<p>“.I suppose the counter-culture of the late sixties was frightening to middle-class parents.”</p>
<p>It was fascinating and exciting to be young during those times. Until your comment, I had never before considered how frightening it must have been to be a parent during those times…</p>
<p>DonnaL:
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<p>Phew, I got rejected from the same place with “stats” eerily similar to yours. Of course, nobody used the word “stats” in those days.</p>
<p>What with everybody talking about how easy it was to get in everywhere back then, I was starting to wonder if I had some foul bodily odor at the interview or something. ;)</p>
<p>“What with everybody talking about how easy it was to get in everywhere back then”</p>
<p>It wasn’t easy to get in back then. Back when many of us applied, admission to top colleges was more difficult than admissions ever had been before.</p>
<p>For all we know, in another 30 years, Harvard may be accepting one in 30 applicants, but that doesn’t mean that admission to Harvard is easy now.</p>
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<p>Indeed. I was first becoming aware of the outside world during the late 60’s. I grew up thinking that assassinations, riots, love-ins, 3-day muddy music events, and student take-overs were just normal. It wasn’t until many years later that I thought about how it must have seemed to my parents, whose formative years included the Depression and WWII. They were raised on respect for authority, duty and sacrifice, and deprivation. How strange we must have seemed!</p>
<p>I graduated from HS in 74. I’ve always considered myself an “over-achiever” because I did better in school than on standardized tests. I had to work hard to get good grades, but I enjoyed doing so, and I always liked to be around kids who were smarter than me. I especially liked, and did well in math. With S1, who is also good in math, I joked that I could never get into the schools he applied to with my old “stats.” Things have indeed changed, but I believe being a girl interested in math in the 70’s worked in my favor.</p>
<p>I had a scholarship to a prep school in Massachusetts (boarding school). We had a very strange grading scale at that time, with narrative reports, and I don’t believe the school ranked. However, I was in “Cum Laude” society. We did have a few AP classes. Being a math nerd, I took AP calc (2 years) and physics (one year). But I don’t recall what else was offered. We did have a variety of extra-curricular opportunities; by my junior and senior year, all my “free” time was spent doing theater production. I was also a student leader in the dorm, and worked in the computer center (where one of my jobs was vacuuming up the chads from the punch tape…). I received a school math award in my junior year. I did not have interesting summer experiences, because I had to earn money in a summer job.</p>
<p>Being a prep school, everything was geared to getting us into the right colleges. The school scheduled the board tests, but I don’t recall any prep classes, except for a brief orientation and some comments about not guessing. My scores were lopsided - 700’s in math, high 500’s in verbal. I took 6 achievement tests (now SATII) and did very well on math 2, physics, and Latin, average in history, chem, and English. My average score did not break 700!</p>
<p>In junior year, we all had to meet with our counselor, who gave us a list of 15 or so schools to look at and do research on. They had all kinds of guidebooks and catalogs in the guidance office. We were instructed to find at least 6 that we liked and then send a letter asking for a catalog and application (no internet and “viewbooks” then!) Senior year, we met with the counselor again to discuss our choices. We were encouraged to pick 4 - a reach, 2 matches, and a safety. Many colleges sent interviewers to our campus, so we signed up to interview with the colleges we picked. There really was not an opportunity to go and visit. I know that the interviewers also talked to the counselors about the applicants, and that is probably how we were “ranked” against each other. As I recall, the counselor secured the teacher recommendations, and we were responsible for the applications (hand-written) and essays (type-written).</p>
<p>My reach was Dartmouth (VERY popular at my school that year.) I got waitlisted. I got into MIT and Harvey Mudd (my “matches”) and Carnegie Mellon (my “safety”). As one poster stated, chances have really changed since then! Mudd actually admitted me in the middle of February (not EA or ED). They sent me a special letter that said they voted to accept me early because there was no doubt I would be accepted later. I still have the cool certificate they sent me. </p>
<p>By March, I had decided that Mudd was the school for me; my parents did not want to send their child across the continent to California, but the scholarship offer from Mudd sealed the deal. I never saw the college, and I had never flown on a jet, but in the fall, I traveled all by myself on a 747 from Kennedy to LAX. My suitcase and 2 trunks were filled with Shetland sweaters, plaid skirts, and corduroy pants that I rarely wore in the smoggy SoCal sunshine! I was no longer a preppy… I was a Mudder.</p>
<p>How did it go from the OP asking </p>
<p>"Now, I’ve heard the situation wasn’t that competitive when all of you were applying to college…so what did the typical overachiever have at the time (SAT score, ec’s, awards, etc…)? "</p>
<p>to all of the parents telling us about their admissions stories…with a heavy emphasis on HYPMS and Ivy admissions?</p>
<p>I think there are many parents on this site with great insight who have been very helpful to students and other parents…and probably shouldn’t be too surprised that our postings about ourselves are not so different from the student postings on this site today!</p>
