Totally different subject, but I see an arms race not just in academics/college admissions but in sports as well. Kids are specializing early, and playing a single sport year round. Parents are spending thousands per year for travel sports/private lessons. I see burnout/injuries at high rates. All of this just to get a bump in admissions. My daughter says there is no community at her school, just a bunch of kids outdoing each other to get into a top college. This is a stark contrast to when I went to high school in the mid/late 80âs. Kind of sad really.
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Graduated from a Wisconsin high school in a small town in 1983. No AP classesâŠdidnât even know there was such a thing.
If you wanted to go to college, you had to make sure you took advanced composition, two years of foreign language. Canât remember what the other classes were. Iâm assuming 3 years of science since I remember dropping physics for choir lol.
I didnât know anyone who applied to more than one college or went on a college tour. Took the ACT onceâŠno studying/prep. It was really just something you had to check off your list for applying to college.
I applied to UW Madison. At that time, you just had to have taken the classes you needed, be in the top 50% of your class, and have taken the ACT. Admission was completely in the studentsâ hands. I never even worried I wouldnât be accepted, which I was.
Those were the days!
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I attended a very average middle-class suburban high school. Graduated in 1977 in a class of 400. No APs offered. The French teacher and the Chemistry teacher were jokes. We played Mille Borne in French and the Biology 2 teacher taught a bit of biochem so we would know something about chemistry. The band instructor was a predator. Finally caught a few years after I graduated. There was a large student smoking area between two buildings. I was one of 3 valedictorians, SAT around 1350 (1500 recentered?). One try. No one I knew did any prep. I was a theater kid and on two varsity teams but not particularly good. My family highly valued education and I was told I could go anywhere I wanted but I was given no guidance by any adult on how I might go about a college search. I donât recall college counseling, but the career office gave me some tests and said I would make a good Naval Officer. I wanted to be either a doctor or a theater critic. Very unfocused and that continued through college. I took introduction to everything. I had a weird list of 5 schools, was rejected by the one Ivy on it. Went to a LAC. Applied to transfer to Stanford, was accepted, and didnât go! One of my few regrets in life and one my children held against me. They would have liked that little legacy boost.
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I attended a small rural high school in OK and graduated with a class of 40 in 1979. I donât even know what the graduation requirements were except for four years of English. I canât recall that I took any math beyond Algebra 1 in 8th grade. Iâm not sure if any other math was offered except for geometry. I canât remember taking any HS science except for chemistry and it was a class of about 6 students. I just took it on a whim. There were no foreign language classes. Nor a guidance counselor.
The high school focused on preparing boys for Ag and trades, and girls for office work and being SAHMs. No math or science for me, but I took typing 1 and 2, and shorthand; other girls also took a class called office practice. I think there were multiple years of home ec offered. Future Homemakers of America was a popular club. There was one sport for girls, 12 player basketball, where the six players on each half of the court couldnât cross the center line. Reading about the quality of other CCerâs education compared to mine (during the same time frame) astounds me.
Itâs strange because it was a K-12 school and I feel like I learned a lot and had very good teachers in Jr. High. English in HS was also good. The rest of the curriculum was abysmal. I probably had a GPA of around 3.2. I can say that there was little grade inflation as I got a D in typing one semester. Not sure how that happened except that I just couldnât type well. I took the ACT and got a 23. I probably did well in the English sections as I always scored in the 90+ percentiles in English on standardized tests.
I didnât care about grades as my parents didnât care about education (and we had no guidance counselor to assist us). I also was a gymnast for most of high school and practiced for three hours a day five days a week year round and had competitions on many weekends. I was tired when I got home! We had a small directional college in my hometown that accepted everyone so most of the 10 or so kids that went to college from my class including me went there (many of the other students got married soon after graduation).
I floundered aimlessly for three years there as I couldnât get excited about any of the majors offered. I had wanted to major in forestry ever since I read My Side of the Mountain as a kid (lol, but at least I was inspired by something!), but couldnât afford to go to OSU. Finally, I just said, to heck with it, Iâm going to OSU. I went, struggled in many of my classes, went hungry, but graduated after 6 years of college with a 2.89 GPA (but my major required a whopping 144 credits). I was the only one in my HS class that attended one of our two state flagships even though my parents were poorer than most I was proud of myself for doing well in the notoriously difficult and math heavy forest measurements courses and the required surveying course in the college of engineering (the foresters in that class earned the three highest scores).
I just retired with a 30+ year career in Forestry working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I lucked into that opportunity when I called one of my professors after I graduated and asked if heâd gotten any job announcements. He said âWell, I just got one from the BIA, but we donât have much luck with those as they mostly hire Native Americans.â I said, âIâm a Tribal member!â And the rest was history.
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I graduated 30-35 years ago from a very strong NOVA high school that is consistently in the top 10 in the state. It was much like the high schools I read about on CC today. We all were in all kinds of ECs trying to impress the colleges. Everyone went to a 4 year college. It wasnât about IF you were going to college. It was about which one. Lots of kids went on college tours. I did not, but I did sign myself out for a week (shhh - donât tell mom) saying I was going on such a trip. I assume grade inflation was a thing back then too. We didnât have near as many APs as there are today, but I took all that I could, as did many others. Out of ~500 kids we had 19 âvaledictorians.â All As taking everything we could. Interestingly - 16/19 were girls.
