<p>I’m enjoying this thread - thanks for posting!</p>
<p>MIT data?</p>
<p>^^^
Here’s what they list for MIT-
Most selective.
44% acceptance rate.
All freshman graduated in top fifth of high school class.
For SAT they have a breakdown-
Math - 85% scored over 700.
Verbal - 80 % over 600, 30% over 700.</p>
<p>Tution and fees $3700.</p>
<p>A lot of these schools with high score students (for the time) appear tol have acceptance rates over 30%, at least according to these authors… I’ve got to believe that pre-common ap students were just more discerning in the number of aps they sent, and just didn’t tend to apply to places they had little chance of getting in.</p>
<p>I’d love to hear Vassar’s admission stats too, but because I chose it over Penn back in 1971.</p>
<p>The high acceptance rates back then were because students self selected. You applied to schools you thought you had an extremely good chance of being accepted to. Having to type each application was one reason. No one was going to do several of those for school they likely had no chance of getting into. I knew, for instance, there was no way I would be accepted at my mother’s alma mater (Smith) or any of the other top tier schools so applying never crossed my mind. I looked one tier down (Skidmore, for example,) but for some reason I had my heart set on going to school in Colorado so went to CU, instead. </p>
<p>I was also at a very rigorous private high school and my transcript was littered with B’s and C’s. That was no big deal either. Only the geniuses got A’s.</p>
<p>How about UVA?</p>
<p>
In 1969 maybe not, but almost every listing in this 1975 book talks about the schools seeking an ethnically and geographically diverse student body. Many of the listings have minority percentage listed. And remember the Bakke case was in 1978. So a lot changed over those ten years apparently.</p>
<p>As far as financial aid, they list those statistics as well. For Harvard, for example, it states that 70% of students recieved financial aid, average amount $2500.</p>
<p>
UVA highly selective.
43% applicants selected for all schools.
It then breakes it down by school. I’ll give Arts and Sciences.
40% acceptance.
Math SAT ave - 660 men and women, 28% scored over 700.
Verbal SAT ave - 600 men, 630 women, 11% scored over 700
75% of students in top fifth of high school class.
$632 tuition in-state.1500 out of state.</p>
<p>I remember Cass & Birnbaum - with six kids growing up and applying to college between 1969 and and 1981, we had 2 additions! And I think Barrons.</p>
<p>Without the internet and the common app, it was the only way you knew about admissions statistics.<br>
I used to pour over that book as a kid. (along with the Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedias!) </p>
<p>I think the SAT has gone through 2 revisions since then, so those scores would be much higher today. I think that the earlier scores allowed for more distinction at the top - hence Cal Tech’s higher score range.</p>
<p>The tuition differences between now and then really make me shake my head. How did we get to a place where a college education costs so much more of a family’s income?</p>
<p>Harvard in 1975 had lots of public school students - can’t find the info on line, but I think it was 30-40% at least. </p>
<p>Not only did you have to type each application separately, Brown insisted on writing your essay by hand!</p>
<p>^^^
In 1975 64% public school students.</p>
<p>More than I thought! My impression was that a large portion of my friends were from public schools.</p>
<p>anniezz-if you look at salary by career, the percentage really isn’t that much different now then it was in the 70’s. With the example posted above, that $3500 was just shy of 20% of the gross income vs 23% or so today for that same job and current tuition rates at the Ivy’s. In the early 70’s, $18,000/year was a generous salary.</p>
<p>Did this guidebook list SAT scores separately for male and female applicants?</p>
<p>I remember that when I applied to college a few years earlier, I had a guidebook that did, and in most cases, the scores for the girls were substantially higher. </p>
<p>The sex difference in test scores affected my college choices. I didn’t bother applying to several colleges that I liked because I thought I had no chance to get in. And I remember thinking that with my credentials, I probably would have been a decent candidate for those schools if I had been born male.</p>
<p>UVA was my safe school in 1976–I applied there, and to HYP. I didn’t actually know much about the Ivies, because kids from my school never went there. My dad offered me $1000 cash to go to UVA instead of Yale, but I didn’t take him up on it.</p>
<p>I actually don’t remember thinking I couldn’t apply to some colleges I remember mostly applying to colleges I wanted to attend with the exception of my state flagship uofm which I did not want to attend but my parents made me submit an application (and I did not attend). In 1974 I had two friends head to H…one public school and one private school graduate.</p>
<p>
In most cases yes.</p>
<p>What it lists depends on what information they were able to obtain. In most cases they list either average or median scores by gender, then list the percentage of students who scored over 500, over 600 and over 700 on each section. Generally they do not split that up by gender. What I’ve noticed is that women typically scored higher on verbal, and men scored higher on math. But I haven’t done a statistical study, just my impression.</p>
<p>For example, Duke (Trinity) average - Verbal - Men 603, women 614
Math - Men 651, Women 625.</p>
<p>But that’s just one example of course.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Vance Packard’s *The Status Seekers<a href=“published%201959”>/i</a> does mention that in 1958, Princeton started admitting a majority of freshmen from public schools, who tended to be better academically, as the private feeder schools at the time were more social elite than academic elite. An editorial in the Princeton alumni magazine expressed concern about admitting too many non-prep school graduates due to the effect on alumni gifts. (sound familiar with respect to legacy preferences today?)</p>
<p>That pattern of SAT scores for men and women is different from what I remember. I may not be remembering correctly.</p>
<p>It’s also possible that the schools I’m thinking of were mostly women’s colleges within universities (like Radcliffe at Harvard and Pembroke at Brown). By 1975, those colleges had begun to merge with the men’s colleges at the same universities, but when I applied a few years earlier, they were still mostly separate, and they were smaller than the men’s colleges. Fewer places for women meant higher selectivity for women in those instances. I clearly remember that the SAT score averages for Radcliffe – especially the verbal – were staggeringly high, but those at Harvard were not. </p>
<p>But that pattern may not have applied at Duke or at the school I ended up at, Cornell, both of which had been co-ed for a very long time.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Using CPI inflation, $3,500 in 1975 is like $14,945 in 2012, while $18,000 in 1975 is like $76,860 today.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That is not what was asked though. The question was to the percent of income and that $18,000/job pays WAY more than $76,000 today so as a percent of income, job for job, that figure has not changed much, if at all, or in many cases, it has gone backwards as a percentage. I know that a junior faculty position at our flagship pays in the $150,000 range, more for some specialty fields even. I would guess at the Ivy’s that pay is at least as much if not more.</p>