<p>don’t forget that the SATs got recentered, so the scores back in the 70’s would be higher today. </p>
<p>Data on Williams?</p>
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<p>I also found my college essays when I was cleaning out the closet. One on why I wanted to go into architectural engineering, and the other on what I wanted to do after college. I was usually a good writer, but I obviously didn’t put much effort into the paragraphs. I KNEW I would get into UT-Austin’s engineering honors program, so I didn’t have to try. If I applied for the same program now, I don’t think I would get into it, even considering that my SAT scorer would be higher.</p>
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Williams = Most selective</p>
<p>20% acce[ptance rate
630 Verbal average, 660 math average
17% over 700 verbal
36% over 700 math</p>
<p>Tuiition - 3,055</p>
<p>ihs76
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<p>RT airfares correlate pretty closely to selectivity growth over the years (weren’t they deregulated in the eighties?) This was true particularly for colleges located back east. I don’t know what Cass Birnbaum said about geographic distribution among the student bodies but I’m guessing it was the rare Ivy that filled anywhere close to half its seats from outside the Eastern Seaboard.</p>
<p>I must have been at “the rare Ivy” - at least based on my roommates!</p>
<p>One from France, one from CA, one from St. Louis and one from less than an hour away. At the time I applied my parents were overseas as well, but I was at an East Coast boarding school so probably counted that way.</p>
<p>Me, too. Group of eight on my entryway floor freshman year had three from the Eastern Seaboard (if you count one kid from the Washington DC ghetto), two from the near-Midwest, one from the St. Louis burbs, one from the Chicago burbs, and one from Hong Kong.</p>
<p>Here’s another voice to say that avg jr faculty salaries in 2012 (at 4-yr colleges) are more like 40-60K, and avg full professor salaries are more like 90-120K. Yes, there are exceptions. </p>
<p>One thing that is different; today, a child with a faculty member parent is more likely to have another parent with a significant income; so ‘family income’ on average for children from the the academic class is probably closer to having kept up with tuition than it would otherwise appear.</p>
<p>Chiming in to say that I went to hs in St Louis and I absolutely had classmates/acquaintances who went to Ivies. Really, it wasn’t as though there weren’t airplanes or anything.</p>
<p>^^well, let’s put it another way: what would it say, about the ivies that the percent of non-easterners <em>hasn’t</em> increased in forty years (assuming that’s true?)</p>
<p>My guess - and this is completely a guess, not data based - is that it’s a change in the composition of the non-easterners. In other words, the kids from St. Louis I knew who went to the Ivies and similar schools were already kids who were relatively well-to-do, who had educated parents who had attended elite schools and came to St. Louis for business or were originally from there in the first place, for whom getting on a plane to go someplace was absolutely no big deal. My guess is that what the Ivies (etc) have done in terms of outreach is go beyond the east coast but also go lower in the socioeconomic pile.</p>
<p>I will also note that I think there is always a difference in the expansiveness of people at different socioeconomic levels. I went to high school in suburban St. Louis in a more uniformly upper-middle-class community than the suburban Chicago high school my kids attended. The kids in St. Louis were far more expansive in their choices (all over the country) than the Chicago kids have been - because their parents were generally more sophisticated.</p>
<p>^^I think that makes sense. I’d also be curious as to the number of non-Californians who went to Stanford and Pomona in the seventies.</p>
<p>^^^
I haven’t been around both a computer and the Cass Guidebook at the same time for a while, and I make too many mistakes on my PDA.</p>
<p>But I do seem to recall that the book mentioned at least 70% of the student body at Stanford in 1974 was from California. I didn’t look at the geographical distribution from other schools but maybe I’ll take a look over the weekend.</p>
<p>I think you can find the numbers for Yale in here somewhere (if you have time and inclination to look around)-
