Back in the say, none of us took a practice SAT, let along a prep class–we all just took it cold.
@vhsdad and we were a lot happier (not that we didn’t have our moments) as a generation then this generation as a whole. At our high school, the pressure to get into a University of California instead of a CSU is immense and then with any kid in APs, the pressure to go to a top 10 school is enormous. My son didn’t want to and didn’t apply to Berkeley, though he might have gotten in. He chose Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, and UCSD and I predict he’ll get into two if not 3, but maybe that’s optimistic. He didn’t get in to Caltech, probably because he didn’t do research as high schooler. RESEARCH as a high schooler!
It was very rare for kids of my generation to know what they wanted to, and so in senior year, they took their grades and maybe a few ECs they had a passion for and applied to a good school. I have always told my kids no rush to be a grown up. Maybe I’ve given them bad advice. He’s gotten into RIT, DU, and UCONN and is happy with any one of those though they don’t have the prestige of an Ivy or a Caltech.
I’m not sure this is progress.
I probably took the same SAT that @bjkmom did and also without any prep or even a look at the exam format.
@Publisher - Really? You can add 150 -175 points to a 1975 SAT score and get today’s result?
Since I attended a CUNY school, because my family had no money and nobody told me that scholarships existed, I am pretty sure I could still get in. My H went to Stony Brook. With his HS stats, no way would he get in now, but I probably could based on mine, but would never apply since I am a humanities and social science kid all the way. In fact, that’s one oft the reasons I didn’t apply to SBU back in the day.
I also agree about the grade inflation. At my second HS, there was an honor roll, called The Top 100 Scholars. The school had somewhere between 4 -5,000 kids when I graduated (a new school opened when I was in grade 10 and took many of the kids who would have come there after that; there were over 6,000 when I first started there). Anyway, this top 100 list was of all four grades. I made it several times and my average was only about a 93. So if a 93 gets you into the top 100 out of 4-5,000, you can see how much grade inflation there is now. Also, I was in the top 10% of my graduating class (56/618). No way would I be so highly ranked nowadays. To contrast, my kids attended a suburban LI HS. One year, I counted the number of kids on the 10th grade honor roll and it was about two-thirds of the entire sophomore class! The other grades had similar results. There comes a point when the honor roll is just a joke.
@vhsdad Exactly. I took mine in a classroom at my HS on a Saturday morning and half of us were hungover from the football game and party the night before and we still rocked the test. NO ONE freaked out about the SAT. You just took it.
I grew up near Lehigh (had my HS graduation at Stabler) and Lafayette and I cannot believe that people have to sweat getting in there now. Lehigh was pretty much considered 13th grade in my day. Things have certainly changed.
I hear ya. My alma mater is a former top party school (which apparently doesn’t even crack the top 20 mow) which now has an admit rate of around 33-35%. Back when I went, I think pretty much anyone could waltz in.
Yes. I had the grades and test scores, was a NMS. btw- adding x points to an old ACT or SAT score- doubt would have gotten perfect (plus) scores, took once, no prep classes et al. No AP classes either. CLEP available but not on the radar. They had Honors versions of required “sophomore” (everyone took it as freshmen) lit classes that current students would have had with AP.
Might get into schools never could consider back in the day- finances. Also gender- single gender schools were just going coed in my era. No way was I going to attend the woman’s version/sister school!!! btw- perhaps more was going on but in the Midwest there was far less information about east coast schools. The internet certainly has widened the scope of schools to research.
Wisconsin used to consider freshman year a shakedown time, now they expect accepted students to be able to graduate. I never realized that men far outnumbered women in college back then since was in chemistry with other math science courses still dominated by men. Really noticed the gender gap for medical schools as the percentage of women kept increasing each year for my school.
Fast forward to son’s era. Gifted and Talented options so much more available but still not the same options for online as now. Like others more gifted than I was he never worked hard to get top grades unless he wanted them. His HS offered an ACT Saturday prep class. Son had taken the ACT and SAT for Talent Search purposes (not available in my day) years before and I forced him to do a practice test. Still don’t believe how many people waste so much time and money trying to get their good but not superior students eke out a few extra points.
