@ucbalumnus I sometimes think the best parts of the “good ole days” was our youth, and I would not trade those early days for anything, but please don’t take my internet connection, my smartphone and my labtop.
Just another vote for a late '80s graduate who definitely knew that there were SAT prep books and courses. I used the books, but never took any courses. Scored very well, but took the test at least 3 times (maybe 4?) trying to get something approximating a perfect score, an approach that I never once suggested to my daughter. (I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned that I took the test 3+ times to my daughter.)
I was a test nerd, and fit very well into the high grades/test scores with a smattering of good ECs profile that I think was more favorably viewed by universities 30 years ago than is today. (I got in everywhere I applied, including an Ivy and top LACs.) I think my resume as is would be considerably less likely to secure an acceptance from the same schools today, and I think that’s a good thing – I’m glad the universe of applicants is significantly broader and that top schools seem to be valuing stuff besides grades and scores more than they used to.
My daughter might be a slightly less gifted test-taker (though still very good), but I think she’s brighter than I was at her age, and probably a more well-rounded person as well.
I would not describe my high school years as more carefree than my son’s time! My high school years and college application process were busy, focused, and intense. My friends and I were very driven to get into top colleges and spent hours researching colleges and studying to do well in class and on exams.
My junior and senior years of high school were my busiest and most stressful years!
I am a hard worker in an intense leadership job now, and I hold degrees from Williams and Columbia, but nothing was ever as overwhelming as high school.
Being at a top college is easier than being in high school despite the more challenging work, because in high school you attend classes all day long, then do hours of extracurricular activities, then do hours of homework, and survive on little sleep.
In college, hours spent in class are few (most hours are spent doing classwork outside of class). In college, your ability to manage your time makes all the difference. In high school, there is less time for eveything; you spend all day in school and do not have as much discretionary time.
The other thing about college in the “good ole days” versus now is that it probably took more time back then compared to now. This is not to say that more time necessarily meant more learning. The extra time back then was time needed because of lesser technology back then:
- When looking for references for a research project, you had to go to the library, look in the card catalog for books that may contain what you want, then look in each book to see if it had what you want. Now, you can do a web search to find what may have the desired information (and find out how to buy your own copy if the library does not have it).
- Typing up a paper on a typewriter may require retyping the whole thing to correct a mistake, unlike doing so on a computer with any word processing software.
- When doing computer science assignments and projects, students today have access to computers (often their own) that have thousands of times of processing speed, memory, and storage compared to the shared computers of a few decades ago. Software development tools are also much more advanced than they were then (e.g. Git/Subversion/etc. versus SCCS/RCS, multiwindow GUIs versus an 80x24 text terminal).
High school workload may have been less affected by such technological change, because the amount of in-class time as a percentage of the total expected academic time is greater, and any reduction in time needed for learning high school course material may have been replaced by test prep and extracurricular time that is “needed” for the college admissions arms race.
Totally–I joke with my students all the time about that: “There’s no CTRL-F for books!”
'Being at a top college is easier than being in high school despite the more challenging work, because in high school you attend classes all day long, then do hours of extracurricular activities, then do hours of homework, and survive on little sleep."
My daughter thinks the same thing now that she a college freshman. She said it is easy not to procrastinate when you have so much time to get things done and only in class about 3 hours a day. Nothing can be worse than 11th grade in her mind up to this point. But I had 0 EC’s as a high school junior, 0 AP classes, finished 80% of my school work at school and only had a 20 hour a week job to contend with. High School was a breeze for me personally because I wasn’t doing anything.
I just read this thread…and all I can say is…wow. Really? You are in competition with your kids about your SAT scores from decades ago?
Sorry…but this makes no sense to me…at all.
We don’t “compete” with our kids on any level. Even in sports related things like marathons and the like…we would be in a totally different age group bracket.
Comparing apples and oranges.
I just can’t imagine comparing my academics on any level or in any way with what my kids are doing.
I just think that’s a competition that is not needed…at all.
FWIW, @thumper1 , I don’t think any of us were saying we were in competition with our kids. In fact, it was the OP’s son that was making a big deal of it, not the OP. [If there was a statement on page 3 or 4 that made you think that, I didn’t go back and read it, but nothing on pages 1, 2, or 5 suggested that to me.] It’s an interesting thought experiment, that’s all.
Anyway, I want to make perfectly clear – I am not in competition with my kid about my SAT scores or anything else for that matter.
First…I know my SAT scores from decades ago…and my GRE scores. So what? They are old news, and nothing I would even remotely consider sharing with my kids for any reason…at all.
The kids know where I graduated from both undergrad school and college. It’s clearly noted that i graduated magna cum laude on my diploma so (if they ever looked at my diploma…which I doubt they have) they would know I was a decent student in my program at my school.
The notion that I would have a give and take with my kids about the strength of my SAT score compared to theirs…when mine is decades old is ridiculous. It sounds like that is what the OP is doing with his kid.
I would never have entered into the comparison of SAT scores with my kids to begin with…but if they persisted in carrying this on and on…I would stop it dead in its tracks by saying…it doesn’t matter. This is old news.
I’m just flummoxed that the OP feels the need to justify the strength of his decades old SAT score compared to his kid. I just don’t get it.
@thumper1 It is okay that you don’t understand the relationship that I have with my children. Sometimes, I don’t even completely understand it myself, but the one thing that my kids know is that I am always coming from a place of love. I am okay with criticism of my parental style and wanting my kids to be competitive in general, but my kids both know that they have to do big things in spite of my crazy.
