How were the college accomplishments of the two who got into medical school?
A real oldster here - high school class of 1966. Back in the days when the main careers open to women were teacher, secretary, nurse, or beautician. Back in the days when even the best high school students got some Bs. Back in the days when the NMSQT was a separate test, not based on PSAT scores. I came out of that test room thinking that it was the hardest test I had ever taken and sure I had âfailedâ. I was very surprised to find out I had qualified, scoring 1 point higher than the minimum. At that time, most of the Ivies and many other elite schools were male only. I didnât want to go to a âgirlsâ school, so never considered the Seven Sisters. I wanted to go to Oberlin, but after a disastrous interview there, knew I wouldnât be accepted -and I wasnât. Bucknell offered me a National Merit Scholarship, so thatâs where I went. I had taken courses at Dickinson before and during my senior year of high school, as part of a pilot gifted program, so I was able to graduate from Bucknell in 3 years, at age 20. Bucknellâs social scene wasnât one I could thrive in, but fortunately I had a great roommate and other non-Greek friends, sang in the Chorale, and enjoyed the plays, concerts, and volunteer activities. Iâve done absolutely nothing related to my political science degree.
ETA: The comprehensive fee (tuition, fees, room, and board) when I started at Bucknell was $2600. My scholarship paid for half of that. Current comprehensive fee at Bucknell is $80.890.
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Reading through this is very interesting. Coming from MA a fair number of the kids in my honors/AP classes went to good schools - Yale, Princeton, Amherst, Bowdoin, Wesleyan etc. My sense is that was less common in other parts of the country at that time (mid 80s). Of course, most kids just went to UMass or Northeastern or BU back then (all very easy admits at the time) and others went straight to work, the military or CC. If I had to guess, I think about 65-70% of kids went to 4 year schools - now (at the same HS) it is closer to 90%. Times have changed.
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These posts are cracking me up. I went to a decent high school in suburban Illinois. Most of my friends went to college but there was not a lot of thought given to it. Most kids went to one of the Illinois schools (UIUC for the better students and one of the state directionals for the rest). We had reciprocity with Iowa so quite a few kids went to Iowa or Iowa State. And then there were a few who went to Wisconsin, Indiana or Purdue. I honestly cannot remember any exceptions to this among my friends.
We got very little college counseling. I applied to maybe 4 schools in Illinois and Iowa. My counselor told me Iâd never get into UIUC. I applied anyway (mainly because I am stubborn and a boy I liked went there) and thatâs where I went because it was cheaper than my other options. I am now married to that boy.
I was an average/good student in high school. I got good grades and a decent ACT score but not great. ACT scores were not what they are now. Good scores were in mid to high 20âs. I only know a couple of people who scored in the 30âs. I really didnât work that hard in high school or college. Even freshmen year in college my goal was not to be on probation. My counselor telling me that I probably wouldnât get in had me convinced I was one of the least smart people there. I ended up getting better grades first semester than I expected without working that hard. I realized I probably had the ability to do a lot better if I put in the effort and did. It also helped that the boy I liked was a very focused student and if I wanted to see him I had to spend a lot of time in the library.
One regret is that due to the lack of counseling I had very little understanding of financial aid and my parents really couldnât afford college. I remember having tearful phone conversations with them freshmen year when they told me they didnât know if Iâd be able to continue. I filled out my own FASFA forms which is hilarious because Iâm sure I just guessed on questions and skipped ones I didnt know. No surprise we were not offered any aid. I think my parents ended up taking a second mortgage on our house to pay for the rest of my schooling. I was the first in my immediate family to graduate (my 2 older siblings went to a state directional and neither graduated). Neither of my parents went to college. We just didnât know how to navigate the process and Iâm sure it was very stressful for them.
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Of course back in the day for many of us, before the Common App and word processors, students could only realistically apply to a half dozen colleges because we had to type/hand write each unique application. It forced all applicants to be very practical in picking their schools to include more matches and safeties. Also with fewer applicants for even the most prestigious schools, the admit rates were higher and more predictable. If I remember correctly, HYP rates were in the 20% range. UMich, Duke and my flagship were my âsafeties/matchesâ which I dropped after getting into Brown non-binding EA at that time.
I still think a lot of anxiety would be alleviated if students were limited to choosing 6 schools through the Common App.
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I wish I had a copy of my app to U-M. From my story upthread, my BF filled out all the general stuff and then forwarded the tri-fold form to me to fill in the blanks, including two (very short) essay questions that I hand wrote, squeezing as much as I could into those small spaces. That was my entire college application experience.
This thread also made me go back into my archives for a tuition example:
If I remember correctly, a single in East Quad was about $1200/yr.
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First year tuition, room and board at Yale was $7k. Then again, my parents modest 4 bdrm suburban home was less than $40k.
