[Mick]

I wouldn't say my HS college counselor was incapable or cranially challenged...she was just oriented to the population in the 50% to 85% range of the SAT, so to speak. She couldn't get you into (or find) a Top 50 college, but she was capable at getting you into the next 500 or so.

A generation later, I was simply amazed at the lack of capability of my son's HS college counselor -- who had the same range of skills as the CC in the above instance, but my son's high school was very strong academically, and my HS -- let's just say I'm amazed that they were accredited, they certainly didn't deserve to be.

[Mick]

I wouldn't say my HS college counselor was incapable or cranially challenged...she was just oriented to the population in the 50% to 85% range of the SAT, so to speak. She couldn't get you into (or find) a Top 50 college, but she was capable at getting you into the next 500 or so.

A generation later, I was simply amazed at the lack of capability of my son's HS college counselor -- who had the same range of skills as the CC in the above instance, but my son's high school was very strong academically, and my HS -- let's just say I'm amazed that they were accredited, they certainly didn't deserve to be.

[Mick]

When I was in HS in CA 20+ years ago ... if you were smart and worked hard you'd know you'd get into UCLA, UCB, UCSD.

Now my understanding from hearing of colleague's kids going through the process, there is much less of that certainty.

I just went through the college application process with two kids this year, one graduating high school and the other from community college.

A 4.0 GPA and a 1550 SAT score is not a guarantee of getting into UCB, UCLA, or UCSD any more.

My kid who will be attending Stanford was rejected from UC Irvine.  He thinks it's because Irvine is being conscious of their yield rate and knew he wouldn't enroll there.

UCLA nowadays is completely a dart board.  They get more applications than any other school in the country (about 150,000), and among my kid's friends there is no rhyme or reason as to who got accepted.

I was happy to see that Stanford took a transfer student from my kid's community college (CCSF).

Top 10 Most Applied-To Colleges (Class of 2027). Stanford came in a healthy #8:

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) – 145,904 applicants (11.6% acceptance rate)
University of California, San Diego (UCSD) – 130,841 applicants (25% acceptance rate)
University of California, Berkeley (UCB) – 125,910 applicants (11.6% acceptance rate)
University of California, Irvine (UCI) – 97,937 applicants (21.3% acceptance rate)
New York University (NYU) – 105,000 applicants (12.8% acceptance rate)
University of Southern California (USC) – 80,808 applicants (9.9% acceptance rate) 
Harvard University – 61,220 applicants (3.4% acceptance rate)
Stanford University – 56,378 applicants (3.7% acceptance rate)
University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) – 54,588 applicants (5.8% acceptance rate) 
Columbia University – 52,823 applicants (3.9% acceptance rate)

[Mick]

When I was in HS in CA 20+ years ago ... if you were smart and worked hard you'd know you'd get into UCLA, UCB, UCSD.

Now my understanding from hearing of colleague's kids going through the process, there is much less of that certainty.

I just went through the college application process with two kids this year, one graduating high school and the other from community college.

A 4.0 GPA and a 1550 SAT score is not a guarantee of getting into UCB, UCLA, or UCSD any more.

My kid who will be attending Stanford was rejected from UC Irvine.  He thinks it's because Irvine is being conscious of their yield rate and knew he wouldn't enroll there.

UCLA nowadays is completely a dart board.  They get more applications than any other school in the country (about 150,000), and among my kid's friends there is no rhyme or reason as to who got accepted.

I was happy to see that Stanford took a transfer student from my kid's community college (CCSF).

Top 10 Most Applied-To Colleges (Class of 2027). Stanford came in a healthy #8:

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) – 145,904 applicants (11.6% acceptance rate)
University of California, San Diego (UCSD) – 130,841 applicants (25% acceptance rate)
University of California, Berkeley (UCB) – 125,910 applicants (11.6% acceptance rate)
University of California, Irvine (UCI) – 97,937 applicants (21.3% acceptance rate)
New York University (NYU) – 105,000 applicants (12.8% acceptance rate)
University of Southern California (USC) – 80,808 applicants (9.9% acceptance rate) 
Harvard University – 61,220 applicants (3.4% acceptance rate)
Stanford University – 56,378 applicants (3.7% acceptance rate)
University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) – 54,588 applicants (5.8% acceptance rate) 
Columbia University – 52,823 applicants (3.9% acceptance rate)

[qwerty49]

When I was in HS in CA 20+ years ago ... if you were smart and worked hard you'd know you'd get into UCLA, UCB, UCSD.

