But that’s not what you said. The study showed it was academically #1 during that period. ND was not a regional school in 1960, Villanova was. Perhaps a student did not want to travel to Indiana but that doesn’t make a school regional. My son has a friend that turned down Stanford for Cornell. That doesn’t make Stanford a regional school.
More guidance counselor captions
Amherst: “One of the nation’s strongest liberal arts colleges.” “Any boy admitted can meet the academic demands.” “A quota makes admissions tough for premed and science students.” “Curriculum unusual, a student should check this.”
Harvard: “Tops; is more nonconformist than Yale.” “Great prestige.” “Student body likely to be overbalanced with the very bright–needs tempering with the average.” “Living expenses are high.” “Looking for breadth of interests and activities as well as performance in the classroom.”
Princeton: “Selection overbalanced in favor of high IQs.” “Excellent academic standards.” “No place for the unsophisticated young man.” “Expensive living.” “Some snobbery brought about by eating clubs.”
Reed: “‘Harvard’” of the West." “Teachers from many parts of the world. Rich experience gained from contact with other cultures.” “Emphasis on the individual–flexibility in programing and teaching methods.’” “Little attention to athletes.”
Williams: “Excellent standards.” “Consciousness of social standing apparent.” “The athletic coach of the high school is often sought out by college representatives.” “Once a student is admitted every effort is made to help him succeed.”
Yale: “Definitely looking for ‘top boys,’ scholastically and in athletes.” “Excellent academically.” “Considered place to go if you want to end up on Wall Street or in big business.” “Half of students from public high school, over a third get financial aid.”
Brown: “Unless it is a first choice of the candidate it is ridiculous to apply.” “Atmosphere is conducive to study.” “Brown men are ‘gentlemen,’ they wear a jacket and tie when they visit the administration offices and they dress for dinner.”
Dartmouth: “Excellent education.” “Interested in solid student and all-around boy.” “An athlete with brains will love the place.” “Isolated–car a necessity.”
Hamilton College: “As good as the ‘Little Three.’” “Very traditional.” “Emphasis is academic; women’s colleges in the area sources of social life.”
I wonder why Fordham dropped off?
^ I’m not sure how much faith to put in to that ranking of Catholic schools. Don’t know what methodology they used.
But Fordham would have gotten a bunch of the brightest NYC Catholics back in the day (just as BC was and remains the dream school of many Boston Catholics and ND of many Midwestern and especially Chicago Catholics).
NYC and Fordham’s neighborhood really went downhill in the '70’s and '80’s, though.
Kenyon: “The eastern men’s college moved westward.” “Standards are high. Expensive demands.” “Isolated. Cultural offerings and coeds imported from neighboring cities and colleges.”
Regarding #11
Average V+M SAT score for Brandeis ca 1982 was 1230.
–1984 college guide
A fun read for this sort of thing: [Malcolm Gladwell’s “Getting In”](Getting In | The New Yorker)
@OnTheBubble I was relating anecdote and perception – I said “at least for me, growing up devout Catholic in the70s/80s.” This thread has been about reflecting on how schools have moved up and down in terms of scores, and as a related matter, selectivity, over the years. I shared my experience as a Catholic, surrounded by Catholics looking at Catholic schools, and ND wasn’t on the list for east coast (or, more specifically, Mid Atlantic) families because it was considered an average, midwest Catholic school. If others from Boston, or DC or CA had a different experience almost 40 years ago, that would contribute other perspectives. In my follow up, I added that Monk Malloy really changed the university and the perception, nationally, as an academic institution. It has been a remarkable transformation of an institution in a short span.
I grew up Catholic in the mid-Atlantic area, graduated in 1980, and Notre Dame was not considered an academically elite school, at least not in my circle. I knew several people who went there, but none of them were top students. When my own daughters started looking into colleges 30 years later, I was very surprised to see how difficult it had become to attain admission there.
Things change. Duke and Georgetown were very good schools, but they both really took off when their basketball teams became elite and put them on every high school student’s radar. Emory was a good regional school, but took off when some alumni gave its endowment a huge donation, the biggest in history at the time. NYU was considered a safety school, but as living in New York became more and more popular, it took off. And so on.
@Midwestmomofboys ignore @OnTheBubble - her sole job is to criticize others. We all laugh about it.
Nonsense. @OnTheBubble has been a powerful resource. Thanks!
I was in the thick of the Catholic universities in the Northeast in the 1970s. ND was clearly the most famous and best Catholic college in the country, both athletically and academically. Nobody else was even close. Even then it had lots of students from all over the country, & was the only “national” Catholic college. Holy Cross was probably #2. This was before DC (& Georgetown) became glamorous.
Regarding Notre Dame, Fiske reported their middle-range ACT in their 1999 guide as 27-31. Though fine scores, particularly with respect to their upper range, they would indicate moderate selectivity during still relatively recent times.
Delete.
I can’t speak from first-hand experience, but my impression is that the “Ivy League” name did not have the same “brand power” in 1960 that it does today.
Everybody knows that the eight schools within the Ivy League are old. However, the “Ivy League”, as a grouping of those schools, is a relatively modern concept. The term “Ivy League” was apparently coined in the 1930s, and it was originally applied informally to any old, academically distinguished school in the northeast that played serious football. This would include today’s Ivies, but also schools like Army, Navy, Lehigh, or Rutgers (which was still private at that time).
The Ivy League, as we know it today, didn’t get organized until 1956 (long after other leagues, like the Big Ten or SEC, were established). As late as 1955, for example, Penn had only 2 of the 7 other Ivies on its football schedule. That was fewer than Army or Rutgers (which each played 3 Ivies that year). Many Ivy League football rivalries go back to the 19th Century, but there was no such thing as an “Ivy League football champion” until 1956.