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I think one thing that was different in the âgood old daysâ was that it was easier to take a circuitous path through college. Or maybe that is still happening but I spend too much time on CC.
One of my cousins who is very bright but was very troubled as a teen, was sent away to some type of air conditioner repair program right out of high school. A few years later he spent a couple of years at Chico State (famous party school) I donât recall the time line, but he ended up finishing with a degree in engineering from Cal Berkeley. He is a successful engineer and one of the kindest guys I know.
My husband (HS Class of 1970) started at community college with an interest in physics. He was the first in his family to enter college and had no support from his family. He switched to a CSU to study music. His dad was furious. I think it took my husband 8 years to finish his BM. Not because he was not a good student. But if a good tour came up on the Musicianâs Union Job Board he would just take off and tour for several months, sometimes up to a year. He was able to have so many adventures on the road with different bands. And he was able to finish his Bachelorâs degree, then a teaching credential and a masterâs degree. It may not have been the most efficient path, but it was what worked for him.
Sometimes I wish I had taken more detours in my younger life, but I am a planner and crave predictability. To this day my husband reminds me that it is not the destination but the journey which is important.
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Love that you had the receipts still! I was able to recreate my stats in large part because my mother had kept all of this in boxes she dropped off to my house several years ago and I have just gotten around to finally going through those boxes and shredding/tossing the paper avalanche (thank you Bag a Week thread mates!).
It was fun to go through the papers, seeing old transcripts, the letters with my test results, etc. I also am more convinced than ever to keep up the shredding over here. Not sure the 45 minutes of âI canât believe she kept all this stuffâ was worth the hours of shredding. 
P.S. Also first year cost of attendance at my school - $28.5k. It was over $34k by senior year. And that was early 90s.
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Still happening, but not so much at the colleges focused on in these forums, which have become too selective to admit âmeanderingâ students with less than almost perfect academic records, and may be less generally to the extent that higher costs to the student make each extra semester a greater financial hardship.
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Absolutely. Our three kids were encouraged to meander as much as they wantedâŠon weekends or summer breaks. 
And as long as they were still working to help pay their expenses.
No way we were letting their scholarship money run out.
Dartmouth brother was a varsity wrestler all 4 years. He was a political science major and had very good grades. He ended up going to Dartmouth Medical school which at that time was a 3 year program.
Tufts brother pretty much made all Aâs and was a more traditional premed chemistry major. He went to Pitt Medical School.
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Yep. I remember well typing out those applications.
Back in the day Brown required the essay to be handwritten not typed. There was a hilarious sample essay in one of those advice books about essay writing where a young man with terrible handwriting hands in his handwriting, but also creates a handwriting font based on a more legible version of his handwriting.
I did not apply to Yale because I had one essay I was happy with and there was no way I could use it for Yaleâs prompts.
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Ah, the white out on the typewriterâŠpainful memories ; )
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I think my brother has finally forgiven me for using white Liquid Paper on his Dartmouth application which was on green paper. (I typed up his application, but he wrote everything himself.)
I did not even want to apply to Yale because my tour guide was a pompous a**, the stereotype of a NE preppy snob that I had in my head. My parents made me apply, so I wrote a really obnoxious essay. Well what I thought were thoughtful essays for Harvard and Princeton yielded the thin envelope and the obnoxious one got me into Yale. To my horror, the Dean of my residential college chose to read parts of my essay during the welcoming freshmen dinner as part of âthese are your classmatesâ, luckily without attribution. When asked, I do suggest to applicants for super reaches to consider âgo big or go homeâ essays for those schools and standard ones for others.
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The dreaded thin envelope! Didnât even need to open it to know it was a rejection. U
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I thought the same when awaiting B-school results. I put the thin HBS envelope in the open-later-with-a-bottle-of-wine pile. It was the only acceptance to arrive as a single sheet of paper. Very evil people in that admissions office.
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I tend to agree. My older son who had much better grades and scores than younger son wrote an essay that began with a nonsense paragraph that heâd designed an AI to write. MIT was not impressed but Harvard was. (They had the head of CS call him urging him to attend.) He liked CMU better, so it was all fine.
My younger son was one of those kids who always seemed to get the B+ rather than the A- and his verbal scores put him in the 25% of his reaches and his math scores put him in the bottom 25%. (Heâs not terrible at math, he was taking Calc BC, but he canât do timed math.) He really loved writing essays starting with the U of Chicago essay which started with all the things he hated about U of Chicago. He got in EA. At which point all his friends thought he was the essay writing guru. He said their essays were all so boring and unhumorous. While he didnât get into the Ivies he applied to (nor did he expect to) he did much better than anyone had predicted, ending up at Tufts.
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