Yes.
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There is a difference between attending MIT and FIU. You will get opportunities at one that you won’t get at the other.
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You still have to deliver. Some kids do. Some don’t. I’ve had a Stanford admin (English major) and CEOs from no names.
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- Why is she going there?
- Generalities bother me.
- My all time favorite- there are too many biology majors and the salaries are low. While this may be true, it doesn’t always matter.
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Ugh. I hate that one too.
I do say this one, but only to certain students…typically those seeking only prestige. It can be one of the most difficult challenges in college counseling to get a high stats student and/or their parents ‘excited’ about their safeties. I 100% agree that applicants have to start with their budget and go from there. IME many/maybe most applicants do want to apply to some reach/stretch schools, whatever that looks like for them based on their GPA/rigor/test score.
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I do think often a mild merit comment in an OP can be misconstrued and generates the repetitive posts on the high merit schools that fit none of the other criteria in the OP. My kids applied to some schools with merit, and particularly if their top choices didn’t work out, merit would be nice - didn’t change our ability or willingness to be full pay.
It’s similar with low income students, until there is clarity on if they will receive financial aid, there is no actual helpful advice possible. I’d say 90% of the chance me threads are identical for the first 10 or so responses. I appreciate that people want to provide advice, but do think that if they perhaps asked for actual information before trotting out the same advice it would enhance the quality of the threads.
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I have zero problem with people saying this to specific individuals, and I agree that this is a good framing for those who are focused on the highly rejective or prestige schools for the reasons you say.
But, I hear it constantly on podcasts, YouTube videos, etc which are giving advice to everyone. It is good individualized advice, but a problematic platitude which assumes (and promotes) striving for reaches for the sake of having reached. My kid is applying to one reach, but only because she likes it as much as some others on the list. But, she did not apply there ED (even though counselor said she’d most likely get in if she did) in large part because she does not like it more than one of her “safeties” and one of her targets. I put safety in quote because that term implies somewhere one would only go in emergency, and that school is tied for #1 on D26s list. Nobody would call her list balanced, but her counselors think her list is great. Other kids, not so much because it is light on reaches.
I am glad the professionals in D26’s life did not say this platitude in general audience settings and make her feel as if something were wrong with her not having more reaches (or even targets) to “balance” her list. There is a prestige school that she dropped from her list late because she recognized she would rather go to one of her “safeties” or a couple of her targets. I’d much prefer the professionals to say something like the following to general audiences, instead of the platitiude - everyone needs to have a school or two that they like and that they definitely can afford and get into on their list. If you have that, and want to apply to 8 reaches as your other choices, fine. Balanced list with that. Fine. All “safeties” no problem. All the rest is flexible if you have a solid choice you’d be happy to go to. That is better general advice in my opinion. But maybe I’m missing something.
What about the “it’s hard to get a job as a humanities major” .. or “humanities majors get low-paying jobs” platitudes. Or platitudes that say math majors or chem majors get low paying jobs, wrong again. Just, no.
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Allowing students to apply to schools that parents have no possible way of affording.
Parents who don’t understand where they are on the ability to pay range are doing a diservice to their kids. Top 30-50 schools don’t give merit for the most part, so understand the costs before submitting the application. Your kid is great, but s/he usually won’t get more than 30% off. So, a $60k tuition private is still going to run around $40k plus room and board before any financial aid. OOS publics usually post merit $ and score requirements on website. If a OOS public doesn’t list merit, then assume it is very small and student is full pay.
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“Going to the flagship will be just like high school 2.0”
I guess that’s true if your flagship has only 10k students and every single one of your high school class of 1000 is going there, and the 1000s from the 3 years before… I’m pretty sure no one at UCLA or Ohio State or Michigan worries about running into the hated rival from hs.
My daughter went to a flagship that was 2000 miles away from her hs and the next year ANOTHER girl from her hs went there! It was not ‘just like hs.’ There were 2 kids from her kindergarten class (K in a different state) who also went to her college, and one even lived in the same dorm! It was actually nothing like Kindergarten.
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One of my kids applied to 20 publics, a few privates, none posted automatic merit awards. Our in state flagship was the only one that offered none. Some we could guess, since her older siblings applied as well, although at many merit changed over the years.
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Yep! And the flip side of that one is “if you go to a small school, everyone will be in everyone else’s business.” Also not true. Funny side story. I recently went to my college reunion. Went to a small school and funny enough, most of us at the reunion felt we only knew a handful of people in the class and all had that same feeling that we would only know five or six people in our class at reunion and didn’t know anyone else 
A few months later, I was invited to a luncheon when I was visiting in another state. There were about 10 people from our college class at the luncheon and honestly none of us knew every one of us. In fact, there were two or three that I had never met and we were in the same class, for four years, at a small school.
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Dealing with the process, with my son right now, I am putting this to the test as we speak. Once he is finished, I will (with his permission) publish a very thorough/comprehensive profile to test the assumption using detailed results. I find “the lottery” to be the most annoying of all and do not want to believe it. Funny someone remembered my old screen name. Had to change it because of all the fan mail.
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Ok kinda funny that it’s you who says this. To each their own. Of course thanking one’s parents is a nice thing to do. When I see people suggesting doing this it’s almost exclusively when a poster says their parents have not limited their budget. When people say my parents gave me a budget of $20K or $30K or whatever, I don’t see people saying “hug your parents”. I’m all for gratitude and thanking parents. It just all seems awkward to offer this as advice in this context when that’s not what kids are asking about.
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Two that are opposite ends of the same issue. “The name of the school doesn’t matter” or “You need to go to a T20 school”
On the name doesn’t matter piece - there are studies showing that on average people who get into a name brand prestige school fare no better career wise whether they choose to go there or elsewhere for college (or something like that). However, for certain populations that is not shown to be true. For low income populations, for certain racial minorities (I have black students in mind here), the name brand does make a difference in terms of career outcomes. Moreover, for a few fields like investment banking and management consulting, those name brand schools can make a difference.
On the you need to go to a top 20 - for most people, for the reasons discussed above, that is not true at all. And, even for the groups where name brand does matter some, plenty of people find paths to successes without those name brands. Success is not foreclosed for anyone if they don’t attend these schools. Yet, this framing can ratchet up the pressure on high achieving students to feel they need to attend one of there schools, even if they can’t afford it.
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But also, there are families where the parents have to sacrifice /tighten their belts a lot more to meet that $20k or $30k than some full pay families where college costs literally might have no impact on their lifestyle or retirement options. Those parents need thanks too …
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Some of us beat on this one relatively regularly here on CC.
Of course this is based on our experience. A lot of us commenting here on CC are older and have quite a bit of experience, for example with successful careers. To me it makes a lot of sense for this web site to allow us to share our experience.
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I have never, not once, seen anyone on this site say a degree that isn’t from a Top 20 is worthless.
I have seen multiple posts clearly stating that there are no possible special benefits, advantages or perks of attending a highly selective university.
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