During the 70s at Rice, it wasn't uncommon to have small junior to grad level course sizes of 3-15 students per course with at least one 1600 SAT score recipient in class with you. Few scored below 1300 and they still scored on a strict bell curve. For a course of 15 students, 5 received 1s or 2s (As or Bs), 5 received 3s, (Cs) and the other 5 received 4s and 5s (Ds and Fs). Typically students would only get 4.5 to 5 hrs sleep per night, one all-nighter per week, and would measure their devotion by the number of minutes or fractional hours per week not spent on study.
Yes, there are lots of guys who score 1600 on the SAT. Many of them didn't get straight A's in high school, but typically had varied interests.
yes...grading was once harder.
today's failry common 3.9 was almost unheard of in the 60s and 70s.