What if that student needs a lot of merit aid and the parents can’t afford an Ivy (can’t or don’t want to pay their EFC)? There are reasons to steer students away from Ivies. And honestly, there ARE kids with Ivy qualifications who truly don’t want to apply there. I had one. She was totally turned off by the “Ivy hype”. Applied to UChicago, Mudd, Swarthmore, got into 'em all. I don’t see that any Ivy offers a better Physics education than the program she picked, either. Ivies are great – for some kids. They aren’t the be-all and end-all for everyone, even those who are qualified.
Slacker- everyone most assuredly has NOT heard of every ivy league college. I did HS outreach for Brown when I lived outside of the “Amtrak corridor” and I can promise you that guidance counselors, HS principals, kids and parents would rattle off the “elite” colleges in the US as Harvard, Yale, Notre Dame, Duke, and some subset of the Big 10. NOBODY had heard of Dartmouth, and NOBODY had heard of Brown. Everyone thought U Penn was the flagship state U of Pennsylvania, a few people thought that Cornell was the Ithaca branch of the SUNY system. Columbia was in NYC and was on par with NYU (some thought they were branches of the same university, just on different subway lines) and poor Princeton… well, if you couldn’t get into Michigan or another “really good school” there’s always Princeton.
Try asking around in the line at the supermarket in Duluth or Peoria or Denver and see who has heard of every Ivy League university. You think the GC’s in Portland Oregon can find Dartmouth on a map?
Is there still such a thing as the “Ivy hype” among knowledgeable people? UChicago is stronger than probably half of the Ivy League schools, and Mudd and Swarthmore are competitive with some of them overall and stronger in some fields.
Re: #158–don’t want to stir up any dissension again, but it’s important to clarify that the offense taken here had absolutely nothing to do with other schools being mentioned or promoted.
@SlackerMomMD said, “I never understand why parents of Ivy students get defensive about other schools getting some recognition or mention.”
I’ve read many, many of these threads and have never seen what you describe (defensiveness over other schools getting mentioned.)
What Ivy parents DO challenge, rightly, are twofold:
- the notion that an Ivy education is no better than that of a less-selective school
- that students/families interested in an Ivy are primarily motivated by ‘brand’ or ‘prestige’ (or ‘snobbery’)
I grew up in a very tiny town in the Midwest ( not far from Peoria). Have lived in upper middle class "Amtrak corridor " ( i.e. NoVA suburbs) for many years. You might be surprised at people from the former who are very familiar ( even attended Ivies) and those from the latter who haven’t heard of most of them. Just sayin…
What I have seen that plays into elite school hype on a local level, is that at events like senior awards, NMF, or senior scholarship ceremonies, the presenters only tend to mention the college the honored student will be attending if it’s a big name school. It would be nice if everyone got to hear where all of those successful students were attending because no doubt there’d be schools mentioned that would be new to some people.
Fall Girl- of course. I was just pointing out that the reason that colleges do outreach is because they have to. Every time I’d think “surely there is saturation and every HS kid in America knows how wonderful my alma mater is” you’d meet a kid who could rattle off the names of 10 colleges on his/her list based on who plays whom in some sports competition.
Back in 2004, I thought I knew a lot. I lived in Boston, and had seen many of the NE colleges. I knew about Carleton, Grinnell, Oberlin, UChicago, CMY, UWash, etc. I had not heard of Caltech, until someone mentioned it, and thought it would be a good fit for my son. When in LA, I went with a friend to see the campus. (When we got a postcard about a Caltech talk in Miami, we went.) He mentioned another college in the greater LA area that would also be a good fit. Well, he might have been thinking Harvey Mudd, but he said a different school.
Lo & behold, my son was encouraged by his GC to apply 2 days before winter vacation in his junior year. There was little time to explore tech schools, let alone arrange interviews, as we were already beyond the deadline. The GC managed to get a few interviews, but being so,late ruled out many colleges.
Anyway, I have learned so much being an addicted CCer. I enjoy helping friends in their college search. You don’t know how little you know until you’ve stayed with CC for years.
@blossom, I wasn’t being literal about “everyone” knowing the Ivies. Ha, I can usually only come up with seven schools myself and it doesn’t matter which school I first name. I am well aware of the mistaken identities of certain Ivies. I went to Penn and spent the 70s/80s and 90s (and probably 00s) telling people that Penn was the school without the good football team. But why the pushback? I meant “everyone” very loosely as in - oh, never mind.