Now my understanding from hearing of colleague's kids going through the process, there is much less of that certainty.

I just went through the college application process with two kids this year, one graduating high school and the other from community college.

A 4.0 GPA and a 1550 SAT score is not a guarantee of getting into UCB, UCLA, or UCSD any more.

My kid who will be attending Stanford was rejected from UC Irvine.  He thinks it's because Irvine is being conscious of their yield rate and knew he wouldn't enroll there.

UCLA nowadays is completely a dart board.  They get more applications than any other school in the country (about 150,000), and among my kid's friends there is no rhyme or reason as to who got accepted.

I was happy to see that Stanford took a transfer student from my kid's community college (CCSF).

Top 10 Most Applied-To Colleges (Class of 2027). Stanford came in a healthy #8:

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) – 145,904 applicants (11.6% acceptance rate)
University of California, San Diego (UCSD) – 130,841 applicants (25% acceptance rate)
University of California, Berkeley (UCB) – 125,910 applicants (11.6% acceptance rate)
University of California, Irvine (UCI) – 97,937 applicants (21.3% acceptance rate)
New York University (NYU) – 105,000 applicants (12.8% acceptance rate)
University of Southern California (USC) – 80,808 applicants (9.9% acceptance rate) 
Harvard University – 61,220 applicants (3.4% acceptance rate)
Stanford University – 56,378 applicants (3.7% acceptance rate)
University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) – 54,588 applicants (5.8% acceptance rate) 
Columbia University – 52,823 applicants (3.9% acceptance rate)

It would be interesting to see the actual frosh class sizes of the top few schools. UCSD and UCI in particular look like “safety schools.”

[qwerty49]

When I was in HS in CA 20+ years ago ... if you were smart and worked hard you'd know you'd get into UCLA, UCB, UCSD.

Now my understanding from hearing of colleague's kids going through the process, there is much less of that certainty.

I just went through the college application process with two kids this year, one graduating high school and the other from community college.

A 4.0 GPA and a 1550 SAT score is not a guarantee of getting into UCB, UCLA, or UCSD any more.

My kid who will be attending Stanford was rejected from UC Irvine.  He thinks it's because Irvine is being conscious of their yield rate and knew he wouldn't enroll there.

UCLA nowadays is completely a dart board.  They get more applications than any other school in the country (about 150,000), and among my kid's friends there is no rhyme or reason as to who got accepted.

I was happy to see that Stanford took a transfer student from my kid's community college (CCSF).

Top 10 Most Applied-To Colleges (Class of 2027). Stanford came in a healthy #8:

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) – 145,904 applicants (11.6% acceptance rate)
University of California, San Diego (UCSD) – 130,841 applicants (25% acceptance rate)
University of California, Berkeley (UCB) – 125,910 applicants (11.6% acceptance rate)
University of California, Irvine (UCI) – 97,937 applicants (21.3% acceptance rate)
New York University (NYU) – 105,000 applicants (12.8% acceptance rate)
University of Southern California (USC) – 80,808 applicants (9.9% acceptance rate) 
Harvard University – 61,220 applicants (3.4% acceptance rate)
Stanford University – 56,378 applicants (3.7% acceptance rate)
University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) – 54,588 applicants (5.8% acceptance rate) 
Columbia University – 52,823 applicants (3.9% acceptance rate)

It would be interesting to see the actual frosh class sizes of the top few schools. UCSD and UCI in particular look like “safety schools.”

[82lsju]

When I was in HS in CA 20+ years ago ... if you were smart and worked hard you'd know you'd get into UCLA, UCB, UCSD.

Now my understanding from hearing of colleague's kids going through the process, there is much less of that certainty.

I just went through the college application process with two kids this year, one graduating high school and the other from community college.

A 4.0 GPA and a 1550 SAT score is not a guarantee of getting into UCB, UCLA, or UCSD any more.