Extracurriculars were just something you did, for me and son. H from India and very different system.
My older sister went to Yale in the 1990s. She sent in an audition tape for singing and that got her in, but she was a B student. She did some stuff and had some interesting experiences to make her somewhat of an unusual candidate but she’d have no chance today.
Our dad was like that too. He went to UC Berkeley after being a C+/B student in high school. No honors classes, no SAT prep (though this was the 60s…), and he turned in his application late. But he only went because he’s from the Bay Area.
Makes me wonder what it will be like for when my own kids or nieces/nephews are in college.
My classmates and I talk about this and related issues (how much the school has changed demographically) from time to time. I ended up finding his link which includes a bunch of stat’s on Yale students (entering freshmen from 1975 -1999/2001). https://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pierson_update_1976-2000.pdf. I suspect many of the highly selectives have similar trends. Section D has the admissions data.
Highlights:
D2 Shift of students from the Mid Atlantic and Great Lakes to South, Pacific Coast and International (by state data in D1)
D4 Reduction of legacy matriculates
D7 Provides admissions rates as well as summary data on public vs private vs parochial school and URM representation. You can see the trend of the increasing number of students applying with admitted students remaining relatively constant.
D8 SAT percentiles, you can see the jump after the “re-centering”
L1, a particularly painful page for those of us who were fortunate to get a kid in. My freshman year tuition, room and board was a little over $7k.
Maybe.
My daughter graduated from the same college (Cornell) in 2011, so that would make me a legacy, right?
Without the legacy preference, I don’t think I would have a chance. My grades and test scores would have been good enough, but my ECs were really weak. I wouldn’t have stood out from the crowd.
The population of Texas was 14.2 million when I started college. In 2016, it was 27.9 million! I think the state needs more flagships.
I went to Syracuse. I would most likely get in again.
Could I afford it? That’s a different question. 8-|
I got into Syracuse. Couldn’t afford it then, or now.
Like the comments above about Lehigh, that’s sort of how many people my age feel about NYU. Back in my day, NYU was where rich kids whose parents didn’t want to let them go away went (it was a commuter school then) or where people who didn’t think CUNY or SUNY was good enough went. I went to a CUNY school but my one month younger (and a year behind in school) cousin went to NYU. OTOH, when my kids were applying, I don’t think a single one would have gotten in, if I’d let them apply and/or they had chosen to. I know I would have gotten in back in the day, but now I have no idea.
Regarding old SAT scores:
You can’t just add a fixed number. Go to https://research.collegeboard.org/programs/sat/data/equivalence/sat-individual to see how your old score converts. (Well, converts to post 1995 scores, that is. Not the 2400-based scores or the new 1600-based scores.)
Personally:
I went to Texas A&M free on National Merit. I don’t think they have fully free rides any longer, but at least now there is the internet so I could choose rather than taking the only one that sent me a letter.
I got admitted to MIT and Berkeley, but I couldn’t afford MIT or housing at Berkeley. (I think UC tuition was almost nothing back in those days.) I don’t think I would have done too well at MIT anyway, since though my scores were high, the course rigor at the small religious high school I attended was very low.
Could I get in now? I’m still trying to figure out how I got in then, and wondering how much those responsible had been drinking. 
My dad got into UCLA grad school for free. Does that count? I will still ask him this question and get back to you guys
In today’s terms the highest ranked college I applied to was Middlebury or today UofM and I got in then and would most likely get in now with the same information.
No way! I went to Washington University in St. Louis and wasn’t even top 20% of my class. Back then, the motto was easy to get in and hard to stay in. I am thrilled that my son is going fall 2018 – he is definitely much smarter than me!
I did also get into University of Michigan and University of Rochester but was rejected from Tufts.
I am still not quite sure how I got into Wellesley back then. I sure fooled them.
Mr. InfiniteWaves took all AP classes and had high SAT scores. I was in honors English and history. Barely made it through trig. And had “okay” SAT scores thanks to the aforementioned math thing.
We both went to Loyola Maryland. I could probably get in there now.
I had wanted to go to Skidmore but it was the only school I applied to that didn’t accept me. And I definitely would also not be accepted there now. 
Oh, hell no.