<p>I actually had someone from MIT call me to try to convince me to apply. As a person possessed of 2 X chromosomes, I was a highly desirable URM. I told the guy I was a liberal arts type, and he assured me that I could major in English at MIT. Right…
I took SAT’s once - studied for the PSAT all the way up to the E’s in vocabulary in the Barron’s book, found the incorrectly answered questions in their grammar review, and then gave up. Never studied for the SAT. Applied to 3 schools – got into two, waitlisted at the third (didn’t try too hard on the essay, lol). I also did stuff like not handing in term papers at school if I didn’t feel like writing them, but it didn’t seem to matter much. I had no idea there was a class rank!
The cost of my private college in1980 was $8000. By my senior year, it had increased by 50%, to $12,000. Still sounds like a great deal from here!</p>
<p>As NM and Val, in 1970, got what I thought was a stack of college brochures in the mail. Clueless guidance counselor and parents, never really considered going or applying to anything but state schools, it wasn’t affordable in anyone’s mind. In todays highly competitive market I’m sure I would have applied to more than one school. Not wanting to go to flagship because I would have lived at home, I went all the way across the state, affordable because the NM scholarship covered full tuition, a whopping $900/year.</p>
<p>Then: Everyone, including low-performing, non-college bound students, took the SAT twice, once in the spring of the junior year and once in the fall of the senior year.
Now: Every junior in public school is required to take the ACT in his/her junior year, as an educational progress measuring stick. Most students still take the SAT once or twice, but more students are taking the ACT again, because it is paid for once already.</p>
<p>Then: No one studied for the SAT.
Now: Now and then someone will take an SAT or ACT prep course, but that is very unusual for public school students.</p>
<p>Then: The only campus tour was one you gave yourself. Someone in the admissions office might greet you if you walked in, but that was it.
Now: Junior Days, Senior Days, Accepted Student Days, lots of campus tours, admissions presentations, etc.</p>
<p>Then: Most of my college-bound classmates only applied to one school and were accepted.
Now: Most of my children’s college-bound classmates apply to multiple schools, and rejections and deferments are not unusual.</p>
<p>Then: For each college I considered, I mailed a letter to request that it send a course catalog. I filled out the application in black ink (and Wite-Out was very useful!). We talked to our guidance counselor if we wanted a transcript sent to a college. The acceptance letters came in the mail, and the envelopes weren’t any bigger or fatter than any other envelopes, so we had to open them to see whether we were accepted (which we all expected to be anyway).
Now: Everything is done online, including having transcripts sent to colleges.</p>
<p>Then: My high school classmates mostly went to in-state universities and were happy with their schools.
Now: My children’s classmates mostly go to in-state universities and were/are happy with their schools. (That hasn’t changed.)</p>
<p>Around here (public school in New England) no one is forced to take the ACT and it is certainly not paid for. What state are you in, Marsian? That is a sweet deal. Do they pay for the extra reports to colleges too?</p>
<p>Could you be “deferred” and 'waitlisted" in the early/mid 80’s?? I don’t remember any of my friends being in either situation.</p>
<p>Yes, I think you could be waitlisted in the 1980s, but when it happened to my son last year I was taken by surprise. </p>
<p>I also remember receiving loads of postcards and junk mail from colleges. That has not changed!</p>
<p>As for campus tours, my mother was giving tours to prospective students at Smith as far back as the 50’s… and she was expected to report back to the admissions office on what she observed about the young ladies! I also gave tours to prospective students in the 80’s, but I don’t remember any schools having programs for admitted students.
I definitely knew people who studied for the SAT’s, and people who took them a second time even after doing well the first time.
Another thing that was very different – no weighting for honors courses. The val of my graduating class deliberately avoided honors courses for fear of hurting his GPA (and went to Harvard), and the val the following year had gotten her high grades in courses like typing and steno.</p>
<p>LBowie - I don’t know about Marsian. I am in Illinois and all hs students are required to take the ACT, whether college-bound or not. </p>
<p>In the dark ages of the mid-1980’s, we did have weighting for honors courses - you could get an “H” which was worth a 5.0 on a 4.0 scale. No one studied for SAT’s beyond a prep book, and it was the “dumb kids” who took it more than once. But I did a college tour of the east coast that was conceptually similar to what I did with my kids.</p>
<p>Not only do they sell wite-out I use it all the time - though mostly on drawings not print.</p>
<p>We had two NMSF at our school. In a class of 80, 6 went to Harvard, 4 to Yale and 2 to Princeton. I think we benefited from the fact that Y and P had just gone co-ed. I took the SAT twice, scores in the low to mid 700s. That verbal score would now be an 800, so I tied my older son. 
