35 Year old college guide-book

Parents Forum
1

<p>I found an old copy of a “Cass and Birnbaum” College guide from 1975 for $2.60. I know most people probably think this kind of purchase is ridiculous, but I find this stuff fascinating - especially comparing it to today's college admissions.</p>

<p>The book ranks the colleges by selectivity – Most Selective, Highly Selective, Very+ Selective, Very Selective, and just plain Selective. There’s no real methodology given, just a statement by the educators who wrote the book similar to what I read on here all the time – that the quality of a school is significantly affected by the attributes of the student body that attends the school.</p>

<p>Most of the schools are just about where you’d expect with regards to selectivity ranking. All the Ivies are in the “Most” category, except for Penn, which is ranked “Highly”, and a couple of schools at Columbia and Cornell which they put in “Highly” (they rank different schools at some universities). But there are a lot of interesting things in the book. With the exception of Harvard, the Webb Institute (which I never heard of) and a few LACs, it looks like no school has under a 20% acceptance percentage. Yale, Princeton, Brown, etc, are in the 20s. </p>

<p>But the acceptance percentage doesn’t seem to correlate precisiely with the author’s perceptions of selectivity, and it certainly does not track with test scores that closely. For example, virtually every school in the book has median or average SAT V+M below 1400. Harvard, Princeton and Yale are right around 1400. But Caltech, which accepted around 45% of the applicants, has a stratospheric average test score (for the time) of around 1450. All the UCs were listed as Very or Very +, even though they all have around 85% acceptance rates. </p>

<p>U Chicago, ranked as “Most” selective, accepted around 70% of applicants, but still had a high average SAT score, around 1310 (which is apparently high for this time). By comparison, the median at Stanford (26% acceptance) is listed as 1270 for women and 1320 for men (yes, the book separates that out too). I obviously don’t know how accurate any of this is, but it is similar to other data I’ve read. So it’s almost like the students are “self selecting.”</p>

<p>And the authors claim to directly quote Harvard administrators “we consider the widest variety of personal factors after we are satisfied the applicant is qualified academically.”</p>

<p>The book also has all sorts of other commentary about life at the schools, etc. I wasn’t even aware there was such a book when I applied to school I wonder if my high school counselor knew about it.</p>

<p>If any old timer wants to know what it says about their alma mater I can let them know -unless I get a lot of requests and tire out :)</p>

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<p>That sounds fun. Does it have college costs?</p>

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<p>^^^
Yep. It lists all the prices.</p>

<p>Amherst - Tuition and fees $3495
UC Berekely - $636, out of state $1500
Tufts - $3235
UVA - $632 - $687</p>

<p>Again, not sure how accurate but the UC price sounds familiar. I remember UCSD being $212 a quarter</p>

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<p>^ Sign me up!</p>

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<p>I recently discovered that my entire annual tuition + room&board bill at a private LAC in 1975 was roughly equivalent to what we are paying for my daughter’s dining option for a single semester.</p>

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<p>That is amusing. I graduated from high school in 1973 and U of Pennsylvania was my safety - it was definitely perceived as a lesser school at the time. All of us who had 1450+ SAT scores figured we pretty much had it made. My friends with the 1300 scores sweated a bit more, but I know at least one with those scores who got into Yale off the wait list that year.</p>

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<p>My mother told me that my brother’s med school tuition (1974-78) was $750 per semester.</p>

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<p>My DH (self-confessed slacker supreme at the time) got into Penn with a 1500 and barely a 90 average in the late 70s – and got a big merit scholarship (merit within need).</p>

<p>Texas A&M tuition for students entering in the fall of 1979 was $4 per credit hour. UGA tuition was $218 a quarter. Dorm and meal plan were each more expensive than tuition.</p>

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<p>Texans will remember that back in the day the cost was $4 per credit hour.</p>

<p>ETA: Cross-posted with CountingDown!</p>

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<p>I went to UT-Austin, so my tuition was the same as CountingDown mentioned for A&M. I stayed in a private girls’ dorm, so that was the biggest expense for my parents.</p>

