1986
Ranked 3rd in class of 190ppl
Strong SATs but not extraordinary, can't remember the details
Rejected at my two top choices, Brown and Georgetown SFS
Accepted at Penn, Tufts, UMass, and a few other local MA/New England backups that I can't remember

The rejections crushed me. I'd only applied to Penn because of an Air Force buddy of my dad's. I wound up going there and I'm confident that I wouldn't have had my current (successful) career or life without that experience. I tell my own kids that you may not get what you want out of the college applications, but you may just get what you need!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is kinda interesting both in terms of what was needed for admittance then vs now, and also how some colleges have changed. (Several posters from 1980s were accepted to uva but denied/WL at William and Mary!) it also shows that the system was pretty random in the past, too.

Things started changing in the 1990s, especially the late 1990s. Population of US is much bigger now but the same number of colleges and universities. The past was much more regionally focused while schools today are much more national. The Ivy Leagues and elite LACs didn't carry the same mystique they currently do; it was a much more self-selective pool of applicants largely drawn from the upper middle classes and especially those whose families had a tradition of going to private colleges. Most of the country, especially outside the east coast, viewed getting into the flagship state university as all was needed for a great education. SAT scores themselves have been reweighted several times. The change to electronic applications rather than hand written essays made it much easier to apply to multiple colleges. It snowballed from there.

+1

The system needs to get away from prep and culled information, but it will never happen. There are simply too many applicants.

This. Your kids are now competing with tens of thousands of wealthy foreign applicants each year. That really didn't start to ramp up until after 2000 or thereabouts. There was so much less competition prior to 2000.

2000
4.4 GPA/1350 SAT
Rank: 7/450, public school in California
6 APs: five 5's, one 4
Extra curriculars: Eagle Scout, varsity letters in track & cross-country for two years, sleepaway camp counselor, part-time jobs afterschool and weekends during school year

NYU: accepted with $10K scholarship, attended
Columbia: waitlisted, then rejected
UC Berkeley: waitlisted, then rejected
Boston Univ: accepted
Syracuse: accepted
UC Santa Barbara: accepted
UCLA: accepted
UC Santa Cruz: accepted
UC San Diego: accepted

In hindsight, I should've applied to more Ivies. I was the first in my family to attend college and I didn't know my head from my ass. The guidance counselor at my large HS didn't know much about East Coast universities as probably only 30% of my class would go to a 4-year college right out of high school and pretty much everyone else just stayed in the California public system. I'm pretty sure more kids sat for the ASVAB test than the SAT at my high school.

I remember that in 1998 Purdue sent acceptance letters to all of us in the top 5% of the class or so at my large suburban high school without some of us even applying. Didn't work for engineering if that was what you wanted, though.

1986
3.98 UW GPA in large public school—top 5 or so in the class. Took 1 AP (literature) and got a 5.
1320 SAT, 600 math and 720 verbal
Applied to Carleton, Oberlin, Swarthmore, and Reed and was accepted at all.

Didn’t think to apply to any safeties. It was definitely a different world!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is kinda interesting both in terms of what was needed for admittance then vs now, and also how some colleges have changed. (Several posters from 1980s were accepted to uva but denied/WL at William and Mary!) it also shows that the system was pretty random in the past, too.

Things started changing in the 1990s, especially the late 1990s. Population of US is much bigger now but the same number of colleges and universities. The past was much more regionally focused while schools today are much more national. The Ivy Leagues and elite LACs didn't carry the same mystique they currently do; it was a much more self-selective pool of applicants largely drawn from the upper middle classes and especially those whose families had a tradition of going to private colleges. Most of the country, especially outside the east coast, viewed getting into the flagship state university as all was needed for a great education. SAT scores themselves have been reweighted several times. The change to electronic applications rather than hand written essays made it much easier to apply to multiple colleges. It snowballed from there.

+1

The system needs to get away from prep and culled information, but it will never happen. There are simply too many applicants.