Took three achievement tests and don’t remember those scores except that even then a 790 on Math 2 was some surprisingly low percentile. We practiced analogies and did a lot of vocab. in English as prep. I was always very bad about doing that homework. It was soooo boring! Give me a paper any day. </p>
<p>I typed my essay, but then had to copy it all in handwriting for Brown which required them to be handwritten. I definitely went on official tours because I remember being told all about Jumbo the stuffed elephant at Tufts. (He burned down the next year and has been replaced by a statue.)</p>
<p>My best friend was waitlisted at Yale and didn’t hear she was in until August.</p>
<p>Our GC sat me down and tried to persuade me to apply to Vassar (no offense jym!) and Smith, but I was sooooo ready to leave an all female atmosphere. It really annoyed me no end that she pigeonholed me that way. We were allowed two college weekends. I visited three school junior year during spring break with my Mom (Barnard, Tufts and Harvard) and had one college weekend at Harvard as a senior for an overnight visit. I applied to Harvard, Brown (sight unseen) and U Penn (also unseen) as a safety. :eek: I had decided I wanted to be in a city. I didn’t apply to Yale, because their application had weird essays (sort of like the Chicago essays).</p>
<p>(This is all from the '90s.) I applied to four schools; my dad said that if I wanted to apply to more, I would pay for them myself. I took the SAT once and got a score that was in the top quartile of every college I looked at - my dad said that if I wanted to take it again, I could pay for it myself. I looked at six colleges, all of which were local; my dad said that if I wanted to tour/attend a college more than a three-hour drive away, I could pay for transportation myself.</p>
<p>Anyone see a theme? ;)</p>
<p>Beyond that, there was no college coaching, no cover letters, no help with essay writing. I filled out my applications by hand, snail-mailed them in, and waited. I wrote a resume for three of them; the resume highlighted my track times and leadership positions that didn’t fit in the tiny boxes on the application. I had two interviews.</p>
<p>One of the big things that irks me about students is that they do apply to ten schools. That is about 90% of the reason why this is my last year as an alumni interviewer; I am not going to spend my free time talking to students who have about a 10% chance of attending my alma mater. Back when I started interviewing, a good chunk of my interviewees would attend. That is no longer the case, because they are just throwing apps out there.</p>
<p>@CIEE</p>
<p>My aunt majored in English at MIT! She went on to get a masters!</p>
<p>Ahhh. . . the good old days! </p>
<p>I attended a small, rural, public high school and applied to college in the late '80s. I had a big cardboard box in my bedroom where I kept (alphabetized, of course) all of the college catalogs I received. I pretty much selected the schools to apply to by how much I liked the looks of their materials - their logos and the colors they used in particular, and glossy materials got extra points. (Clearly wasn’t a good strategy - I ended up strongly disliking and ultimately transferring out of the school I ended up picking to attend! 
)</p>
<p>We almost all took the SAT, and a smaller number of us took the ACT too. No studying or prep whatsoever, and I only knew of one person who took the SAT more than once - the valedictorian who didn’t do particularly well the first time but made up for it the second time. </p>
<p>I had never heard of anyone taking the achievement (subject) tests. And I don’t remember anyone going to a college more prestigious than Union College in Schenectady, NY. </p>
<p>I think I ended up applying to three schools - accepted at two and waitlisted at one. </p>
<p>We spent a lot of time in the guidance office taking those personality-type tests about what majors would be good for us. </p>
<p>I was recently talking to someone at work about this topic and I couldn’t believe it. She only applied to two schools (probably in the early '80s) - MIT and I think Stanford. She went to MIT. Can you imagine anyone today only applying to two super high-caliber schools like that?!</p>
<p>I can. I applied to 4 schools - 3 of which are in today’s top 20 universities and 1 which is just a smidge below - and got into all 4, including an honors program at 2 of them. It didn’t occur to anyone that a really smart kid with good grades and stats needed a “safety.” He or she might not get in everywhere, but he or she was absolutely guaranteed to get into one really good school.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, you can imagine it TODAY? I really can’t.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Then and now, you can major in various humanities and social studies subjects at MIT.</p>
<p>[MIT</a> Anthropology](<a href=“http://web.mit.edu/anthropology/]MIT”>http://web.mit.edu/anthropology/)
[Foreign</a> Languages & Literatures @ MIT](<a href=“http://web.mit.edu/fll/www/]Foreign”>http://web.mit.edu/fll/www/)
