Sandburg - 9th in her high school class - went to Harvard

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was in the top 1/3rd of my public magnet and got into HYP. UMC white kid; no legacy (except parent who was a law student at one) and no hook. Scores and activities (especially accomplishments therein) matter. The difference between 1 and 9 at a big, good public HS is miniscule, especially if it didn't adequately reflect course load difficulty.

I finished within the top 10 at my public HS - I had eight APs with 4s or 5s. Our valedictorian and salutatorian both had 10+ APs. He went to a pretty generic middle-class/working class HS in California.

We were so pissed that two of those in the top 10 were popular cheerleaders who had taken ZERO AP classes. They took a couple honors classes in grades 9 and 10, but then just the regular gen-ed classes in junior and senior years and so they coasted on easy A's which gave them a high unweighted GPA.

So yeah, these types of games definitely happened back in the 80s and 90s where class rank really didn't tell the whole story. I'm sure Sandberg had a fantastic admissions interview - she's quite charismatic and engaging. My working class ex (no hooks, other than dedicated love of musical theater) got into Harvard because of the strength of her interview with a local alum. Again, super charismatic for a HS senior.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was in the top 1/3rd of my public magnet and got into HYP. UMC white kid; no legacy (except parent who was a law student at one) and no hook. Scores and activities (especially accomplishments therein) matter. The difference between 1 and 9 at a big, good public HS is miniscule, especially if it didn't adequately reflect course load difficulty.

I finished within the top 10 at my public HS - I had eight APs with 4s or 5s. Our valedictorian and salutatorian both had 10+ APs. He went to a pretty generic middle-class/working class HS in California.

We were so pissed that two of those in the top 10 were popular cheerleaders who had taken ZERO AP classes. They took a couple honors classes in grades 9 and 10, but then just the regular gen-ed classes in junior and senior years and so they coasted on easy A's which gave them a high unweighted GPA.

So yeah, these types of games definitely happened back in the 80s and 90s where class rank really didn't tell the whole story. I'm sure Sandberg had a fantastic admissions interview - she's quite charismatic and engaging. My working class ex (no hooks, other than dedicated love of musical theater) got into Harvard because of the strength of her interview with a local alum. Again, super charismatic for a HS senior.

I was similar as a kid. I think I was 10th in my class back then too but half the kids above me never took a single AP or honors course. Further, grades weren't weighted. My point is being 9th or 10th might be a little misleading.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Was it really that easy back then? Sandburg was 9th in her public high school class and got accepted to Harvard. Did she do something extraordinary like ranked tennis player??

Her dad went to Hopkins and was an Ophthalmologist, so they were full pay I’m sure that helped.

Idk what she had or not but being full pay is peanuts for these wealthy schools with multibillion endowments, unless you can donate above millions, you get no bump in admissions.

Wasn’t Harvard needs blind back then?

Need blind for admission I think, but didn’t offer aid. I have a friend who graduated high school around 1982. He was valedictorian of his tiny high school in Nowhere, TX. He got into Harvard but his family had no money and he got no aid, so he couldn’t go. He went to UT Austin instead.

I think the original point is that competition for admission was lower back then, and presumably Harvard’s yield was lower as well, as a significant number of admits simply wouldn’t have been able to afford the tuition.

Harvard offered aid then.

Yep, they offered aid. They offered pretty substantial scholarships from the school's own endowment/funds, plus you could take out federal loans. They made sure you didn't have to take out private loans.

Yes, these schools offered aid but offering a plan based on cost of attendance (COA) as opposed to tuition/room/board only is a relatively new development.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was in the top 1/3rd of my public magnet and got into HYP. UMC white kid; no legacy (except parent who was a law student at one) and no hook. Scores and activities (especially accomplishments therein) matter. The difference between 1 and 9 at a big, good public HS is miniscule, especially if it didn't adequately reflect course load difficulty.

I finished within the top 10 at my public HS - I had eight APs with 4s or 5s. Our valedictorian and salutatorian both had 10+ APs. He went to a pretty generic middle-class/working class HS in California.

We were so pissed that two of those in the top 10 were popular cheerleaders who had taken ZERO AP classes. They took a couple honors classes in grades 9 and 10, but then just the regular gen-ed classes in junior and senior years and so they coasted on easy A's which gave them a high unweighted GPA.