My kid who will be attending Stanford was rejected from UC Irvine.  He thinks it's because Irvine is being conscious of their yield rate and knew he wouldn't enroll there.

UCLA nowadays is completely a dart board.  They get more applications than any other school in the country (about 150,000), and among my kid's friends there is no rhyme or reason as to who got accepted.

I was happy to see that Stanford took a transfer student from my kid's community college (CCSF).

Top 10 Most Applied-To Colleges (Class of 2027). Stanford came in a healthy #8:

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) – 145,904 applicants (11.6% acceptance rate)
University of California, San Diego (UCSD) – 130,841 applicants (25% acceptance rate)
University of California, Berkeley (UCB) – 125,910 applicants (11.6% acceptance rate)
University of California, Irvine (UCI) – 97,937 applicants (21.3% acceptance rate)
New York University (NYU) – 105,000 applicants (12.8% acceptance rate)
University of Southern California (USC) – 80,808 applicants (9.9% acceptance rate) 
Harvard University – 61,220 applicants (3.4% acceptance rate)
Stanford University – 56,378 applicants (3.7% acceptance rate)
University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) – 54,588 applicants (5.8% acceptance rate) 
Columbia University – 52,823 applicants (3.9% acceptance rate)

It would be interesting to see the actual frosh class sizes of the top few schools. UCSD and UCI in particular look like “safety schools.”

UCI has ~29k undergrads so ~7k/year (not sure how many are frosh admits vs transfers, although the link below was 148K frosh + transfer applicants for 2024 vs 98k applicants above so if transfer have the same acceptance rate the % enrolled below is a lot lower)

https://uci.edu/about/facts-and-figures.php

from the above ~21K accepted so ~33% enrolled

UCSD has ~35k undergrads

https://univcomms.ucsd.edu/about/campus-profile/

so ~8.5k/year (again unclear how many are frosh admits, the link above says they had ~23k transfer applicants so the % enrolled below if probably also lower)

so if we look at just frosh admits then ~33k, so ~25% enrolled, less if you factor in transfers into the overall number of enrollees

[82lsju]

When I was in HS in CA 20+ years ago ... if you were smart and worked hard you'd know you'd get into UCLA, UCB, UCSD.

Now my understanding from hearing of colleague's kids going through the process, there is much less of that certainty.

I just went through the college application process with two kids this year, one graduating high school and the other from community college.

A 4.0 GPA and a 1550 SAT score is not a guarantee of getting into UCB, UCLA, or UCSD any more.

My kid who will be attending Stanford was rejected from UC Irvine.  He thinks it's because Irvine is being conscious of their yield rate and knew he wouldn't enroll there.

UCLA nowadays is completely a dart board.  They get more applications than any other school in the country (about 150,000), and among my kid's friends there is no rhyme or reason as to who got accepted.

I was happy to see that Stanford took a transfer student from my kid's community college (CCSF).

Top 10 Most Applied-To Colleges (Class of 2027). Stanford came in a healthy #8:

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) – 145,904 applicants (11.6% acceptance rate)
University of California, San Diego (UCSD) – 130,841 applicants (25% acceptance rate)
University of California, Berkeley (UCB) – 125,910 applicants (11.6% acceptance rate)
University of California, Irvine (UCI) – 97,937 applicants (21.3% acceptance rate)
New York University (NYU) – 105,000 applicants (12.8% acceptance rate)
University of Southern California (USC) – 80,808 applicants (9.9% acceptance rate) 
Harvard University – 61,220 applicants (3.4% acceptance rate)
Stanford University – 56,378 applicants (3.7% acceptance rate)
University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) – 54,588 applicants (5.8% acceptance rate) 
Columbia University – 52,823 applicants (3.9% acceptance rate)

It would be interesting to see the actual frosh class sizes of the top few schools. UCSD and UCI in particular look like “safety schools.”