<p>From the mid-70’s, my biggest recollection of the over-achievers I knew or heard about within my HS were the AFS exchange students (only 1 or 2 selected each year - very competitive at the upstate NY urban HS that I attended) and state/national science fair winners. The editor of our HS newspaper was also usually one of the high achievers. All of the Westinghouse winners were considered geniuses.</p>
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<p>It certainly scared my parents half out of their wits. I wanted to go to the University of Oregon, but my parents wouldn’t let me (or more correctly, they refused to pay for it). Because back in those days Eugene fancied itself to be a sort of Berkeley-North. My parents were very worried that I would go there and turn into a drug-addled hippie.</p>
<p>I was not an " incredible college applicant", but I “frustrated” my “?counselors” because I took vocational AND AP classes. Supposedly seperate “tracks”. I was expected to earn some money, and I could make more while in high school as an LVN.</p>
<p>I remember a girl named Aviva Gerowitz (are you reading this?) asking me about my class rank. I told her, but had NO idea what it meant till I came to college confidential!. She said “well that, good… for you.”</p>
<p>I knew kids who tried out for special schools in NYC like “School of the Performing Arts” and Music and Art" or “Bronx Science” and they spent more than an hour each way on trains and buses getting to school.</p>
<p>Mare then 1000 kids in my graduating class; they divided us into groups that attended for about three hours a day. If you didn’t hurry, you couldn’t even get a seat on the radiator. When I said I was leaving before graduating to go to college, they said “bye”!</p>
<p>I did my high school and undergrad college overseas. Scales were first class 60%+, second class: 50-60%, third class (pass) 35%. I had a mix of all three.
One incident I remember concerns a teacher who would read the exam results to the class (didn’t quite have the concept of confidentiality). He read off the first four or five scores which were single digits to about 25, when one of the students put up his hand and asked “Out of, sir?” Our teacher responded with a one word answer, “Pity!” and proceeded with his list, which I remember didn’t have a single first class.</p>
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<p>I’m guessing that you didn’t?</p>
<p>^^No. My dad thought my hair was too long, and we disagreed about the war in Viet Nam, but a genuine drug-addled hippie would have considered me to be a real straight shooter.</p>
<p>What strikes me most about our past experiences is the fact that there were such regional differences then that have smoothed out (but not been eliminated) now.
I graduated in the mid-70’s from a HS in what was considered one of, if not the top school district in Washington. Top 5% of my class,(can’t recall SAT scores but was NM commended so probably in the 90th+ percentile) took them once with no prep and no idea of taking again.<br>
Our graduating class had a dozen or so kids go to Stanford, a few nerds at Cal-Tech, another handful to service academies, and maybe three to Iveys. The really smartest few (judging by later success) went to west coast LACs. My lone friend who went to Yale (which I had never even heard of) had an uncle who taught there, so was obviously aware of things the rest of us weren’t. The rest of the class went to UW, WSU, or CC.
We just didn’t know - to us, Harvard was some weird East Coast school where the kids in Love Story suffered and died…
The world is smaller now.</p>
<p>oh wow! I just looked up my HS and read this…</p>
<p>[Jamaica</a> High School to close doors, ending its rich history in Queens](<a href=“http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2009/12/04/2009-12-04_jamaica_hs_is_passing_into_history.html#ixzz0Ys1IzeDQ]Jamaica”>http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2009/12/04/2009-12-04_jamaica_hs_is_passing_into_history.html#ixzz0Ys1IzeDQ)</p>
<p>Education officials Thursday noted the graduation rate “has stagnated below 50% for years.”</p>
<p>After the state removed Jamaica from the “persistently dangerous” list and the school’s graduation rate jumped 10%, teachers and students relaxed.</p>
<p>Read more: <a href=“http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2009/12/04/2009-12-04_jamaica_hs_is_passing_into_history.html#ixzz0cBJpaykL[/url]”>http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2009/12/04/2009-12-04_jamaica_hs_is_passing_into_history.html#ixzz0cBJpaykL</a></p>
<p>Fascinating read.</p>
<p>Our band had almost military rules–boys had to have hair off the collar and no facial hair–which I find amazing today but was just one of those things then. Either you put up with it or quit the band. Anyhow, it certainly kept a lot of kids from looking like hippies in the 60s! (And we couldn’t wear blue jeans to school until my senior year…1971-72!)</p>
<p>I guess I was an overachiever b/c I won every band award there was. I got my picture in the paper with them senior year. They lived in a box under my bed for years until I finally got rid of them and just kept one small representative one…the John Phillip Sousa award. It also had a lapel pin which I am fond of still. :)</p>
<p>One guy who got a 5 on the AP Calc exam was considered to be a genius. And he got into MIT!</p>
<p>lol,mommusic…DH got the John Phillip Sousa award in 1977. I think the little trophy is still around here somewhere.<br>
DH and I went to the same h.s. in the rural south. There was no grade weighting,no AP classes, no SAT prep classes, nobody took college classes while still in h.s. Community service was something we did at church with the youth group because it helped people, not for a college app.</p>
<p>Anyone (very few) who made over 1000 on the SAT was considered to be really,really smart. Nobody took the SAT more than once unless their scores were too low to get into the state school of their choice. We did band/sports because we wanted to. We held after school jobs because we had to. </p>
<p>Everyone was way more impressed with athletic abilities than academics.
