>when I decided to go to MIT several of my high school classmates sneered that I'd chosen a "trade school" instead of a "real school".
What? Did you attend high school in the fifties?
What? Did you attend high school in the fifties?
Not the 50s the 80s in Boston when it was pretty common to go to schools close by (New England/New York). And MIT didn't have the rep it has now (except among SF readers like I was) -- because engineering wasn't as worshipped.
Nowadays with the common app and common essay it’s easy to apply to lot s of schools. In those days every school had a unique application and needed different essays.
A friend of mine who works in the Harvard admissions office said to me once that things haven’t really changed: lots of people now apply just in case as it’s so easy, so once they toss the egregiously unqualified they end up picking through around the same number of applicants as they used to in the 80s. This was a convo at a bar so take it with whatever sized grain of salt you think appropriate.