So I was one of the 4.0 top students. SAT I think I had a 790M/620V. I applied to one college - our large in-state public and that was that.
But where our generation did have it made - at least in my state⊠is with attendance. Nobody cared near as much. I missed school all the time. I made it my mission to miss at least one day/week my Jr/Sr years. I sound just like my mom on the phone⊠On my report cards, they all say I missed 19 days. I missed a lot more than that. They just seemed to stop counting.
But now? You can only miss so many before you automatically fail. Doesnât matter if itâs excused with a doctorâs note. And in a local system⊠My co-worker found out that if your kid misses 9 days of school in a semester - again excused doesnât matter - you have to go before a judge and can be charged with neglect. So you canât miss 9 days, but if you get strep, covid, flu, etc. you have to be fever free for over 24 hours and they check at the door when you come in. Itâs very stressful
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High School in the Heartland but a diverse city school. Around 300 in the class. Co-valedictorian. GPA over 4.0 with APs. Made a deal with my best friend sophomore year if we continued to get all Aâs that we would share the top spot. He might have edged me out because I played more sports and we got credit and grades for sports. SAT 1280. First Gen. All the normal ECs and leadership positions. Sports. Worked at a Country Club while in HS.
Applied to 2 schools. Had a full ride academic to state flagship. HS Teacher sent in the deposit for me for a T20. Got a scholarship in late May that made the T20 possible. Went to the T20 and met my soulmate and the rest is history.
My D23 who is a lot like me grabbed a full ride academic scholarship to a State Directional. My D19 also did well the merit hunt. We knew the game from day 1 and got them ready. The only thing we never did was SAT/ACT prep classes.
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I remember my dad saying I had to go to college below the Mason-Dixon line.
Of course, since I hadnât paid attention in US History, I wasnât sure where the line was so that was that.
My mother still talks to this day about the deli at Washu selling bagels - it was a different world than our small town, which still doesnât have a bagel shop.
They wanted me to apply to Wake Forest but I was horrified at the idea of a required religion class. Twelve years of Sunday School will do that to a person.
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It wasnât until I went to college that I was friends with anyone who HADNT eaten bagels on a regular basis. In my town we all lined up at the Bagel shop late Saturday night (and got the thick Sunday paper published the day before). College was the first place I met someone who grew up with the notion that Jews had horns. I really lived in a bubble til then.Like most Jews who grew up in a predominantly Jewish area I was flabbergasted when I learned of how small the percentage of Jews was in this country. My kids had the same experience. I remember my daughter at age 8 guessing it was 75 percent. I think learning the truth is akin to some Christian kids learning there is no Santa. It really rocks your world.
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Well as soon as I saw northern boys with blonde floppy hair with these things called âlacrosse sticksâ on the front lawn of the fraternity houses, I was a goner.
BTW the girls from NYC (who were obviously familiar with bagels) were the coolest girls ever. Here I was in my tretorns, add-a-beads, and Peter Pan collar shirts and they were dressed in torn jeans, menâs white shirts and jewelry from a weekend in St. Barts.
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I never realized NOVA high schools were ranked. I thought mine was really good butâŠnot according to current stats!
Thatâs one of my favorite books from childhoood!
Mid 1990s
Rural Midwest public HS (WI)
GPA 4.0 UW
We only had 2 AP classes, took them both
SAT 1430/ACT 34 one try each, no prep
First chair state honors ensemble
Applied to 4 schools, day of RD deadline rushing to post office:
Wisconsin
Lawrence
Northwestern (5 year engineering/music)
Duke
Admitted to all 4
That was when the above stats stood out even at top schools (love the Holderness video!) but now they are just entry level criteria for top 50s.
I distinctly remember how exciting it was for a small town kid like me to read the Lisa Birnbaum college book and look through all the glossy viewbooks I got in the mail.
I researched so much back then, I still recall interesting details about schools Iâve never seen and barely thought about in almost 30 years, as my first kid has gone through the process.
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Iâm going to add DH. American studying abroad at an international school. Applied to Bates, Colby and Dartmouth only. Got accepted to Dartmouth only (probably because he was a legacy and that really counted back in 1972). Not a star student but was a junior Olympic qualifier in swimming. No recruitingâŠ.but did walk on to the team. Not terrific grades, and really nothing special about his application except that he graduated from an international school.
But he didnât get his bachelors from Dartmouth.
And he is very clear that there is no way he would have been accepted nowâŠperiod.
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Reading through this thread makes me think about just how different things were in the USA back then.
My parents graduated from high school in the late '80s/early '90s. They both attended elite prep schools in their city, which was, at the time, the second biggest in India.
My dad scored so highly on his entrance exam that he was literally 150th in the countryâbut he still wasnât able to get into the major he wanted. My mom was near the top of her class as well, but ended up in the same local university as most of her peers.