UCI has ~29k undergrads so ~7k/year (not sure how many are frosh admits vs transfers, although the link below was 148K frosh + transfer applicants for 2024 vs 98k applicants above so if transfer have the same acceptance rate the % enrolled below is a lot lower)

https://uci.edu/about/facts-and-figures.php

from the above ~21K accepted so ~33% enrolled

UCSD has ~35k undergrads

https://univcomms.ucsd.edu/about/campus-profile/

so ~8.5k/year (again unclear how many are frosh admits, the link above says they had ~23k transfer applicants so the % enrolled below if probably also lower)

so if we look at just frosh admits then ~33k, so ~25% enrolled, less if you factor in transfers into the overall number of enrollees

[cctop]

Looks like UCLA actually got 177,317 applications this year:

https://ucop.edu/institutional-research-...counts.pdf

[cctop]

Looks like UCLA actually got 177,317 applications this year:

https://ucop.edu/institutional-research-...counts.pdf

[BostonCard]

I wonder if the earlier number quoted was first year applicants, which was 146,672 this year, up just a skosh from the 145,904 that Mick quoted for the class of 2027 (2023 entry).

BC

[BostonCard]

I wonder if the earlier number quoted was first year applicants, which was 146,672 this year, up just a skosh from the 145,904 that Mick quoted for the class of 2027 (2023 entry).

BC

[82lsju]

I wonder if the earlier number quoted was first year applicants, which was 146,672 this year, up just a skosh from the 145,904 that Mick quoted for the class of 2027 (2023 entry).

BC

I think all the numbers in the list are frosh applications and exclude transfers

[82lsju]

I wonder if the earlier number quoted was first year applicants, which was 146,672 this year, up just a skosh from the 145,904 that Mick quoted for the class of 2027 (2023 entry).

BC

I think all the numbers in the list are frosh applications and exclude transfers

[Treebound]

When I was in HS in CA 20+ years ago ... if you were smart and worked hard you'd know you'd get into UCLA, UCB, UCSD.

Now my understanding from hearing of colleague's kids going through the process, there is much less of that certainty.

I just went through the college application process with two kids this year, one graduating high school and the other from community college.

A 4.0 GPA and a 1550 SAT score is not a guarantee of getting into UCB, UCLA, or UCSD any more.

My kid who will be attending Stanford was rejected from UC Irvine.  He thinks it's because Irvine is being conscious of their yield rate and knew he wouldn't enroll there.

UCLA nowadays is completely a dart board.  They get more applications than any other school in the country (about 150,000), and among my kid's friends there is no rhyme or reason as to who got accepted.

I was happy to see that Stanford took a transfer student from my kid's community college (CCSF).

Top 10 Most Applied-To Colleges (Class of 2027). Stanford came in a healthy #8:

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) – 145,904 applicants (11.6% acceptance rate)
University of California, San Diego (UCSD) – 130,841 applicants (25% acceptance rate)
University of California, Berkeley (UCB) – 125,910 applicants (11.6% acceptance rate)
University of California, Irvine (UCI) – 97,937 applicants (21.3% acceptance rate)
New York University (NYU) – 105,000 applicants (12.8% acceptance rate)
University of Southern California (USC) – 80,808 applicants (9.9% acceptance rate) 
Harvard University – 61,220 applicants (3.4% acceptance rate)
Stanford University – 56,378 applicants (3.7% acceptance rate)
University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) – 54,588 applicants (5.8% acceptance rate) 
Columbia University – 52,823 applicants (3.9% acceptance rate)

It would be interesting to see the actual frosh class sizes of the top few schools. UCSD and UCI in particular look like “safety schools.”

Qwerty, Speaking of "safety schools," you also have university of seventh choice in the mix.....and these numbers don't include all the "trojan transfers" from SMU, Orange Coast College, etc...  Those students are kept out of the freshman class to try to help pad their numbers.

[Treebound]

When I was in HS in CA 20+ years ago ... if you were smart and worked hard you'd know you'd get into UCLA, UCB, UCSD.

Now my understanding from hearing of colleague's kids going through the process, there is much less of that certainty.

I just went through the college application process with two kids this year, one graduating high school and the other from community college.

A 4.0 GPA and a 1550 SAT score is not a guarantee of getting into UCB, UCLA, or UCSD any more.

My kid who will be attending Stanford was rejected from UC Irvine.  He thinks it's because Irvine is being conscious of their yield rate and knew he wouldn't enroll there.

