<p>Last yr. when son was admitted to different schools I watched the forums and began to notice some kids were offered perks/special programs before they even started school. One that stood out to me was Cornell which we would have been paying full cost for. Cornell has a program called Cornell Committment. I spent some time recently looking over this program and it appears that about 800 total undergraduate students out of the 13,000 undergraduates that attend are in these programs. Cornell has determined that these students are their leaders and appear to be given the most help, best internships, most money etc. Where does that leave the student that doesn’t make the cut? How intense is the competition to get into these programs if it’s not offered to a student as a freshman? </p>
<p>This made a big difference in his school choice. He chose the school that “wanted” him the most/offered him the perks and has really had a great experience because of it. He felt it was better to go in at the top than have to prove in a sea of top students that he was more deserving than they were especially when the odds were so tough.</p>
<p>I don’t think we would have been as aware of all these special programs without perusing the threads on cc. It really made a difference in how he felt about each school as he wondered about their committment to him as a student.</p>
<p>Did your student battle with these same thoughts? Has it made a difference in their choice?</p>
<p>Good point sax - I have thought about this as well. While I think it is great to share info here and maybe give some insight to the process, I have thought that it may negatively influence some students as well. I mean, who wants to pay full-freight when you hear about so many people that are getting great scholarships/discounts , special programs, etc. It can make you feel less “wanted”. Unfortunately, the students getting those percs are clearly in the minority so we get a somewhat skewed perspective on CC.
I’m not sure what the answer is, but I do think you make a great point. Fortunately neither of my kids reads CC and think I am weird to visit here ( LOL) so it did not ( or will not) influence them. The older one did comment that she liked feeling “wanted” at the school she ultimately chose.</p>
<p>Yes, it made a difference to my son, but in the opposite direction. After a lot of soul-searching, one of the factors that felt important to my son was wanting to be in an environment where he wasn’t in some thin, elite crust of students. He has had that experience in high school, and it definitely had its benefits, but he really didn’t want to do it again in college. Paradoxically that leads him to the more expensive, snootier, less diverse institution – a paragon of elitism vis a vis the outside world, but internally very egalitarian.</p>
<p>Pa Mom: Did you as a parent worry during the process that your student might start on unequal footing at their college choice? Was it the apparent low % of kids that didn’t worry you? Did it concern you at all or was it more like “they will be fine regardless”? Interesting your daughter ended up where she felt most wanted. I don’t think there is a right/ wrong answer. I do find it really interesting to see how others dealt with this.</p>
<p>JHS: So it did not concern your son that he may not be offered the same opportunities as some of his fellow students over his college carreer? Does/did it concern you at all? Or is he just happy to be among his intellectual peers</p>
<p>This is something that I’ve begun to wonder about. It’s an important question to ask at various college visits in the research stage, and it usually doesn’t occur to students (or even parents) to look into it because so many other factors affecting “fit” are uppermost in the mind. Prospects should ask straight out what their chances are for university sponsored research assignments, fellowships, and internships if they are not designated as a special scholar before the school year even starts. </p>
<p>I feel that we did not look at this closely enough for S1. He was admitted as a Regents Scholar at UCLA, which does not carry perks such as guaranteed fellowships, and as a Memorial Scholar at a top 15 LAC. The benefits weren’t all that clear from the description and we didn’t delve deeply enough into what it all meant. S1 wasn’t thinking about what fellowships or undergrad research might mean to his future…he was thinking about how he would fit in with other students, whether the academic programs appealed to him, whether there was going to be some fun to be had. All of this was new to us and I didn’t find CC until after his apps were in, so this issue of special scholars and what it means to students, those that are designated and those that aren’t, was something we simply didn’t understand very well. </p>
<p>The old, if we’d known then what we know now…might not have changed his decision but I just wish we’d had a clearer idea of what he was turning down.</p>
<p>I thought about this as well–D. got into the honors program at our state U. and also at another college, but did not make the honors admit at ND. She was good enough to be admitted to ND but her scores are in the middle of the pack there, which is about the only datapoint I have to judge where she lies in terms of the caliber of the freshman class. </p>
<p>She opted for regular admit at ND over honors admit elsewhere, and I think it will be good for her development as a person. She’s used to being the top or one of the top students, and has been since kindergarten. She is ranked #2 in her class of 300; she was in the top handful in elementary (private, rigorous) and one of the things we talked about when she was deciding where to apply was how she’d feel if she were in a population where she may very well be middling or even below average. One of the things that made her decide ND was a fit was that the students who hosted her when she visited were very candid about having to readjust your expectations. </p>
