Advice Please: Narrowing Colleges

calmom
Sat, 10 Mar 2007 22:06:13 +0000

I am not sure that I agree with you about merit schools being a huge step down in prestige.

I’m not trying to bash any schools – I personally don’t care about prestige. But HYP are ranked by US News as 1,2 &3 – Rice & WUSTL are excellent colleges, but not within the top 10. I think that the US News ranking list is useful chiefly for lining the bottom of a bird cage, but I do have to say it is probably the most useful proxy we’ve got for assessing the “prestige” value of the school.

To put it another way: if finances were not a factor, how many students would turn down Harvard for Rice or WUSTL? It generally doesn’t happen – those schools offer their merit awards precisely because without them, they have little chance of wooing their top prospects away from the Ivies.

Again - I think that in terms of objective quality of education that many, many lower-ranked, lower prestige colleges offer equal or even better educations when individual factors are taken to account. My personal views are more in line with Loren Pope’s – but I think that we need to honestly acknowledge that the Ivies have a certain luster that very few other colleges share.

Those who make the best choice financially are always going to face the naysayers like Garrity who simply are so blinded by prestige that they can’t believe that anyone would turn down Yale for Rhodes.

What often ends up happening is NOT that the Ivy “makes it happen” in terms of financial aid, bu that the family “makes it happen” because of the prestige-- they are willing to sacrifice more for the sake of the degree.