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[quote=Anonymous]I graduated in 1983 from a Catholic girls high school in California.  It wasn't just that the USNWR rankings didn't exist; the entire college application landscape looked completely different -- like comparing Mars to Times Square.  Admissions were less competitive, tuition was more reasonable, and parents were way less involved (remember -- there was also no internet, no DCUM or College Confidential, so parents did not have these "opportunities" to become obsessive about their kids' college prospects).  Also, coaching for standardized tests, while it existed, wasn't that common and certainly wasn't the intense time and money investment that it is today. I lived in an an affluent community and knew maybe one or two people who did test prep other than on their own.  Nobody I knew went to a private college counselor.  Yes, there were guidebooks (available in your school counselor's office), and some of them categorized colleges according to how competitive admissions were, but these were pretty broad categories, so people didn't fixate on minor differences among schools.

The broad categories pretty much reflected the sense we had of which schools were hardest to get into, based on where the kids who graduated from our high schools in previous years went to college.  So, at my high school, I knew who was in the top track classes, who made honor society, who wrote for the school paper, etc.   And, I knew where those girls had gone to college.  During the summer before my senior year, I did an east coast college trip with two of my friends.  We stayed with relatives and family friends -- one of whom was also hosting a nephew from Kansas, who was doing his own college trip.  Our hosts drove us around or we took Amtrak --  we actually had a lot of fun.  I loved the SLACs we visited and didn't like any of the bigger schools.  When I got home and school started again, I met with my guidance counselor and we made a list of six colleges, all on the east coast, except for Pomona.  My parents were shocked that I didn't want to go to UC Berkeley, but they were encouraging and gave me checks for the application fees as well as cash to mail in my applications from the post office.  I ended up going to a SLAC in New England, where I was very happy.  The whole application experience was so much less complicated and stressful than my kids' experiences.  My oldest graduated from my alma mater.  I'm not a crier, but when he got in, I went into my bedroom, locked the door, and sobbed just from the tension release.  With the younger kids, I knew not to get so caught up in all the craziness.  [/quote]

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