<p>Everybody is different, but for students like my D, it can be a very positive, freeing thing to get to a bigger pond and find out that you are smart, but that there are a LOT of smart and brilliant people out there.</p>
<p>three years ago, my S weighed a very similar choice (almost the same schools) as JHS’s. It was not quite the same, as he knew he was already into one school and knew of some perks he would get, but then applied ED to the second–in effect demonstrating an early preference but letting the schools decide–if he didn’t get into one, he was going to the other.</p>
<p>At the first, he would have been at an “elite” level but not the uber level JHS’s kid had access to. This was not a factor to S, as he believed (and I agree) that the overall level of this school is pretty impressive, and the “Honors” class is the size of many LAC classes, so it would not seem isolating. I do believe that JHS’s S was more at an Honors Honors level, so there would have been fewer students in his cohort than for my S.</p>
<p>He prefered the second school not so much for the cohort, though that was part of it, but for its specific Core program and location. He did not get awarded any special perks that some students got. I think that this did not bother him because he is not very goal oriented. The kinds of research, networking, etc opportunities held little interest for him, and the school does not offer merit money.</p>
<p>For him, college has been more a process than a step, so I don’t think he perceives a competition to be behind on. We do expect he will at some point have some kind of career…:)…but haven’t seen much sign of it yet.</p>
<p>Cornell Commitment is basically a bribe, designed to entice certain particularly desirable candidates to attend. Cornell isn’t allowed to offer merit scholarships (Ivy League rules forbid them), so it has these programs instead.</p>
<p>This leads to an interesting issue: did my daughter, who will attend Cornell this fall, lose all chance of being offered one of these programs by applying ED? After all, there is no need to entice ED candidates. Cornell would have to be nuts to offer any of the limited spaces in the Cornell Commitment program to them.</p>
<p>If special perks are what you’re looking for, applying ED may not be in your best interest.</p>
<p>One of my thoughts ( I really overthink this stuff to death ) was imagining my son saying to his friend “hey, that opportunity is really cool…How do I get involved with that” and his friend saying “oops, sorry, you are not in that special program. It’s just offered to…”
That would be so frustrating!</p>
<p>Again no right/wrong answer… just differerent viewpoints. Thanks for sharing everyone.</p>
<p>Marian, I googled Cornell Committments earlier and read through all the different programs and requirements. You can apply the next year ( the application process is pretty intense) but since so many kids are already involved with their part of the program will she have the same chance of making the cut at that time? The ed thought is an interesting one, too. I also am not sure as a freshman when they offer this up. It appears April but I don’t know if it’s in the FA package or comes later as my son never gave them the chance after getting his FA package.</p>
<p>sax: My son believes that at the school he chose, although there are about the same number of students who receive significant “merit” scholarship inducements to come, there isn’t any discernible difference in how people are treated once they are there, and that the student body is pretty uniform in its academic values and goals. He feels confident in his ability to be recognized in an environment where he’s average, and he longs for the feeling of everyone being on the same page academically. He struggled with the issue, though – it’s hard not to respond to an offer of “elite” status, especially with a bunch of actual money attached. There’s no question that he would have had plenty of intellectual peers at the institution he turned down (more, probably, in absolute numbers, than at the institution he chose), and that the gap between “top” and “bottom” would have looked very different than it does in high school. </p>
<p>This wasn’t the only decision-point issue for him, either, although it was a fairly important one. There were other factors, big and little, that cut in the direction he chose – higher comfort level, knowing more people, more ability to continue a particular EC, really liking some unique customs, family stuff.</p>
<p>I’m not certain at all he made the “right” decision. He would thrive in either situation and love what there is to love at either school. I think he’s right that he won’t be a second-class citizen at the school he chose, and wrong that he would have felt isolated to any degree at the school he didn’t. He didn’t have any bad choices, though. And I understand his values.</p>
<p>The “no bad choices” is an awesome thing! And the “second class citizen” is exactly what concerns me. I want my kid to have equal choice, equal opportunity. Not necessarily “perks” that no one else gets. Just the same shot at the good stuff.</p>
<p>I don’t think it makes much of a difference if you’re accepted into one of these programs at Cornell. It doesn’t mean you’ll do better academically than the other students, but it does help you find, for example, research opportunities more easily. You won’t be treated like a “second class citizen” because you won’t really know who’s the program unless one of your friends decides to tell you about it.</p>
<p>I know several students admitted ED who have been identified for such special programs or given merit scholarships at highly ranked schools (Stanford, Kenyon).</p>
<p>fudgemaster. Have you read about the opportunities offered to the students in those 3 programs? It appears to be much, much more than just easier to find research opportunities.