One of my dadâs classmates did get a full ride to Yale, however, and I recall him telling me that everyone was highly impressed at that personâs 1500 SAT. It seemed that undergrad in America was not considered a possibility by anyone else.
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My grandfather and his best friend had the top scores in the country on the newly created SAT test in the 1920s. They both went to Harvard, but my grandfather apparently was asked to leave after a year for not working enough. He ended up at that other school down the river!
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I so do not belong in this group.
Grew up in a small town, graduated HS mid '70âs. HS was good size (2000+/4 years) and I was in the top 10% of my 500+ student class. Illinois State Scholar. Never took the SATâs because I hoped to attend University of Illinois (state flagship) and they preferred the ACT. ACT scores were high. (I remember a 32 in Math which was very high in those pre test prep days). I also remember sharing ACT scores with a classmate - ours were the same, classmate attended Cornell. Classes in school were honors (when available), school offered no APâs . ( I never heard of APâs until much later). Classmates with similar stats did attend U of I as well as other schools such as Northwestern, Vanderbilt, West Point, Notre Dame, etc. They were almost all from wealthier families and had parents who had attended college.
My family was middle class, not qualified for financial aid , but I had 2 siblings who were 1 and 2 years ahead of me in school (and 1 younger) and my parents wanted us to all go to college. My parents were adamant âno loansâ, and none of us knew anything about merit or other FA. School GCâs were overwhelmed. I was basically on my own.No internet or other resources.
I attended the local community college, then transferred to a decent âregional universityâ in my state and got my degree. I had no other options. I did get a good education, though.
So, I donât think I really âhad it madeâ. Yes the competition was much stiffer for my own kids, but they had several advantages. They had no financial limitations. There was a ton of information available to them via their high schools (Northern Virginia publics) as well as educated parents who were vested in the process and yes, on line resources. I know all students now do not have those advantages, but all student back then did not have it easy.
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Graduated in 1977 from high school in suburban Pittsburgh. Class of about 300. Donât recall my GPA but made Aâs and Bâs except for French my freshman year when I made a C. Had a 1160 SAT with of course no preparation back then. No AP classes offered but did take Alegbra in 8th grade so I had Calculus my senior year.
Captain of varsity wrestling team, President of Sophomore and Junior Class and then President of Student Council my senior year, musical for 3 years, National Honor Society, Physics Olympics.
Applied to Lafayette, Lehigh, Pitt, Clarkson, and Georgetown. Accepted to Pitt. When I visited Lehigh and Lafayette in January I changed to Early Decision at Lafayette and got accepted and withdrew my other applications.
My Freshman year tuition room and board at Lafayette was $5,500. My father who had a fairly successful engineering firm but nothing crazy, paid for his six sons to attend the following colleges from 1971-1991. Bucknell, Dartmouth, Lafayette, Allegheny, Tufts and John Carroll. He also paid for two medical schools, one law school and one business school. Would have to be a multi millionaire to afford paying for those schools today.
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Late '70s grad from a northeast rigorous, single sex independent day school which required a sport and other extra-curricular involvement year-round. I had an A/A- average. I took the SAT a second time, which was not common, to get my math score up to at least a 600, my reading was mid 700s, as best I recall. I applied to Brown which was my top choice, as well as Princeton and a local â7 sistersâ womenâs college as my back-up. Got into Brown, rejected by Princeton, wooed by womenâs college. I had to pay for college myself and was scared by prospect of loans at Brown so went to the womenâs college knowing I could save money by living at home, if necessary. 1st year was easier than my senior year of high school, and I never really âconnectedâ with my school though did get a terrific education. Back then, amazingly, Bowdoin and Middlebury was where our B+/A- range students went, while the sporty A/A- students went to Amherst, Williams or Dartmouth. No one really left the Northeast.
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Honestly, I graduated in the early 70s and I donât remember my GPA nor my ACT score. I do remember taking honors and AP physics (my high school didnât have many AP classes). I was a good student, but not a superstar. I came from a working-class family with parents who valued education. As such, they put money aside and paid tuition for my brother and me. I went to the University of Michigan. There wasnât much thought in my decisionâI just followed my high school boyfriend, who was recruited to play football. We broke up after freshman year. My brother went to Wabash College, a small LAC in Indiana. There wasnât much thought in his decision either. My fatherâs cousinâs son went to Wabash on a sports scholarship, and thatâs why my brother went there.
IIRC my tuition at U-M was about $1500 (this was out-of-state tuitionâit was probably much less for in-state students). A student from a working-class family probably couldnât afford out-of-state tuition at U-M today, unless he/she had scholarships/ merit money. Thatâs a big difference between attending college today and attending college over 30 years ago. I find that cost differential disturbing because it contributes to greater economic inequality in the US.
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This is a fun thread. I agree it was so much simpler and less stressful. My recollection is my HS GPA from 1994 in a SE PA top high school was a 2.9 and I had a 1180 on my SATs. Only really wanted to go to UDel. Applied early acceptance and was deferred and got it RD thanks to being a double legacy!! Denied from Penn State and UMD and accepted to WVU. Graduated college with a 3.9 and it was SO much easier than my high school!
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