<p>this doesn't really have anything to do with anything but i was just curious if anyone knows what the average stats where for people trying to get into the top colleges(ivy league) or more competitive schools(top50) about 40-50 years ago. i'd imagine that the competition has grown immensely over the years.</p>
<p>i dont know what the average SAT's were, but I do know that A LOT more emphasis was placed on the SAT's and grades. I remember a quote by some Ivy admissions officer in the 1980's that went something like "if you score over 1500 on the SAT, you can go to any school in the US." <em>sigh</em> if only things were that easy. :)</p>
<p>wow....imagine how it'll be in another 50 years. i feel sorry for our kids.</p>
<p>thats progress, right?</p>
<p>Yea, my uncle went to an ivy and he didn't do any ec's in hs just tennis. but he was smart and probably got good sats and a 4.0.</p>
<p>Oh.. Progress.. Sure.</p>
<p>Not all change is for the better, though.</p>
<p>When push comes to shove, I'd rather have colleges filled with smart individuals rather than 'well rounded' people.</p>
<p>This is an interesting idea. My parents always say that scores are so much higher today but kids don't seem to be any smarter. They also said that test prep was nonexistent and that you only took the test once, at most twice. I agree about the EC thing though.</p>
<p>SATs had greater weight. In fact, todays high scores really don't measure up. The SAT was re-scaled a number of years ago to compensate for a steady drop in the scores. So, a 1500 today would not have been a 1500 in 1960. Also people really didn't spend money on preparation courses and didn't take it tons of time. I remember when my brother got his 1400. He never said anything about the test. Never spent a second preparing. He was also a NM scholar. Our ceiling was stacked to the rafters with college offers from all over the country. He could have gone anywhere. He graduated #1 in his class and didn't even have a 4.0 (thus my post about grade inflation elsewhere).</p>
<p>The US population was about 186 million in 1960, and about 294 million today. There's still only one Harvard, one Princeton, and so on. So, just at a very rough guess (and someone will probably correct me) the elites are about 40-50% harder to get into today.</p>
<p>I think I'm going to start my own Ivy League University. Who's with me? All I need is about $20 billion in donations.</p>
<p>lol nice idea.. ill help you</p>
<p>What? You'd rather have "smarter" people in good colleges than "well rounded" individuals? "Well rounded" isn't technically what they're looking for... they also accept people who are really good at ONE particular thing... but the point is, colleges don't just want "intelligent" people... they want to see that you actually APPLY that intelligence to the "real world," (which, apparently, is what ECs show)... they want to see that you set goals and have passions beyond the ivory tower of acadamia... the "real world" isn't about SAT scores: "success" is not attained through "intelligence" alone...</p>
<p>so, in all, you don't have to do ECs to be well rounded, but ECs help prove to colleges that you have more than a brain... 'cause a brain ultimately isn't sufficient</p>
<p>when push comes to shove, i'd rather have eager, passionate, AND smart people in colleges rather than just "smart" people</p>
<p>In 1960, not everyone even took an entrance exam because there were still places where the SAT or ACT was not available. Scoring above 1400 was considered extremely high. Using Yale as an example, Yale had an average SAT of about 1210 (it is humourous to see people comment today about George Bush's seemingly abysmal 1207, but at the time, 1964, that easily put him in the middle 50% at Yale). In the more recent year 1976, Yale's 25% to 75% range was 1240 to 1450 and more than 10% had scores below 1100. In 1990, it was 1270 to 1460 with 10% still below 1130. For entry class of 1995, just before recentering, its 25% to 75% range was 1300 to 1470. In 1996, it jumped to 1360 to 1550; in other words recentering of the SAT had a huge upward impact on SAT scores. Also, the comment above about the elites being harder to get into now than 1960 is an unsupportable statement that begs for a little history lesson. Women could not get into most of them at all, minoroties were generally excluded, and those colleges typically took most of their students from designated feeder schools and legacies.</p>
<p>"Women could not get into most of them at all, minoroties were generally excluded, and those coilleges typically took most of their students from designated feeder schools and legacies."
Many universities had women's colleges - Radcliffe, for example. What I would like to see is, applicants at, say, Harvard/Radcliffe in 1960 versus today. Where the heck is mini, he always finds these statistics. </p>
<p>Besides the issue of URM's and feeder school, I whether multiple applications to elites from a single applicant is really up.</p>
<p>I remember when my friend scored 1600 on the SAT in 1973. The New York Times wrote an article about her achievement - it was that big a deal then. She went to Radcliffe (then the women's school of Harvard).</p>
<p>"Also, the comment above about the elites being harder to get into now than 1960 is an unsupportable statement that begs for a little history lesson."</p>
<p>I think it's just common sense...we have more kids going to college and basically the same top tiered colleges that everyone wants to get into...the ivies, berkeley and la, stanford, etc. There's no room for everyone and all the qualified students. </p>
<p>For comparison's sake, my cousin's fiancee is a lawyer and went got his undergrad education at Columbia University in the early 1990s. He had a 1200 SAT and a decent gpa of >3.5; he didn't have any extracurriculars to my knowledge. Even after you recenter his SAT, it'll be a 1300 on our scale, which is about 25th percentile at Columbia right now. And this was just 10-15 years ago.</p>
<p>also you have to take it into account that SATs are a lot easier today than it was before..
i still remember ive seen antonyms section on old SATs exams...
today you only have analogy and even in the early 90s... there were more analogy sections than it is right now..</p>
<p>back then it was all vocab.. it's literrally impossible to score high on SAT unless you are a walking dictionary</p>
<p>I can't say for sure, but way back when, my dad's safety was Columbia, times have indeed changed.</p>
<p>I do know my high school counselor took one summer class at University of San Francisco after senior year, and decided he might want to continue on to college. So, he went over to Berkeley two weeks before school started in mid-1950s and simply filled out paperwork and got in. He doesn't remember having to turn any stats in. He remembers it as you showed up, you were in.</p>
<p>Going back further, my mother was admitted to Northwestern based on the fact that she could pay for it. Funny thing, that's what my aunt said about the 'Cliffe. That was during the Depression.</p>