How hard did you work to get into college?

I was a mediocre hs student with midrange SAT scores in the late 70's. The college application process for me was as follows: An admissions rep from the University of Maryland College Park put up a table at our high school. We walked up to him and handed him our transcript. They glanced at it and told you on the spot yes or no. I got a yes. Tuition was so inexpensive back then my Dad would simply write a check (and we were not wealthy).

I did so little and somehow got into a really good college. This was a long time ago, but I still can't believe my good luck, how I almost screwed it up several times, and managed to graduate and prosper from it.

Probably did the bare minimum effort wise and also took some classes with the laziest teachers out there, which meant free time to catch up on the hard courses which had the good teachers.

I didn't work very hard to get into college but wished I had. Mainly so that I would have been better in some classes I took in college.

Did everything right (as in very high grades, perfect test scores, national level extracurriculars) but was rejected almost everywhere. Who wants to guess my ethnicity?

Joe Biden flunked the 3rd grade.

White.

I didn't work hard at all. Graduated top 10% in my class. My High School was easy and not that demanding. Didn't study for the ACT, took it once and scored 25 which was more than enough to get me into any of the powerhouse DI track programs that I took for 5 official visits.

Same except top 5% of class, but so slow had to walk onto D3 and got stuck on practice squad. Transferred to D1 and left competing behind until post college.

My motivation wasn't to get into college. I like learning things, so I studied to learn the material I was studying. It would have inconceivable for me to just blow off studying unless I was so pressed for time that I didn't have time. (I was fortunate, a middle class kid who didn't have to work, unlike, for instance, the undocumented kids that were working full time at Hyundai/Kia in Alabama.) That got me to top 2% in my class at one of the higher rated public schools in a large state. I did one application for four state universities and got accepted by all of them.

This was the late '60s. Showed up, did what was required but nothing extra. No test prep (wasn't a thing then, but we didn't have money for something like that anyway). On average certainly something less than ten hours of study/homework per week, and maybe closer to five.

Got in to all the colleges I applied to. Knowing what I do now about admissions, I would have been accepted to every college in the country except the women's schools and the military academies.

A housemate of mine never went to lectures, did very little reading, did his essays last minute, crammed for 2 days before exams and graduated business school with merit. IQ well inside the top 1%, work ethic was the opposite.

My high school counselor told me that I was too dumb to go to college. So I thought that if I was that dumb I'd need a college degree to succeed in an occupation. It took going to community college (I had to pay for myself) and a couple changes in curriculum choice, but I eventually graduated from a Calif university (paid for myself by working part time) with a construction management degree. It was tough having to work harder than those I hung out with, but it was worth the effort. My sons have inherited my work ethic and we're all successful. They're just not into running though.

I've read plenty of your posts. Honestly, I wouldn't worry about it.

I had a 3.2 in high school in the late 70s, never cracked a book in 3 years, just read the newspaper for education. SATs were mid range. Applied to Univ or Oregon, got in. Tuition was like a little above $300 for a full load, room and board was $125/mo. Saw some great basketball games!

I studied 1-2 hours a day (not weekends) in high school and got lucky. There was a gap in the distribution and I got 10th in my class in a big high school. The other nine people were way ahead of me and studied hard. I got in Princeton and there was no common app in those days. The application was harder than my school work. One thing that shocked me is that a few of the top nine partied in college-I guess their motivation came from their parents, not inside. I looked up to a lot of these people, so it was a shock.

I graduated in 1990. It was fairly competitive to get into the desired schools but not as much as now.

However, the application process on the whole was very difficult in that you needed to apply to each school individually with their application that you needed to feed into a typewriter and hope to not make any errors which of course I did and had to do several a few times.

I also remember an interview at each school to be an important part of the experience. And despite what you might have heard a good SAT score was also crucial.