DLers: Did most people in your high school go to college?

98% and I went to a public school in the midwest.

I went to a prep school, so it had to live up to its name.

I went to a "college prep" high school and 98% went to college.

How many graduated is another number -- I'd guess 75%.

It was expected at my upper middle class suburban public school

Even the really dumb kids wound up going away somewhere

I graduated in 1990 from a high school in Northern California. It was in a small town but a large school as it served kids from the western county. 98% Caucasian at that time. It’s still largely white. More than two thirds went to some sort of college. Many went to community college, but we seemed to have a large number of kids that went off to 4 year schools around the country. I stayed for two years and commuted to a community college (the dismal campus of Yuba College) I didn’t think I was smart enough for college...but after my first year I realized it was more about perseverance than outright smarts. I transferred to a state university and got my degree.

I was struggling with the choice to go to grad school, r6, because I feared I wasn't smart enough. My then-boyfriend (a French professor) told me, "When you get to grad school, and see the type of people surrounding you, you'll have no doubts that you're smart enough."

FWIW, the smartest person I know is a high school drop out.

Yes. I grew up in a town that was the world headquarters for a chemical company, so there were a lot of residents with advanced degrees.

I graduated in 1975 during the auto industry meltdown and oil boom. It seemed like everyone either went to college or moved to Texas.

I lived in a school district that had 3 different towns - one very rich, one mid-to-lower middle class and one trailer trash hell. Most of the rich kids did, some of us middle class kids did, but I'd say more than 50 percent didn't.

Unsurprisingly it's deplorable country now.

I did go to college, but I had such a hellish time in HS (bullying by students and faculty) and cut so many classes that my educational foundation was nonexistent, and I bombed out of my initial attempt at a degree.

r7, did your then-boyfriend turn out to be correct?

I went to a Catholic high school in Ohio. The good students generally went to Miami University. Everyone's dream school was Notre Dame, and we sent one or two students there a year. I went to Columbia and some of my classmates had never heard of it.

r10, yes. There are brilliant people in academia, no doubt; but I found many intellects to be sub-par.

I went to a Catholic boys college prep. I can't think of anyone in my class of about 175 who did not go to college. 3 of us to Notre Dame, 1 to U of Chicago, 1 to Princeton, 1 to MIT. Those that stayed in state mostly went to UT, TX A&M, UH, or Rice.

I graduated from high school in 1984 in Staten Island. I'll say that 30% of us immediately entered college, with another 20% enrolling in some type of vocational school (like beautician, secretarial, mechanical, or electrician), and nearly the rest either obtaining a city job (police/fire/sanitation) or floating by in some other working-class way.

Also, those of us who did attend college mostly chose the local CUNY institution or closest SUNY. Very few attended private colleges, and just a sprinkling went to any of the Ivy Leagues.

We had a lot of Ivy League legacies, Penn and Cornell, especially.

Boston U, Michigan, Syracuse, Wash U, Northwestern, Tulane and NYU were also popular, at least my year.

Suburban Boston, 1960's. Maybe 80% went to a four year college right after graduation, a number that might have been inflated by the alternative, at least for the males: Vietnam. Maybe a dozen went into union apprenticeship programs for a skilled trade (electrician, plumber, HVAC, etc.) who are all millionaires now. Some of the less academically-inclined women went to secretarial or beauty school. Community colleges were few and far between then, so mostly to BU, BC, Harvard, MIT, RISD, Brown, Northeastern, Babson, Holy Cross, Amherst, Williams, Wesleyan, Georgetown, Penn, UMass, UMaine, WPI, Smith - largely local because there are a lot of colleges in New England and for the most part, college was where you went after high school. If you were a legacy, it was expected. If you were ambitious, it was a necessity. If you were just looking for something to do besides going to Asia to die, it was like four more years of high school. But most people expected to go. There were not a lot of easy-to-get or well-paid union jobs where I grew up. It wasn't like all the factories closed - there never were any where I grew up.

A dozen or more guys out of a class of 200 moved to California to work for six months or so in order to qualify as CA residents and get the in-state tuition rate at UCLA, UCSD, and Berkeley which was then free (but there was a $300 annual registration fee for everyone, resident or not.) Cali's out-of-state tuition rate was $1200 a year in the '60's- an enormous amount by comparison. Admission was not as, ahem, competitive as it is now.

In 1994, I graduated from high school in a rural town on the edge of the South. Out of a class of 105, only 5 of us went to a four-year college. The rest of my classmates either joined the military; attended vocational training; took classes part-time at the local community college; became unskilled laborers; or got married/immediately had children.

While it was rare for anyone from my high school to go to a four-year college, it was even rarer to leave the state to do so--which is what I did. I knew there wasn't a future for a gayling such as myself in a place such as that. With hard work, help from caring teachers, and a little luck, I graduated at the top of my high school class and received a scholarship from a university in Boston.