UCLA nowadays is completely a dart board.  They get more applications than any other school in the country (about 150,000), and among my kid's friends there is no rhyme or reason as to who got accepted.

I was happy to see that Stanford took a transfer student from my kid's community college (CCSF).

Top 10 Most Applied-To Colleges (Class of 2027). Stanford came in a healthy #8:

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) – 145,904 applicants (11.6% acceptance rate)
University of California, San Diego (UCSD) – 130,841 applicants (25% acceptance rate)
University of California, Berkeley (UCB) – 125,910 applicants (11.6% acceptance rate)
University of California, Irvine (UCI) – 97,937 applicants (21.3% acceptance rate)
New York University (NYU) – 105,000 applicants (12.8% acceptance rate)
University of Southern California (USC) – 80,808 applicants (9.9% acceptance rate) 
Harvard University – 61,220 applicants (3.4% acceptance rate)
Stanford University – 56,378 applicants (3.7% acceptance rate)
University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) – 54,588 applicants (5.8% acceptance rate) 
Columbia University – 52,823 applicants (3.9% acceptance rate)

It would be interesting to see the actual frosh class sizes of the top few schools. UCSD and UCI in particular look like “safety schools.”

Qwerty, Speaking of "safety schools," you also have university of seventh choice in the mix.....and these numbers don't include all the "trojan transfers" from SMU, Orange Coast College, etc...  Those students are kept out of the freshman class to try to help pad their numbers.

[jacket3ree]

 It's really the only universal objective measurement.

Except it isn't clear exactly what it measures. I am "old" and remember back in 1966 the general belief was that the test was "objective" and that you couldn't study for it, so why bother? Subsequent experience demonstrates clearly that at a minimum taking lots of "practice" SAT test improves scores. Those individuals haven't suddenly become smarter or better educated. They have however learned to take SAT tests better than their peers. This practice often involves some significant financial commitment. This unfortunate fact has been used as a reason to abandon the test entirely. It is also undoubtedly true that some people are by nature better SAT test-takers than others who are in all other respects similar. That is a naturally occurring advantage that creates a bias in favor of people with that particular skill. The test result is therefore not actually measuring academic ability alone, but rather a combination of factors, one of which is test-taking ability.
 
That said, the SAT test is demonstratively predictive of college "success". One reason for that is that skilled test takers do better on tests than less skilled individuals. College involves taking lots of tests. However, there are undoubtedly some significant "objective" measures of other things that are predictive of college success present in the test as well. I think these tests should be required. I also think it is extremely important to realize that they have significant limitations.

I did a lot better in college than the SAT said I would.  The ACT begged to differ, however. I remember taking the PSAT and maybe kinda sorta reading up on how the SAT worked. But I never "studied" or took a prep class. I took the SAT in one of my high school's classrooms on a very cold Saturday morning. I don't remember the month - probably late October or early November, but since it was Saturday and cell phones weren't invented yet, no one could get someone out to turn on the furnace or the lights. So we Abe Lincolned it in our Carhartts and down vests. 

My college counselor, Bob Brown, was a man I met one time, when I gave him a list of schools where he needed to send my transcripts. Nice enough guy and I was never in trouble. He asked me to 'hold on a sec' while he rummaged in his file for a stapled list many pages long. Oh crap, I knew it, they keep a list!  He thumbed down and said 'Nope, you'd be the first kid from here to ever attend Georgia Tech. That's something.  Good luck!'  I think the novelty of that was why my story didn't turn into Orange County.  In any event, I heard back from Tech before even Mines, Ft. Collins, or Boulder and was on a plane by January to check it out.

I probably did a lot better in grad school than the GRE said I would. Stales (Charley Staley) woke me up from a stupor after a monster house party the night before and reminded me we needed to get our butts down to Georgia State for the GRE. That was the extent of my preparation.

I have better SAT stories with my daughter. Broke 90 mph on 101 going from Mountain View High School up to San Carlos and back after she realized she forgot her ticket when we were in the parking lot. You sweat your kids' lives more than your own.

College admissions is a weird deal. We just learned that UC Irvine is harder to get into than Stanford and I know one case in which UC San Diego was harder to get into than the Naval Academy. Or UC Berkeley.