So yeah, these types of games definitely happened back in the 80s and 90s where class rank really didn't tell the whole story. I'm sure Sandberg had a fantastic admissions interview - she's quite charismatic and engaging. My working class ex (no hooks, other than dedicated love of musical theater) got into Harvard because of the strength of her interview with a local alum. Again, super charismatic for a HS senior.

Seems like the popular cheerleaders with straight As were the smart ones here. High rank without giving up their lives and grinding. They probably have not thought about you in years while you are still resentful of them over twenty years later. I can see who was the winner here.

[Anonymous]

She may have been 9th but maybe the only one who could afford to go. Harvard is not for the middle class or upper middle class. Either you are poor and its free or you are super rich and can drop it on college tuition. Anyone in the mid range is screwed and often those kids cannot afford to go.

[Anonymous]

But the Libbie's love her even with all that privilege...you people are as gross as Trumper's.

[Anonymous]

The incels have found DCUM.

[Anonymous]

My husband was barely in the top 10% of a middle class/blue collar public and got into UVA. Times are different.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Was it really that easy back then? Sandburg was 9th in her public high school class and got accepted to Harvard. Did she do something extraordinary like ranked tennis player??

Her dad went to Hopkins and was an Ophthalmologist, so they were full pay I’m sure that helped.

Idk what she had or not but being full pay is peanuts for these wealthy schools with multibillion endowments, unless you can donate above millions, you get no bump in admissions.

Wasn’t Harvard needs blind back then?

Need blind for admission I think, but didn’t offer aid. I have a friend who graduated high school around 1982. He was valedictorian of his tiny high school in Nowhere, TX. He got into Harvard but his family had no money and he got no aid, so he couldn’t go. He went to UT Austin instead.

I think the original point is that competition for admission was lower back then, and presumably Harvard’s yield was lower as well, as a significant number of admits simply wouldn’t have been able to afford the tuition.

Huh? Harvard offered aid, then and now. They don't offer merit aid, but they offer need-based aid. I overlapped with Sandburg at Harvard and gad a mix of need-based scholarships, federal loans and work-study. And Harvard's yield rate back then was about 75%.

People forget several things when they wonder how a particular kid got into a highly selective college. For one thing, they forget that it's not just about "absolute merit," even assuming anyone knows what that means or agrees on how it should be measured. It's about social engineering a whole class: they want a certain number of squash players, a bunch of clarinetists, some people who will major in classics, some kids who grew up on farms and some kids who grew up in South America, and so on. (As they used to tell us back then: Harvard was not looking for well-rounded students. They were looking for a well-rounded class). Upshot: if Harvard has too few cellists and too few kids from Delaware and too few Folklore and Mythology majors, and a kid ranked 25th in their Delaware high school plays the cello and loves Joseph Campbell... well, that kid is probably much more likely to get in the the 24 kids ranked higher.

The other big issue is that selective colleges are more democratic now. In the late 80s my guess is that 75% of Harvard students came from a few hundred high schools: elite boarding schools, elite private days schools in major cities, elite urban magnets in major cities, and highly regarded suburban public schools in places like Westchester County, Shaker Heights, Newton and Brookline and so on. Now-- for excellent reasons-- Harvard is no longer willing to admit sixty Exeter kids and fifteen St. Albans kids each year: they want their class to be more geographically, racially, ethnically, nationally and socioeconomically diverse.

Oh, and more kids apply now. In the late 80s, Harvard had about 15,000 applicants/year and filled an entering class of 1600. Today, Harvard gets 60,000 applicants/year-- to fill a class of 1600.

As a result, being in the top five at a top school is no longer any guarantee of anything. It buys you a lottery ticket. That's it. Unless a kid cured cancer while winning an Olympic gold medal and is the child of a sitting president, there's no guarantee of anything.

I just want to stress the part about most kids back then coming from only certain high schools. I transferred out of my private school (not elite private but solid) to an okay suburban public school. I had a 3.5gpa unweighted, mid-1200s on the SAT, minority, over a year of APs (unusual back then), awards at the state and regional level, and didn't even get into slacs currently ranked 20-50. I saw all my friends from my previous private - including the bottom of the class - get into them. I mean places like Connecticut College, Trinity College in CT, Dickinson - solid schools but certainly not ivies. The couple of kids who got into HYP from my average public were not just the top of the class, they were alumni kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Was it really that easy back then? Sandburg was 9th in her public high school class and got accepted to Harvard. Did she do something extraordinary like ranked tennis player??

