Originally Posted by DAD22
Originally Posted by ultramarina
I hear all the time about what a different ballgame it is now than it was when we applied.

I don't think we all applied at the same time. I applied to colleges in the late 1990's, not the 80's, for example.

I applied in the early 90s, and I was already conscious of the arms race to the best universities. As a result, I did not apply. That's one part of the selection process for Ivies that often gets overlooked, which is that a great many top candidates opt out.

I was not aware of loose parental morals for those participating in the arms race, but I was aware of overwhelming parental pressure at that time. My peers who were in the arms race were, as far as I knew, doing what they said they were doing, and suffering the consequences.

I did get sought out specifically by my local UC, and it's entirely possible that they were coming to offer me a full ride, but I never heard them out because the idea of living at home and going to college locally was fairly abhorrent to me at the time, as "home" was not a healthy place. The UC sought me based on a practice college admissions essay they were providing to high school juniors, so it was a proctored thing they just happened to get to see from me.

Otherwise, there was nothing on my application to mark me as unusual in any way. For example, there's no way for the school to know whether I got a B in math because it was my best effort, or if it was because I decided that five hours of homework a week was unnecessary. My credentials were clearly good enough to show I'd be successful anywhere I went, but they didn't have that extra something.

I was accepted everywhere I applied, but the financial aid packages offered were fairly pathetic. It didn't help that we were a very low SES family for all but about three years of my life to that point, and that the plant where my mom was working for those was scheduled to close during my senior year of high school. This meant I'd be returned to low SES just in time for college, but all my financial aid applications required the numbers from the previous year, an extraordinarily rare good one. I'd been told all my life that if I got good grades, I'd get scholarships. So much for that.

I decided not to be responsible for liquidating my mom's entire severance package, which is what it would have taken to attend the modestly-priced Cal State just out of commuting range, and so, after a year of trying and failing to work my way through college during the early 90's financial collapse ... anchors aweigh.