Assumptions are often made regarding the historical strength of selective colleges. By SAT score tiers, this is how some appeared in 1960 (Life Magazine, 3 Oct 1960):
Amherst
Carleton
Columbia
Harvard
Haverford
Princeton
Reed
Rice
Swarthmore
Williams
Yale
Brandeis
Brown
Chicago
Cornell
Dartmouth
Hamilton
Johns Hopkins
Lehigh
Oberlin
Rochester
Stanford
Antioch
Bowdoin
Duke
Kenyon
Michigan
Middlebury
Northwestern
Pennsylvania
Iowa
Tufts
Union
UC-Berkeley
Sewanee
Colgate
Denison
Grinnell
Knox
Lawrence
Muhlenberg
Occidental
UColorado
Beloit
NYU
Pittsburgh
Southern Methodist
Syracuse
Virginia
Vanderbilt
Among other possible observations
Women's colleges, as well as technically focused schools, seem to have been myopically omitted by the editors.
Smaller colleges comprise the majority of the first tier.
Carleton was the strongest school in the Midwest; Reed was the strongest in the far West; Sewanee was competitive with Duke in the South.
The members of the Ivy League were scattered across three tiers.
Antioch College enrolled students who were academically competitive on a national level.
Mudd would be way up on the list now, but they were a really new school then (maybe 5 years old), so scores might not have been so high in the early years. But I see they left MIT off, too, and you would think they would have been on it.
Thanks for posting. It is interesting to see how these things change over time. Some of the changes are due to the local economy (Rochester and Emory seemed to have switched places) while other are due to the management of the institution. Some comments:
9 of the top 11 are in the northeast.
As for the womenâs collegeâs, it is not clear that at the time they competed for applicants based on SAT scores. Connections and family wealth were also important considerations.
Technical schools and STEM majors in particular were a smaller part of the overall economy in the 1950âs.
It is easy for colleges to maintain high SAT scores when they are only accepting a couple hundred students each year.
Schools probably were not required by the government to release their test score information. The Life list could have missed some due to lack of data.
Iâm not sure selectivity = strength anyhow. Back then, many publics let in a lot (so their SAT average may have been low), but if you managed to graduate from UIUC engineering, say, you almost by definition had to be good. Many publics did their filtering in college, not before, but that doesnât make a college (or itâs grads) not strong.
For that matter, so did many privates. Northwestern students in the '60âs got the âlook to your right, look to your leftâ speech.
Many changes since 1960. The population has shifted westward and away from New England and the East; the burgeoning high tech/computer science industries in Ca.; the all male Ivys went co-ed; and it seems that the smaller colleges and LACs are somewhat less popular than they once were.
Regarding âstrength,â the usage was intended to refer only to the academic preparation (as suggested by SAT scores) of the incoming students at the colleges listed. Its chief application may be across schools that are otherwise similar. The actual graduates of these colleges would have had to perform, or would have chosen to perform, to varying institutional or individual standards unrelated to the incoming scores of their immediate peers.
Thanks for posting this @merc81. I believe the overall picture dispels some commonly held beliefs about the historical selectivity of the included colleges. I think many assume that a small subset of universities and a small subset of LACs have perennially been the most selective. Based on the information above, however, it appears that some common preconceptions may not be valid. Iâd love to see the numbers for womenâs colleges in 1960, as well as for all schools in the mid '70s and mid '80s.
@Zinhead Despite the gap in acceptance rate and ranking, Emory and URochester are roughly equal now by test scores. Emoryâs SATs are a little bit higher, but both have a mid-range ACT composite of 29-33.
Hummm⊠I graduated in 1980 with a 1490 SAT and was accepted to both Williams and Cornell (but I went to Brandeis). I would say that I was definitely not one of the top SAT admits to Brandeis amongst my classmates. In other words I think in 1980 Brandeis would have been in the 1300+ band.
Another observation - No Catholic Universities like Notre Dame or Georgetown. Maybe they did not report test scores, or Life thought Catholics did not read the magazine, or the Catholic schools underperformed, but it seems odd. Of the schools on the 1960 list, SMU would be the only one today that has a strong religious identification.
@Zinhead interesting point about the Catholic schools. At least for me â growing up devout Catholic the 70s/80s â ND was considered a regional, Midwest Catholic school â people I knew who wanted a Catholic university experience went to Villanova or Fordham or other east coast Catholic schools. ND seemed to develop a national presence in the late 80s/90s. Georgetown was in our collective consciousness for its foreign service program but not much else.
I love some of the GC âquotesâ in the 1960 Life articleâŠ
Columbia: "Location in New York has little appeal to most students."
Yep, donât think thatâs the case nowâŠ
Cornell: "Engineering college prides itself on its mortality rate."
What?!
Occidental: "Doesnât want âgreasy grindsâ."
Clearly us ânerdsâ were underappreciated in 1960!
Rice: âGood for engineering if you can tolerate Texans 10 months out of each yearâ.
This GC was clearly not a Cowboys fanâŠ
**UC Berkeley: âThe Berkeley kids are poor but bright, long-haired proletarians who are deeply involved in current eventsâ. **
Oh my, just wait a few years and see what happensâŠ
Cornell was kind of known as a school with a high rate of suicides, we speculated about dreary weather but apparently some bridge played a part? IDK. Antioch was a school my GC wanted me to apply to (I didnât but my brother went there a few years later).
My stepdad tells a story about getting into Yale and his bishop (he went to a Catholic HS) being really mad about it (âGodless placeâ), so the bishop âgot him intoâ Georgetown without asking him - he didnât apply. That suggests getting into Gâtown was maybe more about Catholic connections back then (1940s).
@Midwestmomofboys Sorry to disagreeâŠbesides below ND had already won 7 National Football Championships by 1960, 4 under Frank Leahy just before 1960. One of the most famous college coaches of all time, Ara Parseghian, came in 1966. Notre Dame was nationally known then and among the best known of any school in the US. The movie âKnute Rockne, All Americanâ came out in 1940 and was one of the most popular movies released before the war.
Oklahoma State did a study and found: âThe University of Notre Dame in Indiana was the U.S. Catholic institution of higher education which consistently ranked first throughout the 1960s, 1970s,1980s and all three decades combined.â
Georgetown ranked 7th during this period. Villanova did not make the top 10. Fordham was ranked #2 during this period and BC #3.
@ OnTheBubble. I was referring only to NDâs academic reputation for selectivity. Of course it was well known as a football powerhouse, and beloved among the âsubway alum.â At the same time, as an academic choice, for a Catholic student from the mid-Atlantic, it was rarely on the list. That is not to say east coast folks didnât support ND football-- they just didnât see the reason to send their kids to South Bend when Villanova, Fordham etc. were right there. ND shifted significantly in terms of its academic reputation, starting 80s/early 90s. While Father Ted was beloved as a leader, it was really under Monk Malloy when ND began a push towards national prominence as an academically selective institution. Perhaps itâs an example of how much more regional college applications were 40 years ago. Back then, with U Penn in Philly, not many saw the need to travel half way across the country to Northwestern. All that has changed, obviously.