[MIT</a> School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences](<a href=“http://history.mit.edu/]MIT”>http://history.mit.edu/)
[MIT</a> Department of Linguistics](<a href=“http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/]MIT”>MIT Linguistics – Department of Linguistics and Philosophy)
[LIT@MIT:</a> Literature at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology](<a href=“http://lit.mit.edu/]LIT@MIT:”>http://lit.mit.edu/)
[MIT</a> Music Program](<a href=“Massachusetts Institute of Technology |”>Massachusetts Institute of Technology |)
[MIT</a> Political Science](<a href=“MIT Department of Political Science”>MIT Department of Political Science)
[women’s</a> & gender studies](<a href=“Women's & Gender Studies at MIT”>Women's & Gender Studies at MIT)</p>
<p>1973: I applied to one school, a UC, the one that had my program. Of course I knew I would be accepted, I was well into the “upper 12 1/2 percent” that you needed to be accepted. Handwritten application, no essay that I can recall. We never heard of anyone studying for the SAT, or taking it more than once. I took the SAT once, and achievement tests once. My score on the English achievement test was high enough to exempt me from taking ANY English composition requirements in college. Tuition was $627 per year. The “town center” consisted of: one trailer. The dorms were expensive: about $125 per month including food. When I moved off campus, I remember sharing food expenses with my housemates. My portion was $7 per week.<br>
I knew very few kids who applied for more than one school. That’s because they applied to Stanford. So those kid applied to UC in addition. The most selective UC at the time was UC Santa Cruz–liberal arts, no grades, just pass/fail, a very tough admit at the time, mostly for valedictorians/academic superstars. Second choice UC’s for those kids were Berkeley and UCLA (MUCH easier admits at the time). As mentioned before, there was only one application for UC, you checked off your choices. Was there an application fee? I can’t remember.</p>
<p>Back when the earth’s crust was still cooling, my twin brother & I attended a large public high school in a city environment, so the student body was very heterogeneous. We both took the SAT 2x and heard mention of the Acheievement tests but never took them.</p>
<p>I recently found one of my SAT score sheets - they were mediocre at best. Back in the day anything over 1,000 was a respectable score which gained you admittance to the state flagship immediately. I showed the scores to my niece, nephew & the DD. We all got a chuckle out of my god awful scores!</p>
<p>We both applied to the state flagship - he in Pharmacy, me at the science campus. He was admitted, me waitlisted. He also applied to Northeastern & Philadelphia College of Pharmacy & accepted at both. I applied to UMASS & a state college in our home state.</p>
<p>We did a tour of Northeastern UMASS, etc and settled on the state flagship for him and the state coillege for me - in-state tuition and FINANCIAL AID/work-study for us both since mom & dad had 2 in college at the same time. We both visisted the state flagship to attend football games & I did visit my college campus prior to my accepatance. I paid for my last vtwo years of undergrad as I had a part-time job after I gave up playing baseball for school. I made enough to cover what financial aid didn’t, with a few dollars left for spending money.</p>
<p>Yes, we hand wrote the applications. I remember having to write a 2-3 paragraph essay, but that’s about it.</p>
<p>Dad went to college on the GI Bill, very far from home (Dallas, then UMASS), so he had some ideas about school. Mom didn’t go to college & it was dad’s uncle that took us on our college tour weeekend. We got lost in Boston, which turned my brother off to Northeastern - that plus the neighborhood around the school was not yet gentrified.</p>
<p>Sorry, fostarte, that was a typo! I can’t imagine it today.</p>
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<p>By the 1980s, they raised the standards somewhat on this:</p>
<p>600 on English achievement test or passing score on UC-administered essay exam: exempt from remedial English (Subject A) requirement
4 on AP English: exempt from first reading and composition course
5 on AP English literature: exempt from both reading and composition courses</p>
<p>This is essentially the same now, except that the Subject A requirement is now called the Entry Level Writing requirement, and the test score that can be used to exempt oneself from it is a 680 on the SAT writing, or 30 on the ACT English / writing (there is still the UC-administered essay exam as well).</p>
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<p>Even back in the early 1980s, they told students that they needed a safety. But most of the UCs admitted everyone at baseline UC eligibility, and most of the CSUs admitted everyone at baseline CSU eligibility, so it was not too hard for a decent student to find a safety if s/he did not want to use the community college as a safety (and the UCs and CSUs were less expensive then, so cost was much less of an issue than it is now).</p>