GREAT thread, OP!

Plus the youth sports conveyor belt into colleges really ramped up. Traveling all over creation playing "faux pro" youth sports did not exist at all like it does today. This zillion industry is new.

Our 80s parents were barely aware our teen youth sports careers and they never attended a single one of our college games. Not sure they even had any idea we were in the college team.

Anonymous wrote:This is kinda interesting both in terms of what was needed for admittance then vs now, and also how some colleges have changed. (Several posters from 1980s were accepted to uva but denied/WL at William and Mary!) it also shows that the system was pretty random in the past, too.

Things started changing in the 1990s, especially the late 1990s. Population of US is much bigger now but the same number of colleges and universities. The past was much more regionally focused while schools today are much more national. The Ivy Leagues and elite LACs didn't carry the same mystique they currently do; it was a much more self-selective pool of applicants largely drawn from the upper middle classes and especially those whose families had a tradition of going to private colleges. Most of the country, especially outside the east coast, viewed getting into the flagship state university as all was needed for a great education. SAT scores themselves have been reweighted several times. The change to electronic applications rather than hand written essays made it much easier to apply to multiple colleges. It snowballed from there.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why did you guys score so low on your SATs compared to what kids score today? Didn’t prep?

Prep? I took it in the 80s. No one "prepped". I can't even recall taking it more than once. We showed up on a Saturday morning, took the test, and that was that.

And SAT was scored differently then. Everyone scores higher now. You can’t really compare scores from the 80s and 90s to scores today.

I graduated in 1998.

I honestly don't remember my SAT scores. I know that my verbal score was perfect and my math score was not so great.

4.0 gpa

University of Colorado at Boulder: rejected, and I was devastated.

Penn State: accepted

Harvard: accepted


I didn't apply anywhere else. Throughout middle and high school, my dream was to go to CU Boulder because we went skiing each winter in Colorado and I loved it there. I applied to Harvard because my guidance counsellor and English teacher ordered the application materials for me and told me I should complete them.

Harvard turned out to be an OK backup plan.

I remember watching Walter Cronkite on TV and shopping at Hechingers. And an 800 on the SAT was unheard of, as was a 4.4 gpa. Ah, good times.

1992
3.8 GPA
1110 SAT

Accepted: George Mason (free tuition)

My parents were getting divorced, and I was on my own to apply for college. I only applied to Mason and that's where I went. Ended up going to an Ivy for grad school, so it worked out for me.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I applied for Fall 1991

IB School
B average
Extra curriculars:Theater, sports

Applied:
U Maine- Accepted
UVM- Accepted
Vanderbilt- Denied
Georgetown- Denied
Boston College- Accepted
Tulane- Denied
U Washington- Denied
U Arizona- Denied

Any data more than 5 or 6 years old is irrelevant. Things have changed so much. I got in to the U. Washington with a 2.6

ALL the data more than 5 or 6 years old is relevant to the topic of this thread, which is precisely about OLD DATA. Geez.

O.K. - that was me who said that, I was just pointing out (inarticulately) how much things have changed. So what difference does it make what stats you got in with under such different criteria as was in effect then. YThose days are long gone and we all know it. Seriously, what difference does it make?

Exactly. And we'll all be dead soon. And the oceans will swallow up the land. And no one in my house knows how to change the TP when one roll becomes empty. And...

Applied for fall of 1998.

1440 SAT, two 800 SAT II and don't remember what the others were, a couple AP 4 and 5s. Regular prep school. GPA was probably around 3.7. No real extra curriculars.

EA at Dartmouth, deferred and later rejected. By the time spring rolled around I didn't care about Dartmouth because the two people I knew who got in early were people I distinctly did not like.

Accepted at Brown, Bowdoin, Amherst, Kenyon, Davidson, Haverford and Bates.

WL at Princeton

Went to Brown.

Knew several classmates who got into Penn with SATs in the 1300s. Especially if they applied EA.