Admission to Selective Colleges in 1989

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Applied 1989. 1410 SAT. 5 APs (all 4s & 5s). Top 10% of class at top prep school. Good (not spectacular athlete) with leadership roles & interesting background (but not URM). Rejected Princeton, Stanford. WL Dartmouth. Accepted Georgetown, Bowdoin, Middlebury.

Maybe not so very different from today after all?

Another 1410 who graduated in 1990 chiming in here. Ranked 18/222. NMSF. ECs included cheerleading, student teaching, after-school job, summer jobs. Got a rec from employer actually. (All HS essays hand-written btw.) NY public school and needed FA. Went to Penn (not Penn State). Also got into Michigan (honors), Emory, Binghamton, Albany. Given option to take gap yr and come to Cornell but declined.

Back then girls breaking 1400 was unusual - the only other girl I know who did so went to Yale.

DC22 is going to Penn too.

^^ also rejected from Tufts which was NOT need-blind then or now fyi.

[Anonymous]

I think it was different, because in 1986 I had over 1500 SATs, all A grades (no weighting), NMSF, number two in our graduating class from a NY-area public school, solid ECs, and it never occurred to me or anyone that I couldn’t just pick the school I wanted to go to. I did two applications, two acceptances, and went to Yale. Today, my stats and experiences are still a crapshoot.

[Anonymous]

2004 checking in here. 1500 SAT public HS. applied to 5. full ride at state school and T10 private. An ivy acceptance. 2 waitlists (Harvard + Stanford). Was crushed, but Columbia wasn't a bad consolation prize.

[Anonymous]

In 1991 I almost applied to Stanford but didn't end up doing so. Always wondered whether I would've been accepted. 1380 SAT, ranked in top 5 in class of around 500-- I can't remember the exact ranking or what my GPA was.
Today? HAH!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Late 1970s didn’t break 700 on verbal SATs and it was still in the top 10% at UPenn. Friend with lower SATs in at Yale. (Bright, deserved the admit and highly accomplished in life.) Differentvscale then; hard to compare. The globalization is a factor now for sure. You could walk on to a crew team then. Now the teams are recruited internationally.

The “normalization” of sat in 1995/96 largely will add 60-70 points to the verbal score from pre this time. So a 680 prior would be 740/750 after 1995. Most of the point increases come from verbal portion

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it was different, because in 1986 I had over 1500 SATs, all A grades (no weighting), NMSF, number two in our graduating class from a NY-area public school, solid ECs, and it never occurred to me or anyone that I couldn’t just pick the school I wanted to go to. I did two applications, two acceptances, and went to Yale. Today, my stats and experiences are still a crapshoot.

+1

My cohort, (1986) was very strong (not me, LOL) - and pretty much the top 50-60% of the grade went to Ivy/Stanford/Williams/Ahmerst type schools. The middle 25-30% went to places like Michigan and Wisconsin and the bottom tier went to places like U-New Hampshire, Skidmore, Conn College etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Late 1970s didn’t break 700 on verbal SATs and it was still in the top 10% at UPenn. Friend with lower SATs in at Yale. (Bright, deserved the admit and highly accomplished in life.) Differentvscale then; hard to compare. The globalization is a factor now for sure. You could walk on to a crew team then. Now the teams are recruited internationally.

The “normalization” of sat in 1995/96 largely will add 60-70 points to the verbal score from pre this time. So a 680 prior would be 740/750 after 1995. Most of the point increases come from verbal portion

Plus they also dumbed down the verbal section. Very few 700 plus verbals in 1989.

[Anonymous]

Northwestern circa 1988: Average SAT was around 1240. Acceptance rate was nearly 40%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In 1989 I got rejected from Yale, Princeton and Williams with a straight A average, 1390 SAT and at top prep school. So yes, it was tough then too.

The SAT used a 2400 point scale in 1989 and that would be equivalent to a 1000 on the current sat

you’re not smart enough to create a believable lie

No. That scale was much later. It was 1600 scale. So before you call someone else stupid....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I graduated from a Fairfax Co. HS in 1988 and it was said to be one of the most competitive years.

This certainly was not the case for my high school. So many waitlist and outright denials for top kids (top 5% of class) at UVA/W&M and Ivie, Duke, etc.

Even a Supreme Court justice's kid was waitlisted at many of the places I was.

That's not to say it's not increasingly more difficult these days to get in. The difference being that student's "Back up schools" back then are now very hard to get into, but it was just as hard for the top 10/Ivies, etc.

Yup! In 1988, if you graduated HS in Virginia and had at least a 2.0 (or something ridiculously low), you were GUARANTEED admission into Va Tech.
I don't live in VA anymore, but my state's 2nd ranked large school (because the flagship is T50 and wouldn't do guaranteed admissions), requires a 3.5 GPA to be guaranteed admission just for comparison.

School I attended in 1988 had a 35% admission rate, today it's 7% or less (T15 school at that time). in 1988 ~12K students applied for ~1900 spots. This year ~51K applied for the same ~2K spots.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In 1989 I got rejected from Yale, Princeton and Williams with a straight A average, 1390 SAT and at top prep school. So yes, it was tough then too.

The SAT used a 2400 point scale in 1989 and that would be equivalent to a 1000 on the current sat

you’re not smart enough to create a believable lie

No. That scale was much later. It was 1600 scale. So before you call someone else stupid....

Yup--not even close. The switch occurred in 2005 (according to google).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Northwestern circa 1988: Average SAT was around 1240. Acceptance rate was nearly 40%

So glad I was applying then and not now! Had such an amazing time at NU. Then again, my 1400 from then would be a 1480/1490 now and that was all with 2 takes of the SAT and no studying/prep work, and most people only took it once back then.

[Anonymous]

1988, private HS with 3.5 gpa and mid 1200 SAT. No extracurricular or sports. I took some APs - art history, English, chemistry- but only took one of the AP exams. Accepted to UMD, Hopkins, Mary Baldwin, rejected by Temple. I had no clue what I was doing or what I wanted from a college. Ended up transferring from MD to SMCM, which is probably where I should have applied to in the first place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My sister got into Vanderbilt with an 1100 on the SAT's. Those were the days. Can you even imagine that now?

The SAT has been recentered since then so that is about 160 points and Vanderbilt has gotten much more selective since that time, perhaps more than any other school in that time period.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid is going to Georgetown and I remember thinking, wow, it is harder to get into Georgetown today (12% acceptance rate) than it was to get into Harvard in 1987 (the year I applied). Back then, I think the Harvard acceptance rate was around 16%.

None of us would ever get into our alma maters today, folks....!

If you were applying today, you would apply to over 3X as many schools, your high school GPA would be significantly higher due to grade inflation, your high school class rank would be much less likely to be submitted and considered, and your SAT score would be much higher due to recentering and greater access to test prep.