[1701-1976</a>, Yale Book of Numbers | Office of Institutional Research](<a href=“http://oir.yale.edu/1701-1976-yale-book-numbers]1701-1976”>http://oir.yale.edu/1701-1976-yale-book-numbers)</p>
<p>According to this website, in 1975 around 50% of the students at Yale were from either New England or the Middle Atlantic. The rest were spread around the country and internationally.</p>
<p>There’s similar data on line for Harvard (president’s reports on Harvard and Radcliffe)
It’s in here somewhere but doesn’t seem to be working now-</p>
<p>[Harvard/Radcliffe</a> Annual Reports](<a href=“http://hul.harvard.edu/huarc/refshelf/AnnualReportsCites.htm#tarHarvardPresidents]Harvard/Radcliffe”>http://hul.harvard.edu/huarc/refshelf/AnnualReportsCites.htm#tarHarvardPresidents)
<a href=“http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/2582287[/url]”>http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/2582287</a></p>
<p>There were plenty of non-Californians who were undergraduates at Stanford in the 70s, although I think there are more there now. My sister, for one (originally class of 1980) and her roommate/BFF (from Colorado). Of the five undergraduates I knew reasonably well, other than my sister and her friends, three were from various East Coast locations.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I can attest that as late as 1980 you rarely had a problem getting time on a squash court, even without reserving in advance. The squash courts were sort of an East Coast In Exile club.</p>
<p>Going back into the 30s and 40s, you had people like William Hewlett (Michigan), David Packard (Colorado), William Rehnquist (originally from Wisconsin, I think), Sandra Day (Texas), Vic Palmieri (Illinois). Back then, California had far fewer people, and everybody was coming from somewhere else.</p>
<p>As for Pomona, one of my cousins (from Washington D.C.) went there in the 1950s, and another in the late 60s (she also came from Washington, although she had lived a good portion of her childhood in California, so maybe she doesn’t count).</p>
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<p>Is that The Spirit of St. Louis?</p>
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<p>Thanks, Bovertine. That’s my recollection; that 50% was the gold standard (or, 45/45 with the rest internationals) and with HYP leading the Ivy pack slightly. The seventy per cent Californians at Stanford figure also sticks out in my mind.</p>
<p>Things never change!</p>
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<p>I can only hope that in the year 2047 (35 years from now), I can sit down with my kids and grandkids and look at something like the “Fiske Guide to Colleges 2012” - * “Grandpa, you read things printed on paper? How quaint!”* , and get a laugh at NYU only costing $60K a year. ;)</p>
<p>I bought an original 1879 tuition bill from Yale on ebay. Term cost was $59, room was $4.75, fuel was $6.25 and there was a 10 cent charge for the course catalog. This student was lucky to be awarded an $18.90 “abatement” (financial aid?) for a net term cost of $45.20! Looking at on-line CPI calculators that equates to about $1100 in 2012 dollars.</p>
<p>My father, a B and C student, got a full (merit-based) ride to one of our state schools in the 70s. He also did no community service and I think he played football one year?</p>
<p>I’m the opposite of him (12 season athlete, A student, community service, etc) and I’m barely qualified, if at all, for some of their programs now.</p>
<p>Has anyone noticed that these old tuitions aren’t much higher than the current application costs?</p>
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<p>I looked it up -
Stanford had 70% from the “West and Northwest”, Pomona had 80% from the west and northwest. I take that to mean CA, OR, and WA.</p>
<p>Interestingly, Reed had onlyu 46% from the West/Northwest with 19% from North Central US, and 19% from Mid Atlantic. It is listed as “Most Selective” although it accepted 62% of students. The average SATs were 621 V and 628 M. I know Steve Jobs got into the school supposedly with a 2.5 or so GPA. But I also remember a couple of the brainy kids from my high school went to Reed - which of course I had never heard of at the time.</p>
<p>In this guidebook they list the racial makeup too, and they list a minorities “oriental” - which I guess is what we term Asian today. At UCLA there were 8.4% Asian in 1973-4. Things do change.</p>