kids have done/are doing and Iām in awe.
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By objective measures, I am smarter than my husband. Itās not gross to say that because it has little to no relevance in our daily lives. You seem to be conflating āsmartā with self-worth/aptitude/success. Saying I am smarter than he is certainly doesnāt mean I am better. He is smart enough, plus he is more driven, arguably harder working, and a better leader and delegator.
He is a far better athlete than I amā¦is that gross to say? He is also a better singer, but I am more artistic. It doesnāt seem odd or gross that we recognize our differences and celebrate each otherās strengths. I donāt understand why thatās so offensive to you.
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I never saw Harry Potter (yes, thatās seems impossible but true) - but Flint is a non descript dorm - you must be talking about the Hall of Languages thoughā¦assuming - donāt know.
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Theyāve already made a version of it: Educating Rita 
And if I had a nickel for every time someoneās hummed āBeauty School Dropoutā around me, I could have retired earlier.
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Wow. CC parents are quite an accomplished bunch! I am so not worthy. 
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Um, I am not embarrassed. 
I am not proud, either.
As āsuccessfulā as I was in high school, most of the kids I hung out with accomplished more in their careers than I did, even if their grades and test scores were lower in the 1980s. If you wanna think Iām like the quarterback re-living my glory days, fine, but it isnāt exactly a huge flex to admit I was the class nerd ā and being a great test-taker is not a skill that comes in very handy once you graduate.
But more to the point of this thread, as well as many of us may have done in the 80s, our kids left us in the dust. And whereas we mostly didnāt sweat about getting into college, our kids often canāt gain admission to their parentsā alma maters. Which is a damn shame.
We had it easier. So you ask, who cares? I think we all should. Because what college admissions has become is not sustainable. The highly selective schools are out-of-reach for historically ādeservingā students. Nearly every school is financially out-of-reach for most. The conventional ācollege experienceā is disappearing in the age of community college transfers and dual credit courses.
I find it enlightening to see what experiences informed the parents, compared to what this generation faces, personally.
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Classes ā I attended a basic, public HS in NYS that only offered 3 AP classes. I was bored out of my mind in math classes, so one of my teachers suggested that I read textbooks independently instead of going to classes. This led to getting ahead of the standard course sequence and reaching the highest level math/science/CSā¦ courses offered by my HS early. I became a half-time student at a nearby SUNY during HS to avoid being bored and/or finding classes uninteresting. In addition to math/science type courses, I also took social science type electives classes like biopsychology and behavioral neuroscience, at the college. This probably helped with LORs, which included a professor from the college. However, I had below average rigor in foreign language for my HS. I only took Spanish up to 3rd year or so. Instead I took Latin in my senior year, which I found more appealing.
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GPA ā I received a 4.0 in all college classes taken above. My GPA for classes taken in HS, was substantially lower, maybe 3.6 (not in top 10%). I often got Bās in subjective writing classes, classes that didnāt interest me. or classes that graded on participation.
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SAT/SAT II ā 500 CR, 800 Math/Science/ā¦ ā The relatively low CR score mostly relates to a weak vocabulary at the time. I received a much higher >700 on the verbal section of GRE, after being exposed to a wider vocabulary during college. I only took the SAT once without prep, because I wasnāt aware that it was acceptable to take more than once.
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ECs/Awards ā I had some local/regional achievements in math contests and participated in a quiz bowl + math league. I didnāt do any sports or particularly time consuming ECs and instead spent a large portion of my free time playing video games I may have also mentioned being published in Nintendo Power as the first person to complete a video game in college apps (figured out gameās password system). I was one of the few persons from my HS who was rejected by the National Honor Society after being initially invited to participate.
Admitted ā Stanford (attended), MIT, Brown, Cornell
Rejected ā Princeton
I only applied to the 5 schools above, without safeties, because I had a non-binding early acceptance. I only needed to apply to colleges that I might choose over the early acceptance. I applied to all colleges as a prospective engineering major.
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Not really. You went to college (usually the state school about an hour away, but a few went out of state and nobody went to the big names) or you went to work ā and honestly, a lot did go to jail. The ones who worked were in family businesses or apprentices, or got an associateās and worked as office help of one kind or another. I canāt remember anyone ever getting an athletic scholarship or going to a big school, but college was definitely perceived as the only way to end up with a ārealā job in a ārealā place. To this day there are no commute-distance trade schools or universities.
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Wow you are smart! Well done.
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The non binding early acceptable became the safety.
1985
Public county high school in the south
I was in the advanced group, so took the 2 AP classes offered.
Took no foreign language in high school (but was offered)
I remember I took pre-calc (called senior math) as junior then no math as a senior
70th in class out of 300 or so (no weighting based on rigor)
Never missed a weekend party.
Applied Vanderbilt and WashU
(continued my tradition of never missing a party)
Got in both.
(continued my tradition of never missing a party, received one A in four years of college but still went to law school)
BTW Vanderbilt in those days was filled with bitter Duke and Ivy League rejects. Very 1% student body.
Kids in our high school typically went to the state flagship or a public regional school. Lots of kids didnāt go to college at all.
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Graduated from NJ HS in early 80ās. I was very self driven, so I did the research for getting into college, gave my parents my list of where I wanted to visit, took care of applications, etc.
Graduated 13th out of 170. Had some Bās. mostly in English. No APās were offered, but took honors. Was strongest in Math. Old SAT was 580V 710M.
I actually had decent ECās. president of youth group, French Club. Part of NHS. Volunteered at local hospital. Played 2 JV sports.
applied for Mechanical engineering
Reach -MIT - only applied as they sent me the application. Did not get in
was Waitlisted at UPenn.
Accepted at CMU (went here)
Accepted (safety) Leheigh. --which today is nobodyās safety!
My parents were really pushing Rutgers but I wanted to go away.
I took my S19 to see CMU, though there was little chance he would get in. He decided after visiting that their CS program was too intense. I just am amazed I went there, and somehow graduated . I do remember females were only 10% of my graduating class.
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Same here. I applied to one college and I went there. My college bound daughter applied to maybe 4 and got into all of them. She opted to go to Texas State University 60 miles away. Itās kind of nice because she can room with her ābestieā and come home on weekends to do her laundry. I never understood the appeal of prestigious schools or why kids insist on using a shotgun approach to applying to college, when 95% of the time they end-up going to an in-state school. You can send in one application and save yourself a lot of suffering.
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Graduated in the early 1970s from a all girl prep school. Class size 80. We didnāt believe in ranking, but did have grades. I donāt know my GPA but I got more Aās than Bās. Definitely never got an A in French. SAT was 720V, 730M which translated to 800V/730M in the first recentering. That second table is too confusing to figure out! I took AP Calc BC, AP English, AP European History and AP Art. Extra curriculars, Girl Scouts (with National Leadership role), modern dance, recorder group, newspaper, yearbook. (The latter two senior year only when I was a border and it was easier to participate.) National Merit commended.
I remember my SAT scores because my friends were obsessed with them and we did have regular vocabulary tests with them in mind.
I applied to three colleges. U Penn (safety), Brown and Harvard. Got into all of them and Penn gave me a āPresidential Scholarshipā which was a merit award at the time. Went to Harvard.
Harvard was much easier than high school and I got better grades there too.
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