<p>Drusba, that’s really why the National Merit Scholarship was a big deal back then. It could pay for tuition, compared to today where it will pay for books.</p>
<p>Yes, we had test prep companies and test prep books. I had a vocab book- obscure words like chiropodist that I think I have never used since- until my kids had SAT Prep for Dummies (among others which they generally ignored) and they were flabbergasted I knew these meanings. All harkens back to that SAT prep.</p>
<p>In the 70’s, UC tuition ran roughly $6-700.</p>
<p>Interesting about the SAT test prep in the 70’s,lookingforward. I don’t recall anybody worrying about it back then , but then, I went to a pretty mediocre public school. I can certainly relate to kids generally ignoring the test prep books. I bought one for my kids and it pretty much just sat there(except for an occasional opening it up to check out a word or two, pretty much to humor me I think). I nagged on occasion but then just gave up! I figured it would be what it was going to be.</p>
<p>Someone recently guessed that if kids today had to do that awful word analogy section, CR scores would suffer.</p>
<p>I actually kinda liked the analogies tbh. Was sad to see them go D:</p>
<p>Four years at Harvard (room, board, fees) cost $45K in the early 80’s.</p>
<p>I had excellent HS grades (4.0 unweighted) and SAT scores (around 1500 on the old, pre-recentered SAT, which if I recall was 99+ percentile) that in 1970 might have gotten me into any college in the country. But FA at private colleges was pretty weak—as someone said ^, mostly loans and campus jobs, and the financial aid kids working as cafeteria busboys and such were looked down upon as charity cases by the affluent prep school kids at places like Yale and Harvard, so there was a definite caste quality to it. Even the $4K to $5K/year COA at a private university ($4800 is the figure I recall for Harvard, but my memory could be playing tricks) was well beyond my family’s reach financially, in a single-income household of 8. Besides, we had one of the top universities, the University of Michigan, as an affordable in-state option. So that’s where I went. It wasn’t a hard decision.</p>
<h2>^Your other posts seem to indicate that you are applying to college this year or next. </h2>
<p>My 17 yo son and I use the same computer that stays logged in as Toller. Much easier that way and I never thought anyone would notice (or care).</p>
<p>bclintok- I asked D1 if her former roomie (my “third daughter”) minded her job in the cafeteria. “Heck no, she’s the center of attention and she gives us extra bacon on Sundays.” DH was working the dirty dishes window when I first met him. It was his stage. I think he joked how everyone flocked to him.</p>
<p>My uncle didn’t prep at all either. I wish things were still that way, so that my 2400 would actually be rare or meaningful.</p>
<p>I heard it would do ALOT more than a 2400 today because there weren’t that many competitive people.</p>
I was a sophomore in 1972 and took both the SAT and ACT because I was looking at schools that required one or the other. I got a 34 on the ACT. I was supposed to take the PSAT, but took the SAT and got 1530. I had taken most of the classes I could take that were offered at my high school (Campbell, Smyrna, Georgia) and realized that if I stayed for my senior year I would be restricted to Orchestra and some other electives, basically wasting a year. The only senior class required that I could take was English. I had applied to BYU, Georgia Tech, Princeton, U of U and USC. I was surprised to be accepted WITHOUT the requirement that I graduate from high school as long as I completed senior English which I took in summer quarter after my junior year. Because I am LDS (and knew that I was a bit short of wisdom and discipline at 17) I chose BYU whose Code of Honor promised to provide some behavioral guidelines, buth was the only school that didn’t offer a scholarship of some sort. I also CLEP’d out of many freshman classes which created some strange situations. I started just after my 17th birthday in August 1974. Because most males at BYU at the time served a mission between their freshman and sophomore year, I found myself at 17 in a lot of classes with 21 and 22 yo guys (and the women that were looking to marry them). I also discovered that you don’t ace University like you do high school and found myself at the end of my 2nd year with a 2.something GPA. Yikes! Scary!
I served a mission in 1976 and came back in 1978 a little bit more mature. It takes a lot of 4.0 semesters to recover a 2.something GPA up to the 3.7 I had when I graduated.
My son attended a program called “Running Start” in the state of Washington where he took all of his junior and senior high school classes at the community college. He received his associates degree along with his high school diploma. This created some problems because many colleges where not familiar with the program and treated him as a transfer student rather than an incoming freshman (most universities in the Northwest recognize the program and give the students full credit for the courses, but still admit them in competition with other freshman). In Washington this would have been great, but while BYU gave him credit for two years of college they refused to accept the college courses he had taken against their general education requirements. He started BYU as an 18 year old junior with almost no general ed requirements completed. He had to take most of these courses again and found himself having to be careful in his last years to avoid financial penalties for having too many credits.
I don’t think it would be quite so easy these days to get into college based solely on your college boards, however my daughter also started BYU right after her 17th birthday. She received 1/2 academic scholarship and a 1/2 diversity scholarship (my wife is Cuban). She was a much better student than her father and earned her PhD at 26. Her only scored a 30 on her ACT, but carried at 3.9 through high school with a lot of EC. She taught as an assistant throughout her senior year, her Master’s and her PhD. Upon graduation she was recruited onto the faculty as the Director for the Marriage and Family Therapy Clinic.
My point is that while college boards are important, there are a lot of other things that contribute to your college success.
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