Any student who wants to can go to Cornell, get great grades and excel academically. They can have great friends and get to know great people. However if they decide they want more than that and find that others have been given this whole extra level of opportunities and exposure all along wouldn’t that make them angry or at the very least frustrated they were not included from the start?</p>
<p>Duke and Wash. U have some similiar awesome programs.</p>
<p>As a parent paying full cost I would be really frustrated and feel as though I was subsidizing the great experience of other “chosen” applicants that my son was not invited to participate in.</p>
<p>Funny thing is, I’m not sure a school even exists where everyone comes in with equal chance at opportunities offered.</p>
<p>This isn’t a special program, but this letter was in my financial aid package from Dartmouth (emphasis mine):
So it isn’t a merit scholarship, just a scholarship that’s based on merit…? ;)</p>
<p>It didn’t influence my decision at all, but it did soothe my bruised ego a little after the rejections from Princeton and Chicago and waitlists at Amherst, Middlebury, Swarthmore, and Williams. :D</p>
<p>I just sent off my daughter’s selection card to a great public which didn’t offer her any perks. After being courted with scholarship offers by two or three fine LACs, her choice came down to two public schools, one of which invited her into a fairly exclusive residential honors program with great appeal to her in terms of special opportunities, community, small scholarship, etc. She didn’t know about the special scholars program in the school she’s chosen until admitted students day in mid-April, and felt more than a bit miffed she hadn’t been invited there (her quals are impressive enough to expect to have been). But she’s decided that her chosen school, which is smaller and overall higher quality, is the best fit. Hopefully there will be good opportunties there, even if she has to be a bit more aggressive to uncover them without special mentoring or labels.</p>
<p>This is an interesting topic. Right now, I’m strongly considering attending NYU, where I will be in one of these special programs that offers a lot of perks (although it doesn’t affect research or internship opportunities, that I know of). My father is intrinsically suspicious of honors programs–he wonders aloud if the existence of an honors program is the school admitting that their general curriculum isn’t really good enough. I think that for me, the program is a draw, but wouldn’t be the main reason why I decided to attend NYU. I guess you could say that the program bought me, but what it really did was make me take a second look at NYU and think about all the other advantages that come with the school–benefits totally unrelated to the honors program. So, has the program made NYU more attractive to me? Sure, but it certainly wouldn’t be the only reason why I went there. </p>
<p>I can’t personally speak from the other side–those considering a school where perks are offered, but not to them–since neither Carleton or Wellesley offers these type of perks, but I can see both sides of the argument. On the one hand, I can see how one might feel like they were kind of getting shafted over more “desirable” students…but on the other hand, a lot (most) of the schools that we have been talking about, especially, are selective enough that I would think most students would have been happy to be accepted, period. It doesn’t apply in my case, because my top choice schools didn’t offer these programs, but I would have been more than happy to have been accepted into the plain old program at my top schools to care too much about not being in the top 800 or whatever group. I understand that sometimes a student feels like they were qualified to be in whatever special program and not being offered that option stings a bit, but really…the schools that we have largely been talking about are selective enough to make those feelings a bit frivolous in my opinion–there are plenty of people who didn’t get in who would kill to have your spot.</p>
<p>camelia, I think that the idea is that the Dartmouth financial aid office (or any other Ivy financial aid office) must determine your “need” based on objective criteria.</p>
<p>Once that is done, however, they are then free to choose how to “meet” that need – with whatever combination of scholarship, loan, and job appeals to them. You got proportionally more scholarship than some other applicants did because they really wanted you. </p>
<p>There’s some serious hair-splitting going on here.</p>
<p>As for Cornell, I don’t think that all the leadership positions are gone by any means. It’s a huge school with a huge variety of opportunities.</p>
I don’t think there is a right/ wrong answer. I do find it really interesting to see how others dealt with this.</p>