Her dad went to Hopkins and was an Ophthalmologist, so they were full pay I’m sure that helped.

Idk what she had or not but being full pay is peanuts for these wealthy schools with multibillion endowments, unless you can donate above millions, you get no bump in admissions.

Wasn’t Harvard needs blind back then?

Need blind for admission I think, but didn’t offer aid. I have a friend who graduated high school around 1982. He was valedictorian of his tiny high school in Nowhere, TX. He got into Harvard but his family had no money and he got no aid, so he couldn’t go. He went to UT Austin instead.

I think the original point is that competition for admission was lower back then, and presumably Harvard’s yield was lower as well, as a significant number of admits simply wouldn’t have been able to afford the tuition.

Huh? Harvard offered aid, then and now. They don't offer merit aid, but they offer need-based aid. I overlapped with Sandburg at Harvard and gad a mix of need-based scholarships, federal loans and work-study. And Harvard's yield rate back then was about 75%.

People forget several things when they wonder how a particular kid got into a highly selective college. For one thing, they forget that it's not just about "absolute merit," even assuming anyone knows what that means or agrees on how it should be measured. It's about social engineering a whole class: they want a certain number of squash players, a bunch of clarinetists, some people who will major in classics, some kids who grew up on farms and some kids who grew up in South America, and so on. (As they used to tell us back then: Harvard was not looking for well-rounded students. They were looking for a well-rounded class). Upshot: if Harvard has too few cellists and too few kids from Delaware and too few Folklore and Mythology majors, and a kid ranked 25th in their Delaware high school plays the cello and loves Joseph Campbell... well, that kid is probably much more likely to get in the the 24 kids ranked higher.

The other big issue is that selective colleges are more democratic now. In the late 80s my guess is that 75% of Harvard students came from a few hundred high schools: elite boarding schools, elite private days schools in major cities, elite urban magnets in major cities, and highly regarded suburban public schools in places like Westchester County, Shaker Heights, Newton and Brookline and so on. Now-- for excellent reasons-- Harvard is no longer willing to admit sixty Exeter kids and fifteen St. Albans kids each year: they want their class to be more geographically, racially, ethnically, nationally and socioeconomically diverse.

Oh, and more kids apply now. In the late 80s, Harvard had about 15,000 applicants/year and filled an entering class of 1600. Today, Harvard gets 60,000 applicants/year-- to fill a class of 1600.

As a result, being in the top five at a top school is no longer any guarantee of anything. It buys you a lottery ticket. That's it. Unless a kid cured cancer while winning an Olympic gold medal and is the child of a sitting president, there's no guarantee of anything.

I just want to stress the part about most kids back then coming from only certain high schools. I transferred out of my private school (not elite private but solid) to an okay suburban public school. I had a 3.5gpa unweighted, mid-1200s on the SAT, minority, over a year of APs (unusual back then), awards at the state and regional level, and didn't even get into slacs currently ranked 20-50. I saw all my friends from my previous private - including the bottom of the class - get into them. I mean places like Connecticut College, Trinity College in CT, Dickinson - solid schools but certainly not ivies. The couple of kids who got into HYP from my average public were not just the top of the class, they were alumni kids.

I think you got screwed on the GPA. Maybe colleges knew that the private was a tough grader and accounted for that when your private school friends applied. But your bad grades transferred and you ended up with a terrible UW GPA from public. Were you even in the top 1/3rd of the class there?

[Anonymous]

^ plus college counselors were probably way better at the private.

[Anonymous]

A few kids in my HS in 1970s did SWAS. Meaning School Within a School. They get no grades all of HS, so no GPA.

I recall one SWAS kid huge DeadHead self majored in the Grateful Dead in HS and wrote a book on then and followed them all summer by hitchhiking town to town. He also took SAT no studying with a perfect score and did several protest marches on Washington DC.

He got into Harvard. Prior to robots in cram schools, folks paying people to write essays, perfect GPAs they let in interesting people.

That kid was so interesting he arranged for Abbie Hoffman to speak at my HS while he was on the FBIs most wanted list!!

But folks today want to apply 2022 standards. Quite frankly most of kids today would not make it into Harvard in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s.