<p>Coincidentally, I was cleaning out a closet today and found an “informative essay” that I wrote as a high school senior, on the spiraling costs of attending college! It made me laugh.</p>

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<p>I remember that Cass & Birnbaum guide! Curious about Swarthmore if you have a moment, Bovertine. :slight_smile: I have one kiddo who’s graduated and another one currently in attendance. Would love to know what was going on in the admissions office at Swat in the '70’s.</p>

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<p>Swarthmore- most selective of course.
42 percent accepted,
90 percent in top fifth of HS class, Median SAT 1360, 38 percent of class over 700 on verbal, 40 percent over 700 on math. 3125 tuition. 8 percent black students.A lot of other info here. It’s obvious the authors like this school a lot.</p>

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<p>Oh yeah- Swat had 650 men and around 590 women back then.</p>

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<p>Yet another indicator I was born in the wrong decade. =P</p>

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<p>In 1982, I applied to Penn (honors program), NU (honors program), and Georgetown, with WashU as my back-up, and got into all 4. It would never have occurred to me in a million years that I wouldn’t have gotten into at least one of those 4, or that I should have had another school in my back pocket. I had excellent GPA and test scores and some national academic awards, but my EC’s were limited to moderate leadership positions in school organizations plus a part-time job. It was really a different era back then.</p>

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<p>Going rate for tuition in the Ivies was about $3500/year in mid-late 1970s. UChicago was considered a bargain at about $3000 as I recall.</p>

<p>IIRC, my father’s salary (jr faculty at an Ivy) was about $18,000/yr. The said Ivy did offer free tuition to offspring, and 1/2 tuition for other Ivies. All the Ivies had had reciprocal free tuition for Professors offspring, but switched to 50% off sometime not long before this period.</p>

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<p>According to [CPI</a> Inflation Calculator](<a href=“http://146.142.4.24/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1&year1=1975&year2=2012]CPI”>http://146.142.4.24/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1&year1=1975&year2=2012) , $1.00 in 1975 is equivalent to $4.27 now, adjusted for inflation.</p>

<p>But those tuitions listed in #3 are still much lower than today after multiplying by 4.27.</p>

<p>Regarding SAT scores, be aware that the scores were recentered in 1995. The conversions are given here: [SAT</a> Equivalence Tables](<a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/data-reports-research/sat/equivalence-tables]SAT”>SAT Suite of Assessments - College Board Research) . So those pre-1995 SAT scores are equivalent to higher scores as reported for today’s SAT. An example would be that a 1400 V+M then is equivalent to a 1470 CR+M today.</p>

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<p>I’d love to hear about Vassar’s admission stats, since that’d be only 6 years after they went co-ed!</p>

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<p>I graduated from high school in 1969. Decades ago, admissions to the schools mentioned were often limited in terms of social class. Financial aid and racial or socioeconomic diversity were not factors as yet. The applicant pool was therefore smaller, and more people from that limited applicant pool were admitted, raising the percentage admitted. I would venture a guess that for Ivies and top LAC’s, the majority of students came from private schools.</p>

<p>I recently looked at my high school transcript. I was ranked #1 in a rigorous private school but my grades were mostly in the 80’s. Imagine that today! We had never heard of gpa’s. We didn’t prep for SAT’s either, but were told testing was strictly for “aptitude.” </p>

<p>Of course, at that time, if a male student didn’t want to go, he would be drafted and end up in Vietnam. Different times indeed. So the less privileged kids ended up in Southeast Asia rather than Cambridge or wherever.</p>

<p>I did well with admissions but things were so chaotic I chose not to go at all. I am glad my kids are entering young adulthood without those pressures, despite the cost of college and the recession.</p>

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<p>Unfortunately there are some schools for which the authors have no testing data and Vassar is one of those. It does have a 62 percent acveptance rate listed and is called Highly selective. In 1975 apparently it had 650 men ans 1500 women and cost 3400 dollars.
I guess some schools didn’t release some data to the authors. Bowdoin also gives no SAT data but I think it was yesy optional.</p>