[jacket3ree]

 It's really the only universal objective measurement.

Except it isn't clear exactly what it measures. I am "old" and remember back in 1966 the general belief was that the test was "objective" and that you couldn't study for it, so why bother? Subsequent experience demonstrates clearly that at a minimum taking lots of "practice" SAT test improves scores. Those individuals haven't suddenly become smarter or better educated. They have however learned to take SAT tests better than their peers. This practice often involves some significant financial commitment. This unfortunate fact has been used as a reason to abandon the test entirely. It is also undoubtedly true that some people are by nature better SAT test-takers than others who are in all other respects similar. That is a naturally occurring advantage that creates a bias in favor of people with that particular skill. The test result is therefore not actually measuring academic ability alone, but rather a combination of factors, one of which is test-taking ability.
 
That said, the SAT test is demonstratively predictive of college "success". One reason for that is that skilled test takers do better on tests than less skilled individuals. College involves taking lots of tests. However, there are undoubtedly some significant "objective" measures of other things that are predictive of college success present in the test as well. I think these tests should be required. I also think it is extremely important to realize that they have significant limitations.

I did a lot better in college than the SAT said I would.  The ACT begged to differ, however. I remember taking the PSAT and maybe kinda sorta reading up on how the SAT worked. But I never "studied" or took a prep class. I took the SAT in one of my high school's classrooms on a very cold Saturday morning. I don't remember the month - probably late October or early November, but since it was Saturday and cell phones weren't invented yet, no one could get someone out to turn on the furnace or the lights. So we Abe Lincolned it in our Carhartts and down vests. 

My college counselor, Bob Brown, was a man I met one time, when I gave him a list of schools where he needed to send my transcripts. Nice enough guy and I was never in trouble. He asked me to 'hold on a sec' while he rummaged in his file for a stapled list many pages long. Oh crap, I knew it, they keep a list!  He thumbed down and said 'Nope, you'd be the first kid from here to ever attend Georgia Tech. That's something.  Good luck!'  I think the novelty of that was why my story didn't turn into Orange County.  In any event, I heard back from Tech before even Mines, Ft. Collins, or Boulder and was on a plane by January to check it out.

I probably did a lot better in grad school than the GRE said I would. Stales (Charley Staley) woke me up from a stupor after a monster house party the night before and reminded me we needed to get our butts down to Georgia State for the GRE. That was the extent of my preparation.

I have better SAT stories with my daughter. Broke 90 mph on 101 going from Mountain View High School up to San Carlos and back after she realized she forgot her ticket when we were in the parking lot. You sweat your kids' lives more than your own.

College admissions is a weird deal. We just learned that UC Irvine is harder to get into than Stanford and I know one case in which UC San Diego was harder to get into than the Naval Academy. Or UC Berkeley.

[qwerty49]

College admissions is indeed a weird deal, or at least it was back in 65-66 when I was applying.  

For some reason I applied for early admission to UC Berkeley (Dad was an alum but that didn't really skew things too badly) and found myself in the position of having to accept or decline by January of my senior year -- 3 months before Stanford sent out its decision letters.  So that caused some angst when I had to turn Berkeley down before having heard from any other schools.  (I did seek some input from the high school teachers who wrote my Stanford recs, and they seemed pretty confident I would get in.)

Northwestern was my "safety school" (I'd attended a summer course there and liked the campus) and Harvard waitlisted me.  

Yale accepted me and invited me to a recruitment "party" hosted by a local alum.  Me being a typical 1960's California boy, the deal-breaker was when the alum revealed their tradition of wearing coat and tie for dinner every night in the frosh dorm.  Ouch.

That left Stanford, and man, I was so overjoyed to get the thick envelope in the mail on April 16th.

Our high school class sent 4 (out of about 630 students) to Stanford, which was some kind of record for a local public school at the time.  We didn't have AP classes to pad GPAs in those days, so SATs were considered a pretty valid triangulator, along with recs and extracurriculars.  The 4 of us compared notes and agreed that our extracurriculars must have made the difference.

Looking back, I would have to agree that SATs were less than perfect, but I'm not sure what could have taken their place.