I applied college back when all applications were done on paper and essays handwritten, you had to even type envelope on a typewriter, get stamps and I rode my bike to post office.

One essay was like Angela Ashes I wove a tale of disparity, adversity that could have won a Pulitzer Prize in my lousy handwriting in pencil no less.

I got in and they loved the essay. Today would not be read and applicant tracking software would rule me out based on GPA and SAT score and there would be 10-20 times the applicants.

I feel handwriting all applications and physically mailing, it, getting checkbook out for application, getting a stamp etc really made kids only focus on the few schools they want and think they can get in. They should go back to that approach

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Was it really that easy back then? Sandburg was 9th in her public high school class and got accepted to Harvard. Did she do something extraordinary like ranked tennis player??

Her dad went to Hopkins and was an Ophthalmologist, so they were full pay I’m sure that helped.

Idk what she had or not but being full pay is peanuts for these wealthy schools with multibillion endowments, unless you can donate above millions, you get no bump in admissions.

Wasn’t Harvard needs blind back then?

Need blind for admission I think, but didn’t offer aid. I have a friend who graduated high school around 1982. He was valedictorian of his tiny high school in Nowhere, TX. He got into Harvard but his family had no money and he got no aid, so he couldn’t go. He went to UT Austin instead.

I think the original point is that competition for admission was lower back then, and presumably Harvard’s yield was lower as well, as a significant number of admits simply wouldn’t have been able to afford the tuition.

Huh? Harvard offered aid, then and now. They don't offer merit aid, but they offer need-based aid. I overlapped with Sandburg at Harvard and gad a mix of need-based scholarships, federal loans and work-study. And Harvard's yield rate back then was about 75%.

People forget several things when they wonder how a particular kid got into a highly selective college. For one thing, they forget that it's not just about "absolute merit," even assuming anyone knows what that means or agrees on how it should be measured. It's about social engineering a whole class: they want a certain number of squash players, a bunch of clarinetists, some people who will major in classics, some kids who grew up on farms and some kids who grew up in South America, and so on. (As they used to tell us back then: Harvard was not looking for well-rounded students. They were looking for a well-rounded class). Upshot: if Harvard has too few cellists and too few kids from Delaware and too few Folklore and Mythology majors, and a kid ranked 25th in their Delaware high school plays the cello and loves Joseph Campbell... well, that kid is probably much more likely to get in the the 24 kids ranked higher.

The other big issue is that selective colleges are more democratic now. In the late 80s my guess is that 75% of Harvard students came from a few hundred high schools: elite boarding schools, elite private days schools in major cities, elite urban magnets in major cities, and highly regarded suburban public schools in places like Westchester County, Shaker Heights, Newton and Brookline and so on. Now-- for excellent reasons-- Harvard is no longer willing to admit sixty Exeter kids and fifteen St. Albans kids each year: they want their class to be more geographically, racially, ethnically, nationally and socioeconomically diverse.

Oh, and more kids apply now. In the late 80s, Harvard had about 15,000 applicants/year and filled an entering class of 1600. Today, Harvard gets 60,000 applicants/year-- to fill a class of 1600.

As a result, being in the top five at a top school is no longer any guarantee of anything. It buys you a lottery ticket. That's it. Unless a kid cured cancer while winning an Olympic gold medal and is the child of a sitting president, there's no guarantee of anything.

I just want to stress the part about most kids back then coming from only certain high schools. I transferred out of my private school (not elite private but solid) to an okay suburban public school. I had a 3.5gpa unweighted, mid-1200s on the SAT, minority, over a year of APs (unusual back then), awards at the state and regional level, and didn't even get into slacs currently ranked 20-50. I saw all my friends from my previous private - including the bottom of the class - get into them. I mean places like Connecticut College, Trinity College in CT, Dickinson - solid schools but certainly not ivies. The couple of kids who got into HYP from my average public were not just the top of the class, they were alumni kids.

I think you got screwed on the GPA. Maybe colleges knew that the private was a tough grader and accounted for that when your private school friends applied. But your bad grades transferred and you ended up with a terrible UW GPA from public. Were you even in the top 1/3rd of the class there?

My 3.5 was top 20% but you're probably right: my public school peers (the kids in my AP classes) who got into the top schools were top 5-10%.