So the “Ivy League” was still a new thing in 1960. Over time, the power of the “Ivy League” name grew in a spectacular fashion – it’s now the most recognized and respected higher education “brand” in the world (the only real rival is “Oxbridge”, but that’s a much smaller group). Today, nobody would put any Ivy in a second or third tier based on SAT scores, and part of the reason for that change is that any school associated with the “Ivy League brand” is automatically perceived as desirable by high-scoring students.
My impression is that Antioch was considered an academically-strong progressive LAC in the 1950s (maybe something like Reed today). Today, the top LACs in Ohio form the “Ohio Five” (Denison, Kenyon, Oberlin, Ohio Wesleyan, College of Wooster), but it was historically the “Ohio Six”, wth Antioch as one of the better-known options.
Antioch was never well endowed or well managed though. Its reputation and finances deteriorated starting in the 1960s, as the school overdosed on what is now termed “political correctness”, and it ultimately had to close its doors in 2008. It has now reopened, and seems to be attracting some good students, but is still very small.
@Corbett -
Here is a 2014 school ranking by SAT score - organized by the same sized groups as the 1960 ranking. The school name is followed by the “tier rank” in 1960 and the relative change (in parentheses)
In terms of Ivy League Schools:
Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Columbia remain in “tier 1”.
Dartmouth remains in “tier 2” and Penn moves up from “tier 3” to “tier 2”
Brown and Cornell move down from “tier 2” to “tier 3”.
Sometimes real data gets in the way of marketing hype…
CTech - NR
UChicago - 2 (+1)
Harvard - 1
Princeton - 1
Yale - 1
MIT - NR
Vanderbilt -5 (+4)
Olin - NR
Wash U - NR
Mudd - NR
Columbia - 1
Stanford -2
Northwestern - 3 (+1)
Pomona - NR
Rice - 1 (-1)
Dartmouth - 2
Duke - 3 (+1)
UPenn -3 (+1)
Tufts - 3 (+1)
Williams - 1 (-2)
Amherst - 1 (-2)
Swarthmore -1 (-2)
Bowdoin - 3
Webb - NR
CMU - NR
Brown - 2 (-1)
Notre Dame - NR
Carleton - 1 (-2)
Cornell - 2 (-1)
Johns Hopkins - 2 (-1)
CMC - NR
Wellesley - NR
Northeastern - NR
Vassar - NR
RPI - NR
Hamilton - 2 (-2)
Washington & Lee - NR
USC -NR
U Mich - 3 (-1)
Grinnell - 4
Case Western - NR
Reed - 1 (-4)
Middlebury - 3 (-2)
Scripps - NR
Emory - NR
Colgate - 4 (-1)
William & Mary - NR
============================
Oberlin - 2
G Tech
UC Berkeley - 3
UIUC
Cooper Union
NYU - 5
UVA - 5
Brandeis - 2
U Rochester - 2
Not in top 59
70 Kenyon - 3
74 Union - 3
77 Occidental - 4
77 SMU - 4
=======================
Not in top 100
Antioch - 3
Iowa - 3
Sewanee - 3
Lawrence - 4
Muhlenburg - 4
Knox - 4
U Colorado - 4
Dennison - 4
Beloit - 5
Pitt - 5
Syracuse - 5
OK, I stand corrected. Some people would.
But look at it this way. LIFE magazine selected 50 schools for their 1960 evaluation. The 50 schools were grouped into 5 “tiers”, based on SAT score. The Ivies ranged from Tier 1 to Tier 3.
Now reclassify the same 50 schools into tiers, using the current Forbes SAT data. Have the Ivies improved in standing, relative to the other 42 schools evaluated in 1960 ? It varies, depending on the school, but overall I think you have to conclude that the Ivies have either maintained or improved their positions. To pick the most obvious example, Penn would not go in the same “tier” as Iowa or Sewanee today.
This approach does exclude schools like MIT or Caltech, which certainly have top-level SAT scores. But the same was true of LIFE’s approach in 1960. LIFE never claimed that their “tiers” were comprehensive.
Two points from the original 1960 article (link in Post #6 above):
- The selected schools were explicitly deemed "50 representative colleges". So it is clearly not intended as a comprehensive list. And this makes sense; even in 1960, there were a lot more than 50 colleges and universities in the US.
- The compilers of the list took pains to **exclude** engineering students. First of all, they did not include any engineering schools (like MIT or RPI), as noted previously. Secondly, they deliberately excluded the SAT scores of engineering students at many of the schools that did make the list. Schools like Berkeley, Stanford, and Rochester have an asterisk next to the SAT numbers. The * means: "the liberal arts college only". It's apparent that the LIFE list was intended to serve as a guide for prospective liberal arts majors, although this is not stated explicitly.
It’s interesting that these 50 schools were considered “representative” by LIFE in 1960. By 2016 standards, the list seems to be disproportionately weighted towards private schools, LACs, and the northeastern US, with relatively little coverage of state schools or the rest of the country, and zero coverage of engineering. This may reveal something about the demographics of LIFE subscribers in 1960, or perhaps just the demographics of the LIFE editorial staff.
I doubt that any college ranking today would exclude the test scores of engineering students. This may be one reason why the top LACs rank higher in the old LIFE ranking than in the modern Forbes ranking. It seems likely that the average SATs at many universities would drop if engineering students weren’t counted. In contrast, most LACs have zero engineering students and would not be affected at all.
SAT are not the only component of selectivity. Any of the bovines and Stanford, MIT, Chicago etc could fill their entire classe or the majority of their class with perfect or near perfect scores. However the schools have various different priorities in what they are looking for in students.
Also to get the most up to date picture about average SAT scores ( new SAT), College Factual would be a good source.