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Anonymous wrote:What this shows is that getting into Harvard used to be immensely easier. People who went to Harvard in the 90s wouldn’t be in at anywhere comparable today.
It’s not harder or easier per se, but the grade inflation is making the signals of quality very noisy. A few decades ago, the high school grades already helped the admissions pick the outstanding (academically) students pretty accurately. In addition, applicants these days are supposed to play victim and write a sob story about what kind of hardship they have gone through and how they have overcome their hardship and what lessons they have learned. It’s like everyone is applying for a script writing major!
Wrong. It is easier. Harvard used to have a much higher admission rate. In 1988, it was 14.6% and less than 15,000 applications.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1988/7/8/freshman-class-sets-application-records-pthe/
In 2025, there was a 3.43% acceptance rate out of 57,435 apps.
https://features.thecrimson.com/2021/freshman-survey/makeup-narrative/#:~:text=This%20year%2C%20the%20College's%20acceptance,totals%20a%20historic%201%2C965%20students.
But you also wouldn’t apply unless you have an almost 4.0 GPA unhooked. Also, kids are dramatizing their sob story to have a chance of being admitted as a hardship case.
I had a 4.0 in high school without ever studying for more than an hour a night, ever. Was elected class president, worked a summer job, no national awards. Got into Yale. Took an SAT prep class and mom and dad could pay tuition.
The kids now work much harder than I did and are so much more accomplished. They are taking harder classes, taking more of them a year, doing actual work/research, getting national awards. The IDEA that you think kids are crying their way into Harvard now shows real intellectual disinterest. The kids who are talking about their "sob story" are also winning the TOC. These colleges take 1 kids out of every 25 apps. Get real.
The real advantages now are with athletes, donors, and legacies - and those still favor the white kids.
This is just not true in my experience. What's true is that kids have more extracurriculars. And everyone knows the strategies that only a select few used back in the 80s and 90s. If I had a nickel for every kid who has a published paper these days... who believes this BS?
Work harder? I doubt that very much. I can say that I not only worked much harder on academics (as measured by hours of hw per day) than my kids but read a lot more books, wrote exponentially more papers, went much farther in foreign languages, and so on.
What do you think happened? I’m curious on your perspective as to why you had a better education than your kids. Was it impossible to find?
People are going to jump all over me but here is my experience. I am in academia and numerous people in my family (parents and siblings) are also academics. Also have a family member who taught at one of the most well-known prep schools in the country for decades. Every single person I know says the quality of students at the top has gone down. Maybe overall the mean has gone up. Certainly there is more geographical diversity in college applications -- and that is a good thing.
What I see and hear constantly is that teachers and professors who have been teaching for decades have had to lower their expectations.
Why? I don't know... phones? video games? maybe high schoolers spread themselves too thin. Maybe we reward test taking over deep thinking. Or maybe, weirdly, we have gone back to a world where money buys admission through exorbitant college counselor groups or niche activities?
Most Ivy students today are pointy and if you take them out of their narrow specialty, they are average at best. They are also ambitious for wealth not intellect. As the children of immigrants, they don't come from multigenerational wealth in America so you can't blame them. That's what is valued now.
this is not true at our private HS which is a feeder. HYP admits are either super pointy in math - extreme placement in crazy math competitions, win medals for coming up with AI models that cut down dialysis 20% etc. And also head of prom committee. Also top 5% of class in a very tough school. Or they're Top 5 debaters in the country (which is a much more competitive EC than in my day - it makes my debate team look like a 4H club). Also works part time. And also top 5% of class.
Both kids are highly socially capable, has dates, drinks at parties, etc.
Those groups make up half the kids who get into HYP from our feeder. The other half play a sport, but I get that this forum likes to keep the focus on the boring robotic poor kids takin your white kids spot. Which is laughable.
What are they studying at HYP now? I doubt they are intent on working for DaVita. They are doing the prom because they don't want to be seen as robotic even if they are. It's smart. If you didn't know, the answers to those crazy math competitions have been leaked for years and easily bought.
so you want to gloss over the fact that it's ATHLETES who have the real upper hand. White athletes.
Yes, this is well-known.
I went to a HYP school, as did 6 of my siblings/cousins on my dad's side, all of whom are older than I am and went in the 90s. Among the 7 of us, we all went for a variety of reasons, but mostly we were the type of well-rounded kids who went in the 90s and early 2000s.
However, most of *their* kids went to or go to Ivies, but almost all were recruited for specific sports that Ivies recruit extensively for (not the same sports the parents played).
What are they doing now and have they surpassed their parents' success?
NP this is a weird question, and makes me side eye so many people who get stuck in a prestige trap. I went to Illinois State University, not even the best public option available for IL kids, but the cheaper one. And there's almost zero possibility my kids will surpass my success. The 90s and 00s were an amazing time to join the work force. I had stocks, I was a millionaire before I was 26, my other investments over the last 30 years have been ridiculous, and I bought my two current homes for prices now that would make a millennial cry.
I didn't need to go to Harvard. I was smart, got a great education, took risks (I didn't understand why everyone my age wasn't moving out west), and worked every night and weekend in really exciting spaces with super exciting people doing things that I thought moved our society forward.
Reading this thread, I wonder if I didn't have another advantage - not to take my background as anything other than dumb luck. I was lucky to have a mom and siblings who loved and liked each other (my dad died young), but I never expected anything would be handed to me. I knew my work product would be what I'd be judged on - not a college name on a resume. I was surrounded by people a lot like me, and I"m not sure we got there because we were smarter, better trained, worked harder or what. There were some kids from Harvard. But not many.
My kids all go to a "better" school than ISU. None of my kids will surpass my professional success if you judge this by money. But I'm happy to have my kids grow up to be high school history teachers or whatever they want. Maybe moving through life without HYP name on my resume has allowed me to see things in a broader way. I've never, ever thought my life would have been better off had I gone to HYP. And my college friends are still very dear to me. We've all done well.
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