Flash back 25 years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and you’d find admissions standards that are sure to shock aspiring Badgers of today.
The university guaranteed admission to all high school graduates in the top half of their class. It accepted more than 80% of applicants.
“I walked upright,” Dan Conley, a 1981 graduate, said with a chuckle. “That’s how I got in.”
How times have changed.
Now students are discouraged from applying without a grade-point average from 3.5 to 3.9, an ACT score of at least 26 and a class rank in the 85th to 96th percentiles. The acceptance rate for Wisconsin residents is 65%. No student is guaranteed a spot in the freshman class, no matter how good his or her grades are.