Reply to Sandburg - 9th in her high school class

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[quote=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 [/quote]

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