The majority of students may have taken the SAT “naturally” (i.e., without specific preparation) at some point. As a result, the averages at even top colleges were not notably stratospheric if one looks back far enough (1960):
Mean Score Range 1290-1350 (V+M)
Amherst
Carleton
Columbia
Harvard
Haverford
Princeton
Reed
Rice
Swarthmore
Williams
Yale
Mean Score Range 1230-1290
Brandeis
Brown
Chicago
Cornell
Dartmouth
Hamilton
Johns Hopkins
Lehigh
Oberlin
Rochester
Stanford
Mean Score Range 1160-1230
Antioch
Bowdoin
Duke
Kenyon
Michigan
Middlebury
Northwestern
Pennsylvania
Iowa
Tufts
Union
UC-Berkeley
Sewanee
Mean Score Range 1100-1160
Colgate
Denison
Grinnell
Knox
Lawrence
Muhlenberg
Occidental
UColorado
Mean Score Range 980-1100
Beloit
NYU
Pittsburgh
Southern Methodist
Syracuse
Virginia
Vanderbilt
Lots of articles on the recentering of the SAT in 1995
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED563025.pdf
http://www.greenes.com/html/convert.htm
Many comments from parents who were in HS back in the dark ages. My time was prehistoric (hint- college grad date in CC name). Son’s perfect 2400 for a retake (only 35 on ACT) scores circa 2005 are now ancient history- and he only applied to three schools (btw, I was a lot older than most when he was born). My scores were not quite as good recentered but, like him, only test practice done. Back in my day admissions were NOT need blind and of course most of us had never heard of most of the schools CC’ers concern themselves with now since they are east coast places no better than honors at many of our flagships (I stand by my statement).
Times change and so do testing and educational emphases. No, your kids are no smarter or better performers than they would have been in your day. Different, not necessarily better, skills. We read complete books in English class and again in required college lit classes. Many more than today’s AP course takers will have. We learned math and science without calculators. And looked things up in print material, not predigested computer short bits. Better? No. Different? Yes. Look back at your parents’ educations. Think about opportunities for your daughters compared to their grandmothers (or great as time goes by and women’s lib is ancient history and not current events like in my day). If equivalent IQ testing was done for you and kids they can thank you for their intelligence.
Back in my day many were admitted but many did not succeed at UW (Madison)- a winnowing occurred during college, not before. Now the emphasis is expecting to finish if admitted. Likewise the elite schools allowed so many who did not deserve to get in because of money and connections unlike today’s methods.
We are living in a Golden Age. It would be interesting to see life 100 years from now.
Wisconsin still does appear to overadmit to engineering majors and winnow out students with high GPA progression requirements (as high as 3.5 technical for some majors).
https://www.engr.wisc.edu/academics/student-services/academic-advising/first-year-undergraduate-students/progression-requirements/
But in the old days, it was often the case that the state flagships were large enough that they did not have to be very selective to avoid overflowing capacity, and the minimum to continue was 2.0 GPA and C grades. Of course, at very low levels of selectivity, there were more students who failed even to meet those standards. But they probably accepted such failures because they assumed that the cost of such failures was less than the gains for those who were given a chance under low admission standards but did succeed (cost and gains for both the student and the state).
Those posted SAT scores reflect the fact that schools were either ACT OR SAT requirements. The only reason for many in ACT states to take the SAT was for National Merit in my day. Many equivalent schools not listed because they were ACT ones.
My oldest sister was high school class of '84. There was definitely SAT prep and tons of college-admissions pressure going on at private schools – the U of Chicago Lab School in this case. The big change is how selective our safeties have become. Pretty much the whole class at a school like that could get in to GW, BU, Richmond, Wisconsin…Illinois was seen as an embarrassing outcome for non-engineers. Those aren’t safeties any more!
@merc81 The scores you posted versus what we see today show one thing I miss about the old SAT. The test was hard enough so that there was a bigger spread and getting to a 1400 was an amazing accomplishment. Today, a 1400 is treated as a ho-hum experience by the masses in CC because it is probably the lowest limit acceptable to get into elite schools.
@wis75 I agree with you about it just being a different time and different skills being measured between generations of parents and kids.
@Hanna Maybe that is the difference between most posters experiences is that private hIgh schools had already moved towards the test prep era while Public high schools were years behind that trend.
fwiw I attended a good but not great private high school.
At our public HS (upstate NY), the more academic students did some test prep and and knew of a test prep class taught by HS teachers, which I attended on the recommendation of friend, once a week at the Y. But it was basically reviewing old tests as others have mentioned. At that time (early 80s), Kaplan and Princeton Review were just getting started so no one knew about them. Yup 1400 was the key, esp getting a 700 on both the first time and not having to retake.
99.99% in SAT saved my butt because I had 3.0 gpa for skipping 40% classes with my mom’s signatures. Had bought Barron’s SAT book and studied 1 hour every day for 3 months during summer. That was my greatest academic achievement in high school, aside from graduating. Barely graduated from college and law school also. All teachers hated me because a lazy kid got into an Ivy over hard working kids. Could’t psyche myself to work hard at schools. I think I would have gotten close to 1600 now because back then I had been in USA for only 6 years and my English reading comprehension and vocabulary were poor. Personally, I don’t think high GPA or test scores in high school or even college correlates to intelligence; just shows you worked hard to go through the hoops.