People who went to college at least 10 years ago: what was your profile and where did you get in?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Last 10 years doesn't include the 90s or 80s folks!

"at least [i]10 years ago.." certainly does!

[Anonymous]

Class of 1998, high performing private school in a mid-tier city. Quintessential upper middle class white student from an educated family.
SAT scores: 1440
Class rank: school didn't rank (only 80 in my year)
No official AP classes (school didn't offer them but allowed us to take AP exams on our own, which many did and I took four, all 5 scores)
Leadership: only one, captain of tennis team. Wrote for school paper all four years. No other special hooks.
SAT II scores: 800, 800. 740.

Accepted: Brown, Penn, Duke, Amherst, Bowdoin, Haverford, Kenyon, Davidson.
WL: Dartmouth (I'd applied early)
Rejected: Yale

Not unhappy about the Dartmouth WL as it transpired. I'd fallen in love with the campus and outdoor setting but by the time the ED decisions rolled around I was having second thoughts and the initial disappointment was mitigated with a bit of relief. Whoever reviewed my application at Dartmouth must have not liked me because I ended up getting into a bunch of comparable schools. And I thank the admissions offer who rejected me because I went to Brown and had a wonderful time.

Probably wouldn't get in today. I'd most likely be lucky to get into Haverford or Davidson or Bowdoin these days too. Kenyon was my safety. I remember the college counsellor trying to persuade me to include a few more safeties but I reasoned that I was happy enough to go to Kenyon and was 100% confident I'd get in and my parents had capped the number of applications to 10 and I didn't want to waste it on more safeties.

I do remember my parents saying that college admissions at the time (1990s) was so much more competitive than in their day (mid 1960s).

Kids from my school were getting into Penn with SAT scores in the 1200s-1300s and not even honors classes. But they did have special hooks. Lacrosse for several of them. At the time Chicago was accepting 70% of applicants but it was a self-selective pool to some degree. So many of us laughed at applying to Chicago because it was seen as geeky and dorky.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Last 10 years doesn't include the 90s or 80s folks!

Please look at the thread title.

Reading. It's important.

[Anonymous]

High school graduation- 1998
GPA: 4.0
SAT: 1200
AP: 3 classes
National honor society
Student government- all 4 yrs of high school
2 sports
Accepted: bucknell, Tulane, Emory, Vanderbilt
WL: wake forest
Went to Vandy. Absolutely no way I’d get in by today’s standards.

[Anonymous]

Gpa: 90 average (out of 100 no weighting); 1230 SAT; varsity swim captain. Went to U of Florida out of state applied early.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Gpa: 90 average (out of 100 no weighting); 1230 SAT; varsity swim captain. Went to U of Florida out of state applied early.

Graduate high school in 2002

[Anonymous]

3.2 gpa, mostly honors classes, 1 AP, terrible math grades, 1410 SAT, a ton of extracurriculars and service work.

Got into NYU, UM College Park, U of Delaware, rejected from BU. Went to UMCP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People always say it's way harder to get in now than it was years ago. I'm interested in the anecdotal data from this forum, to see if this holds true.

I was in college from 2005-2009. Graduated with honors (so top 20%; there were no rankings outside of that) from a top private HS. GPA was the equivalent of an A (but the scale included A+, so it wasn't equal to a 4.0). SAT score was 1400 on the old scale (low for my GPA, but I always underperformed on standardized tests). 800 on the SAT II writing and 700 on the SAT II Math subject test (whichever one is the easier one). I only took one AP course (Latin -- I got a 4 on the exam). I applied early to Georgetown School of Foreign Service and UChicago, and got into both. Since I liked those schools, I didn't apply anywhere else.

My understanding is that 1400 is now around the 25th percentile for admits to UChicago, so I wonder if I would get in now.

OP, was your total 1400 or 1500?

[Anonymous]

'84, 1150 (? or something like that) SAT, 3.4 GPA - Virginia Tech.

Would not get into that school today.

[Anonymous]

I think they reweighted the SATs in the early 1990s? So people with lower scores from the 1980s would have had higher scores under the new scoring weight? A 1150 might be the equivalent of 1250?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gpa: 90 average (out of 100 no weighting); 1230 SAT; varsity swim captain. Went to U of Florida out of state applied early.

Graduate high school in 2002

1979 hs graduate. SAT score 1260, GPA 4.1, one AP English class.

Lots of extra curriculars. 4th in class of about 900 plus kids.

University of Florida. I think I would still get in today, but I know from friends" experiences with their kids that it is a lot tougher.

It was really the perfect college experience for me.

[Anonymous]

HS Class of 1998
Private school, rural area
1560 SAT
3.8 GPA
Swim team, youth group leadership, Harvard Model Congress

Admitted to Northwestern (journalism) early; got into Michigan’s honors program

I will say that I had an essay good enough to extricate my application from the pile

[Anonymous]

Those of us who still know our scores from many years ago know them because we have older children and we have had to have conversations with grandma about why our children are not attending the schools that we attended. Our parents in particular me remember schools like Middlebury as being almost like safeties or easy to get into. times have certainly changed.

[Anonymous]

Let's see. I graduated HS in '90. My GPA was 3.7 (can't remember if that was weighted or not), top 11% of class, SAT score 1410, took AP Calc BC and AP European History (got 4s on both?), and I was a very accomplished violinist. Worked throughout HS.

Accepted to: U Chicago, Carnegie Mellon, Bucknell, Rutgers

WL: Oberlin (both the college and conservatory!)

Rejected: Yale and Cornell

I ended up going to the U of C which turned out to be a great fit for me (I hadn't even heard of it before college applications). Today I wouldn't get in to the U of C, but I probably would get into Oberlin (the college, not the conservatory). Not sure about CM these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Those of us who still know our scores from many years ago know them because we have older children and we have had to have conversations with grandma about why our children are not attending the schools that we attended. Our parents in particular me remember schools like Middlebury as being almost like safeties or easy to get into. times have certainly changed.

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