Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My mom kept papers I wrote in 6th/7th grade in public Fairfax Co. HS and the length, depth and grammar was much more advanced than what my kids are doing in middle school today.

The thing was over 20 pages long and I received a B+. The comment was "too short". My kids were floored.

Standards were very high and there were no 'do-overs' or submitting things late. If it wasn't turned in on time you got a '0'.

We also had many pop quizzes.

And you did not have the Internet to just google things and paraphrase which so many students do today!!!

we just copied everything out of an encyclopedia. 20 pages handwritten is like 5-7 pages typed.

let's be honest about our academic histories, ok?

I went to a NE boarding school and graduated in 2005 with an honors GPA (top 20% of the class; my HS did not calculate a cumulative GPA beyond that), but only a 1400 on the SAT. I did get a perfect score on the SAT II Writing. I only took one AP exam, but otherwise took difficult courses.

I got into Georgetown SFS and UChicago early (the only two schools I applied to). Not sure my SAT score would be high enough today for those schools.

Anonymous wrote:My mom kept papers I wrote in 6th/7th grade in public Fairfax Co. HS and the length, depth and grammar was much more advanced than what my kids are doing in middle school today.

The thing was over 20 pages long and I received a B+. The comment was "too short". My kids were floored.

Standards were very high and there were no 'do-overs' or submitting things late. If it wasn't turned in on time you got a '0'.

We also had many pop quizzes.

And you did not have the Internet to just google things and paraphrase which so many students do today!!!

My mom kept papers I wrote in 6th/7th grade in public Fairfax Co. HS and the length, depth and grammar was much more advanced than what my kids are doing in middle school today.

The thing was over 20 pages long and I received a B+. The comment was "too short". My kids were floored.

Standards were very high and there were no 'do-overs' or submitting things late. If it wasn't turned in on time you got a '0'.

We also had many pop quizzes.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I got a 1350 on the SAT in 1989, which was good enough to get me into Williams.

Any idea what a 1350 is worth now?

Well, the College Board "normalized" the SAT circa 1995/96. So you can add about 70-80 points to your score, most of it to your Verbal score. So you'd likely have ~1420/1430 nowadays with just that adjustment.

And just think, back in 1980's we took it once maybe twice and did no prep work at all. Getting above 1450/1480 was a Top score back then. None of this everyone has over 1540

1400s in the late 80s (on a very different SAT than the one in the past 15-20 years) was a very, very selective score back then.

It was a different test.

My husband was a straight A honor student, athlete, top of his class and got a near perfect SAT score in 1990 and was rejected from Duke and Georgetown. He did go to Hopkins.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I got a 1350 on the SAT in 1989, which was good enough to get me into Williams.

Any idea what a 1350 is worth now?

Well, the College Board "normalized" the SAT circa 1995/96. So you can add about 70-80 points to your score, most of it to your Verbal score. So you'd likely have ~1420/1430 nowadays with just that adjustment.

And just think, back in 1980's we took it once maybe twice and did no prep work at all. Getting above 1450/1480 was a Top score back then. None of this everyone has over 1540

1400s in the late 80s (on a very different SAT than the one in the past 15-20 years) was a very, very selective score back then.

It was a different test.

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.

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.

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.

Around that time I got into every school I applied - Amherst, Duke, Princeton, Wesleyan, Williams, and UVA. Only difference was I had a 1480 SAT and attended a public HS in the South. Maybe they were looking for geographic diversity.

Anonymous wrote:1988: local MCPS high school. 3.9 GPA, there was no weighting then. Hardest humanities and science but not math, no calculus. No AP tests. 1500 SAT. Not great extracurriculars, just music really. Great essays.
Rejected: Harvard, Princeton. WL, Amherst. In: Oberlin, Chicago, Bowdoin, Williams.

I’m a little bit older with similar stats. This is the thing. Harvard was never an easy admit. But it was easier than it is now, and there are many schools that are insanely competitive now that were fairly easy then. As others have mentioned, state flagships were the safety schools.

Anonymous wrote:I got a 1350 on the SAT in 1989, which was good enough to get me into Williams.

Any idea what a 1350 is worth now?

Well, the College Board "normalized" the SAT circa 1995/96. So you can add about 70-80 points to your score, most of it to your Verbal score. So you'd likely have ~1420/1430 nowadays with just that adjustment.

And just think, back in 1980's we took it once maybe twice and did no prep work at all. Getting above 1450/1480 was a Top score back then. None of this everyone has over 1540

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.

Anonymous wrote:Also remember in 1970s schools used real averages with no weighting.

76.76, 84.23, 98.26. None of this we all get 4.0 GPAs. And teachers had balls to give an F out. I had one teacher in HS who failed 1/2 the class.

Years show all the work hand written. Literally a 500 page essay by F Scott Fitzgerald with one period missing would not be a 100.

Today 89.5 is an A my daughters HS

Go yell at the clouds some more. Classes were also much much easier and the subject matter not nearly as complex. Arguing that kids back then were somehow smarter than kids today is ludicrous.

And no one was hand writing a 20 page essay much less 500.

Also remember in 1970s schools used real averages with no weighting.

76.76, 84.23, 98.26. None of this we all get 4.0 GPAs. And teachers had balls to give an F out. I had one teacher in HS who failed 1/2 the class.

Years show all the work hand written. Literally a 500 page essay by F Scott Fitzgerald with one period missing would not be a 100.

Today 89.5 is an A my daughters HS

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I got a 1350 on the SAT in 1989, which was good enough to get me into Williams.

Any idea what a 1350 is worth now?

Probably 80-100 points higher in today’s test

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/05/11/why-your-new-sat-score-is-not-as-strong-as-you-think-it-is/

Thanks!