[qwerty49]

College admissions is indeed a weird deal, or at least it was back in 65-66 when I was applying.  

For some reason I applied for early admission to UC Berkeley (Dad was an alum but that didn't really skew things too badly) and found myself in the position of having to accept or decline by January of my senior year -- 3 months before Stanford sent out its decision letters.  So that caused some angst when I had to turn Berkeley down before having heard from any other schools.  (I did seek some input from the high school teachers who wrote my Stanford recs, and they seemed pretty confident I would get in.)

Northwestern was my "safety school" (I'd attended a summer course there and liked the campus) and Harvard waitlisted me.  

Yale accepted me and invited me to a recruitment "party" hosted by a local alum.  Me being a typical 1960's California boy, the deal-breaker was when the alum revealed their tradition of wearing coat and tie for dinner every night in the frosh dorm.  Ouch.

That left Stanford, and man, I was so overjoyed to get the thick envelope in the mail on April 16th.

Our high school class sent 4 (out of about 630 students) to Stanford, which was some kind of record for a local public school at the time.  We didn't have AP classes to pad GPAs in those days, so SATs were considered a pretty valid triangulator, along with recs and extracurriculars.  The 4 of us compared notes and agreed that our extracurriculars must have made the difference.

Looking back, I would have to agree that SATs were less than perfect, but I'm not sure what could have taken their place.

[Giants]

College admissions is indeed a weird deal, or at least it was back in 65-66 when I was applying.  

For some reason I applied for early admission to UC Berkeley (Dad was an alum but that didn't really skew things too badly) and found myself in the position of having to accept or decline by January of my senior year -- 3 months before Stanford sent out its decision letters.  So that caused some angst when I had to turn Berkeley down before having heard from any other schools.  (I did seek some input from the high school teachers who wrote my Stanford recs, and they seemed pretty confident I would get in.)

Northwestern was my "safety school" (I'd attended a summer course there and liked the campus) and Harvard waitlisted me.  

Yale accepted me and invited me to a recruitment "party" hosted by a local alum.  Me being a typical 1960's California boy, the deal-breaker was when the alum revealed their tradition of wearing coat and tie for dinner every night in the frosh dorm.  Ouch.

That left Stanford, and man, I was so overjoyed to get the thick envelope in the mail on April 16th.

Our high school class sent 4 (out of about 630 students) to Stanford, which was some kind of record for a local public school at the time.  We didn't have AP classes to pad GPAs in those days, so SATs were considered a pretty valid triangulator, along with recs and extracurriculars.  The 4 of us compared notes and agreed that our extracurriculars must have made the difference.

Looking back, I would have to agree that SATs were less than perfect, but I'm not sure what could have taken their place.

More on the topic…

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/06/opini...-ios-share

[Giants]

College admissions is indeed a weird deal, or at least it was back in 65-66 when I was applying.  

For some reason I applied for early admission to UC Berkeley (Dad was an alum but that didn't really skew things too badly) and found myself in the position of having to accept or decline by January of my senior year -- 3 months before Stanford sent out its decision letters.  So that caused some angst when I had to turn Berkeley down before having heard from any other schools.  (I did seek some input from the high school teachers who wrote my Stanford recs, and they seemed pretty confident I would get in.)

Northwestern was my "safety school" (I'd attended a summer course there and liked the campus) and Harvard waitlisted me.  

Yale accepted me and invited me to a recruitment "party" hosted by a local alum.  Me being a typical 1960's California boy, the deal-breaker was when the alum revealed their tradition of wearing coat and tie for dinner every night in the frosh dorm.  Ouch.

That left Stanford, and man, I was so overjoyed to get the thick envelope in the mail on April 16th.

Our high school class sent 4 (out of about 630 students) to Stanford, which was some kind of record for a local public school at the time.  We didn't have AP classes to pad GPAs in those days, so SATs were considered a pretty valid triangulator, along with recs and extracurriculars.  The 4 of us compared notes and agreed that our extracurriculars must have made the difference.

Looking back, I would have to agree that SATs were less than perfect, but I'm not sure what could have taken their place.

More on the topic…

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/06/opini...-ios-share