Yearbooks, going the way of the Dodo

<p>The internet has changed the world I used to know so much.</p>

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A survey conducted by yearbook publisher Jostens last year estimates about 1,000 colleges still publish yearbooks. Sullivan estimates that 15 years ago there were about 2,400.</p>

<p>"The Internet has blown down the four walls of a campus in a traditional sense," Sullivan said. "And it has blown off the covers on the yearbook.”

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<p>[url=<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=9896443%5DLink%5B/url"&gt;http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=9896443]Link[/url&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p>

<p>The college my son attends has not published a yearbook for over 15 years, due to increasing costs and declining interest. Interestingly, the yearbooks from the past are the most used reference source in the University Archives of his college.</p>

<p>I didn’t purchase my own college yearbook because I didn’t have the money to spend on it. I think it would be fun to have now. We recently looked at my father-in-law’s yearbook from 1949 and it was a real hoot!</p>

<p>I got my daughter a yearbook last year (freshman) but she said it was a waste because it only focused on sports and Seniors. We didn’t buy one this year and maybe will do so her senior year. I treasure my yearbooks, although we didn’t have one senior year due to lack of interest. I also have my father’s 4 yearbooks.</p>

<p>I didn’t even know colleges published yearbooks, and I graduated 25 years ago. In my mind they are a high school thing, but I didn’t go to a college with a lot of school spirit.</p>

<p>Harvard still publishes one. It’s pretty good.</p>

<p>I have no idea if Northwestern still publishes them or not, but they certainly had them when I was there. The disadvantage of marrying a fellow alum is that we have 2 of them and I somehow can’t bring myself to throw the extra ones out!</p>

<p>Who else remembers the “real” facebooks – books with pictures and brief bios (name, hometown, major) of the incoming students?</p>

<p>Pizzagirl, you could sell the yearbook on ebay. The yearbook from my senior year is currently listed at $55.</p>

<p>I’m bummed that my college yearbook disappeared in my last move as did the one from law school. I still have my h.s. one and I look at it once in a while. Is there something replacing them? The internet seems so ephemeral. My kids all have theirs and I had no idea yearbooks are on the way out.</p>

<p>I spent a day reshuffling our bookshelves this week and came across a BUNCH of yearbooks… my HS and college from the 70’s, my husband’s HS and college from late 60’s.
Son’s MIDDLE school, high school from 2000’s and DD’s high school from last year.</p>

<p>Had a blast mulling over the pics and notes,signatures.</p>

<p>Don’t think son’s college (large state U) had yearbook last year when he graduated.
Or he just decided against it. He is NOT the sentimental type so wouldn’t think he’d buy one.</p>

<p>We had facebooks both my freshman year in college and my first year in law school. Some of my cruder male classmates referred to them as “pigbooks,” and used them primarily to try to look for attractive women.</p>

<p>I have all of my high school’s yearbooks from the years when I was in 7th through 12th grades, as well as the yearbooks for my last two years of college and all three years in law school. They’re fun to look at, so long as I stay away from my old pictures, for obvious reasons. My son has yearbooks for 6th and 8th grades as well as his senior year. I don’t know if the U. of Chicago still puts out a yearbook. I also have copies of a couple of my father’s old college yearbooks, and the law school yearbook for my parents’ class – all acquired on ebay, since my father still has (although he seems to have misplaced) the original copies that I loved to look through as a child, along with his high school yearbook. (If anyone ever comes across a copy of the 1936 yearbook for Roosevelt High School in Yonkers, New York, please let me know!) I’ve seen the yearbook from my mother’s senior year at Sarah Lawrence, but her photo wasn’t in it.</p>

<p>It would be a shame if yearbooks disappeared, but I’d be surprised if high schools gave them up, since they’re such a big tradition there.</p>

<p>At my old high school, they offered Yearbooks but only a few students bought them. For $75 we received a book in black and white. It looked like it had been pieced together in Microsoft Word - or any other program simply terrible for graphics - by, er, well, disinterested high schoolers (Yearbook was a class that was required for some tracks). On top of that, I’m not sure what the teacher/editor’s problem was, since the Yearbook featured prominent errors such as “GREAT GOLE, SOCCER TEAM!”</p>

<p>I was recently at a flea market and saw a table of yearbooks. One was Vassar 1938. I called it to the attention of a friend whose D had gone there. Another friend with us said her MIL went to Vassar at about that time. And there was the MIL in the senior class. The dealer said he’d never sold a yearbook to a family member. My friend said she’d never seen a young picture of her MIL.</p>

<p>I didn’t buy any yearbooks at my undergrad school since I have my own pictures of myself and my friends and the activities we were involved in. With digital photography really taking off around then, it was easy to take one picture and send a copy of it to the 50 other people involved for free. Also, I probably only knew about 5-10% of my graduating class, so interest was pretty minimal.</p>

<p>I’ve got yearbooks going all the way back from elementary school through high school, though. It just seemed to mean a lot more when you knew a lot more of the people and wouldn’t necessarily have your own record of the things you did.</p>

<p>I didn’t buy my college yearbook, and neither did DH…and we went to the same school.</p>

<p>In any university with a population approaching that of a small city, there just isn’t any point to it. Now, if individual colleges each put out their own, that would be worth having.</p>

<p>DH has a college yearbook fr. his senior yr. I have one from my freshman year.
We both still have h.s. yearbooks too (went to same h.s.)</p>

<p>Both S’s got h.s. yearbooks each year.
Neither interested in college yearbooks</p>

<p>Not to highjack the thread but in a similiar vein…</p>

<p>Do any kids still get college class rings?
DH and I have them but S1 was not the least bit interested…said he wasn’t a “ring guy”.
S2 is a college soph. guess the jury is still out on him but it will surprise me if he wants one.</p>

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<p>My mother purchased one for my D this past fall. I was surprised that she chose a simple classic signet ring in 18k gold, no stones or frills. A “simple” ring now goes for $600.</p>

<p>Even my D’s ‘simple’ high school ring was $400. No way around that one though.
A young woman who will wear second hand stuff as long as it is wild and glitzy.
So a chance for another piece of jewlery is not to be missed!</p>

<p>When I was in college, buying class rings was considered (by people I was friends with, anyway) as an embarrassingly old fogy thing to do.</p>

<p>Every single person I know who’s gone to one of the service academies has bought the ring and still wears it.</p>

<p>From the time I was little, I loved my dad’s college ring with the Tau Beta Pi (engineering honor society) emblem. When I decided to go into engineering, my goal was to get a ring with the same symbols, and I did. I still wear it frequently.</p>