@“CC Admin” What did your S decide?
@wisteria100 OP is @MotherNeedsAdvice. @CC Admin had to repost the original for some reason.
While that has become more true now, that wasn’t so true a decade and half ago or more.
When I was an undergrad and for a few years afterwards, the dynamic I observed and heard about from town locals who attended Oberlin or were HS students was the following:
Cream of the crop of the students from the Oberlin area tended to overwhelmingly choose East Coast elite/respectable universities/LACs. This was especially the case with faculty children. Schools they ended up attending were Harvard, Amherst, Dartmouth, Swat, etc. Only exception was aspiring engineering majors as they gravitated towards Ohio State*.
Those just below that cream of the crop attended Oberlin or peer private colleges.
With the exception of engineering, Ohio public colleges were regarded for anyone else who had viable college aspirations.
Incidentally, Midwest public colleges were also doing their utmost to recruit students from the coasts just as much as their private LAC counterparts when I was a HS student/undergrad. One illustration of this was the exceedingly lowish stats required for classmates from mine and overlapping graduating classes needed to be admitted to ones which were elite in their own rights such as UWisc-Madison**.
- One of my engineering uncles is an alum.
** Knew several HS classmates who were admitted and attended UWisc-Madison with HS GPAs as low as C/C-…but highish SATs.
If you take a look at UW admission chatter now, out of state students who don’t have at least a 3.7 unweighted and a 30 or 31 are usually rejected.
When my UW kid was also looking at LACs (under duress, we gave up and he was deciding between public flagships by the end of the process), Grinnell had an acceptance rate around 40%. The education hasn’t changed in the 4-5 years since he was visiting colleges, the competitiveness of the process has, driving up applications and encouraging folks back east to consider the charms of Iowa.
@cobrat: “Incidentally, Midwest public colleges were also doing their utmost to recruit students from the coasts just as much as their private LAC counterparts when I was a HS student/undergrad.”
Massive Midwestern unis like UW-Madison just weren’t terribly selective back then. They likely admitted WI residents who were C students with high test scores as well. In disciplines like engineering at UIUC and UW-Madison, the hard part was getting out, not getting in.
UIUC and Wisconsin are different in this respect. UIUC admits to engineering majors but its “weeder GPA” is only 2.25 in technical courses to be able to enroll in junior/senior level engineering courses: https://wiki.illinois.edu/wiki/display/ugadvise/Technical+GPA+Requirements . On the other hand, Wisconsin weeds much more aggressively, with some majors having “weeder GPA” as high as 3.5 in technical courses and 3.0 overall, and no engineering major having a “weeder GPA” lower than 2.8 in technical courses and 2.5 overall, in the most recent year listed (2016-2017) at https://www.engr.wisc.edu/academics/student-services/academic-advising/first-year-undergraduate-students/progression-requirements/ .
But the weedout policies is some midwestern flagships are probably not relevant to someone choosing between Grinnell and Middlebury.
Curious what you decided! Really can’t go wrong with those choices. Just wanted to add to the many useful posts above that Grinnell students do have a bit higher test scores on average than Midd. kids, perhaps in keeping with Grinnell’s being a Ph.D. feeder school. Not that the difference is huge or that that should be a deciding factor, but sometimes name recognition on the East Coast is not reflective of stats.
Grinnell is a hell of a school. You certainly wouldn’t be shortchanging him education wise if he went there. If you feel guilt about not spending an extra 100K To go to Middlebury…it’s not Harvard, ya know?
This whole “prestige” thing…after a while, employers don’t care. They just want someone who gets the job done, whether you went to an Ivy, or yer local State school. If your son is going to be an academic then it might be another story, but even there I’ve got some in my family and they were all over the map in where they studied.
@MotherNeedsAdvice - What was the final decision? We’re on the edge of our seats!