I forgot. I wanted to mention the SUNYs. I think they came up on this thread or the other closed one.
It’s not that the SUNYs are bad, but there are only a few that have a high percentage of top students, and with the exception of Geneseo, they’re all big research universities. If you go one level down in selectivity, you get to Oswego and Oneonta, which are smaller schools. They’ve both come way up since most of us went to college, but most people remember them as huge party schools that anyone could get into. People need to adjust their thinking. I have, but I think a lot of people haven’t. I think that also contributes to the general attitude that the SUNYs are nothing special.
Binghamton is a great school, and I would be very happy to send my daughter there. She’s actually showing some interest, but it’s big by NY standards. I checked today, and there are a lot of graduate students teaching lower level courses. The funny thing is that they consistently get better reviews on RateMyProfessors.com than the professors who teach the upper level courses.
One other thought from earlier in the thread. I think a few people used the phrase “as if school X isn’t good enough for their child”. This implies that it’s somehow snobby to think that a school isn’t good enough for your child. Going back to what I said in my previous post: if someone says that a school isn’t good enough for their child and they’re referring to the social status of the kids or the clothes the kids wear, I could see how that sounds snobby. If someone said “There’s too much riffraff there”, that would be snobby. But is it snobby to want our kids to study with, and form relationships with the smartest kids they can get in with? I don’t think so at all.
Before I get buried, I have nothing against Trinity College. If they gave merit aid, I’d try to get my daughter to look at it. But I’ve heard that it does have a lot of rich kids, and it does seem to have a very low acceptance rate, relative to the average stats of the kids. That’s not necessarily bad, but I could see people questioning what you’re buying when you’re buying that type of school.