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Personally, I refuse to let my kid even apply to an Ivy for undergrad-in my NEVER humble opinion, it is a waste of good money in this day and age. Any midwestern or northeastern large state u is going to be just hunky-dory for under-grad; then hit the ivies for grad school and show 'em what they missed first go-round.
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I believe you when you say that that opinion was not humble. It's an opinion shared by a lot of people in my region of the country, but it's not a factually correct opinion for all college applicants in all places, because some college applicants
1) WILL find programs or opportunities at one or another Ivy that they would never find at any Midwestern state university, or
2) will pay much less to attend the Ivy, all costs considered, with Ivy need-based financial aid than they would at State U. (This, of course, depends on family income and whether the state university is in state or out of state.)
What I ask of my children is that they be active and curious when they are young, and gradually develop a sense of what they like to do and what kind of people they like to hang around with. What I promise them as their dad is that I will pay 100 percent of their expected family contribution at any school to which they gain admission that has a suitable program for them, and beforehand pay to my utmost ability for programs that help them pursue their interests while they are too young to work for money. I make lots of financial aid applications for K-12 programs--I just made another one today--and we fare pretty well in getting our children interesting learning opportunities that they like and that open their eyes to the outside world. We do all that at an affordable cost for an average middle-class Minnesota family. Different parents resolve these trade-offs in different ways, but on my part I want to encourage my children to maximize their learning in whatever environment they are in.
Thus, here, the plan is indeed to line up the U of MN as the "safety" school. It has a great honors program in its Institute of Technology that any young person should be proud to be part of. Young people who qualify for that program have a bright future ahead of them, because it is not trivially easy to get in. I suspect (but this is up to each of my children, not to me) that my oldest son and each of his younger siblings in turn will make some applications to some subset of "reach" schools with strong programs in some subject of interest to them at the time they apply to college. I may end up with four different kids going to four different schools, or I may end up with all four going to the U of MN, my alma mater. I expect them to take responsibility for seeking out ACCURATE information about important life choices, and living with the consequences of those choices with courage and dignity.