The Val of DH’s class went to Stanford. We were only impressed because it was in Californina…that’s all any of us knew about it.</p>
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<p>How exactly would you expect people to answer this question? In the past, top achievers went to these schools just like today. (I think I was fairly clear that I was NOT admitted to one of these schools). Assuming that every parent on here did not perform a sociological study of what the typical high-school high achiever did in the past, they can only base it on what they know. If someone was considered a “high achiever” back in their day, they are giving their statistics as an anecdotal point of reference. And the OP specifically asked about top SAT scorers.</p>
<p>It may be an opportunity to brag a little, but it is certainly not off-topic. It’s not like somebody working their SAT scores and alma mater into the “recipes” thread. (“Now I may have only scored a 780 Math SAT, but at least at Caltech they taught us how to correctly assemble a quiche.”)</p>
<p>Ok, this is not a superstar story but funny anyway. My dad went to Georgetown in 1932. He was on the baseball team there. During spring his senior year, he was practicing with the team and the coach asked what he was doing after graduation. He replied, 'I dunno." (Remember, this was in the middle of the Depression.) Coach asked if he was interested in the med school. Dad said sure and without further ado, was admitted to Georgetown Med. He graduated in 1940, did a 2yr internship and signed up for the Army. Came back 5 years later.</p>
<p>PS For myself, great grades, scores, leadership at an unbelievably small all-girls Catholic HS in NYC. (No sports, our state PE was fulfilled with ballet class!) Didn’t get into Georgetown. Alcoholic GC later confessed that he never sent his half of the application. C’est la vie.</p>
<p>I love the stories on this thread! My siblings got into Ivies in mid 70s from average high school with excellent grades and mid 700 SATs but no significant ECs (one was a baton twirler). I went to a more competitive high school several years later, and had good grades and mid 600s SATs and got into Ivies as well. I think the difference between my sibs hs experience and mine was that I was encouraged to participate in EC’s to be a “well rounded” college applicant. </p>
<p>A lot of girls then went to secretarial school. A lot of “middle class” kids were able to get financial aid at private colleges which made the cost comparative to the cost of public. The high school students today are under so much more pressure to be excellent at everything and so much more pressure to find the funds for college.</p>
<p>I was NMSF back in the early 80’s. I went to a highly regarded public high school in NJ (at the time) and my graduating class was 750 kids. My GC never explained the extra steps to become a NMF or the potential benefits so I don’t think any of the 7 NMSFs of my class moved on. No AP classes at all, and I don’t think anyone took any college classes during HS. I was in advanced math & science and I do remember that our val did summer work at one of the local pharmaceutical companies but aside from that we all had jobs. I worked 30 hours a week during school & 40 during the summer. The only EC I remember spending any time on was the yearbook staff. The rest of my spare time was spent driving to the shore :)</p>
<p>I ended up at a local private college for 2 years which was a bad fit, and then transferred to a public college to finish my degree. No merit money since my parents wouldn’t fill out the FAFSA because they didn’t think the schools needed to know all their “business.” Sigh.</p>
<p>RE: Post #76</p>
<p>I expected people to respond about overachievers they knew…and did not expect most of the posts to be about the parents themselves.</p>
<p>I’m sure we are all above average…just thought we’d have known people more high achieving than ourselves!</p>
<p>That said, I am also enjoying reading the various stories.</p>