Reply to Admission to Selective Colleges in 1989

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was a HS student in the very early 80s and unless you had access to a typewriter, you were absolutely hand-writing your essays.

We were lucky because my mom had an IBM electric typewriter at home for work and am my friends came over to borrow it for their papers.

Kids weren’t smarter, but doing stuff was harder. You couldn’t look up anything at the drop of a hat, you really had to search out stuff and use micro-fiche, card catalogues, and you had to wait for books for weeks at times. It’s shocking we knew anything at all given how much effort and time it took.

My HS teachers definitely handed out Ds and Fs— some of them gleefully.

Kids learn at a much, much faster rate now because information is available at a much faster rate.
They also have to devote brain power to the rapid technology changes. Once personal computers were readily available in the mid 80s, everything changed and we got to witness how blazing fast technological change is. Now it’s at an even much faster rate.

In all, I think it’s both harder and easier for kids today—but they definitely learn more and faster…and because of technology and related advancements, there is simply MORE to learn.[/quote]

Ditto on handwritten essays. there was only one required typed paper when I was in HS in the late 70s - mega research paper in College English and only a quarter to a third of HS seniors were enrolled. Think it was a minimum of ten pages + foot notes. I paid someone to type mine (worked in an office after school).

No way the school could require that every paper be typed as probably only a tenth of the class had access to typewriters. I'm pretty sure it was a Title 1 school. [/quote]

We get it. You’re old. Hand writing a paper because of technology limitations doesn’t make it harder or more challenging. Unless you think kids back in the 1900s using quills and ink pots were smarter or studied harder than you because of it.

And no one was hand writing a 500 page paper. [/quote]

I graduated from high school in 1980, and hand writing a paper was harder not because of the act of writing, but because of the difficulty in making any changes.  I remember my college applications were tri-fold, heavy duty paper and they only sent you one application.  Typing was difficult - trying to insert thick paper into the roller curled the application, and lining up the application to type on a specific line or centering the "x" in the checkbox was nearly impossible.  One application required that the essay be written "in your own hand", so handwriting it was, and once you finished writing in pen changes were not feasible.  For school papers, a decision to move a paragraph could require a full re-write of the paper, and corrections to misspellings were done with white-out (and no spell check).  What I remember most, was while the college application process was tedious (and I only applied to 4 schools), it was not stressful.  I ended up attending an Ivy, but felt all the schools I applied to offered a good option.  The process now is so fraught with judgement that the stakes are regretfully amplified.[/quote]

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