I don’t see the need for literally everyone knowing the Ivies just as I don’t see the need for only the Ivies to be mentioned in the media regarding college admission rates. To be honest, I don’t care if Penn/Columbia/Cornell aren’t well known in Duluth or Portland, Oregon (or even Maine), or Peoria. I know Penn is a good school - I don’t need other people to know that I went to an Ivy. (I don’t know where most people went to college/grad school - it’s not something we discuss)
I know I’ve never thought the college experience at CTCL schools were the same as the Ivies. I don’t think people even think that given that CTCL schools are marketed to B/B+ students, not high achieving students - two different student populations. GCs may very well suggest a couple of CTCL schools as safety schools or for full-tuition merit scholarships to the high achieving student - I don’t see a problem with this. People are often very quick to offer in-state schools to these same students when those schools may be even more poorly suited to the high achieving student.
I guess I’m coming from the opposite direction. Previous to my daughter’s college search, my knowledge of schools was limited to HPSM, Penn, Columbia, Berkeley, UNC and UVA. So, it was refreshing for me to find interesting schools outside (for me) these usual suspects. I see the Ivies as great schools that provide a fantastic experience to certain students. But I see CTCL schools fill a need for another and yes, different set of students.
I didn’t realize CTCL are only marketed to B/B+ students. Is this really the case? I don’t think Reed, which is a CTCL, is a B student kind of place. But I could be wrong.
Originally, when the book came out, it was called “Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools You Should Know About Even If You’re Not a Straight-A Student” and its Amazon reviews included
CTCL has evolved in the past 20 years and seems not to have that “not A student” focus anymore. But the life changing aspect was, as I recall from reading it back when, that these schools could take a not-A-student kid and deliver a terrific education.
Loren Pope also wrote “Looking Beyond the Ivy League: Finding the College That’s Right for You”.
Slacker, I agree with you and sorry we are talking past each other. I discovered Beloit late in life- what a special place. I learned about Lawrence and Pomona and Wittenberg and Rhodes and Earlham too late for me but not too late to recommend to other people. And every time I think I’m done, I interview a candidate from Lake Forest who impresses the heck out of me, or a kid from Juniata who is clearly going places and I realize that the pool of great colleges in the US is both wide and deep.
This is NOT the experience of my recruiting colleagues overseas. The list of top schools and “not top schools” in other parts of the world is somewhat ossified. And of course the number of late-bloomers who could find their place intellectually in a university but aren’t considered college material is a huge one depending on the country.
We are lucky! Even on a week when every kid you meet is licking his/her wounds that Stanford said no… as if that were the only great college in America.
For grad school, I passed up a full scholarship with stipend at an Ivy to go to** a State U that had a stonger reputation in my field. ** Best educational decision I ever made.
Now that I am involved in hiring, I know that in my field, I would never have gotten the recruitment opportunities and eventual internship & job offers I got had I gone to the Ivy.
@Agentninetynine -
Reed is the one exception among CTCL schools. although Whitman is getting to a similar level of selectivity. I know when Pope first composed the list Reed was not so hard to gain acceptance. Other CTCL schools were replaced with new schools once their acceptance rate dipped below 45, 40%. I would say most CTCL schools have acceptance rates over 45%. I think the CTCL group really like Reed’s approach to college so the school remained even though it may no longer be within reach for most CTCL school applicants.
When D and I went to the CTCL presentation two years ago, the director definitely pitched her speech toward the not-A student. In fact, she was pretty clear that most colleges like the B student despite what the students and parents may read in the media about ever shrinking acceptance rates and the fierce competition for college admission.
I think about 1% of this thread discusses the actual article 
From the comments to the Washington Post article:
I attended Brown (Pembroke) and Sarah Lawrence. I’m 74 years old and have waited… waited very patiently, for someone to ask where I went to college and then stagger back in awe at the impressiveness of these names. It hasn’t happened. Seventy-four damn years and it hasn’t happened.
"What Ivy parents DO challenge, rightly, are twofold:
- the notion that an Ivy education is no better than that of a less-selective school
- that students/families interested in an Ivy are primarily motivated by ‘brand’ or ‘prestige’ (or ‘snobbery’)"
I would agree with this. It does not mean that schools such as Swarthmore, U Chicago, etc. are any different from the ivies. But there really is a difference between what is offered in terms of the intensity and demands of the work at these schools compared to many average colleges.
I also support the statement that many, many students choose to go to these schools for a lot more than prestige. See this blog for another take on this: http://giftedchallenges.blogspot.com/2016/04/choose-wisely-some-truths-about-elite.html
I DO agree that the ridiculous focus on the rare students who get into all eight ivies obscures how absurdly hard it is for most kids to even get into one of the schools. And you have to wonder why these kids applied to all eight of them, given how different each of them are from each other. In situations like this, it almost seems like it was a trophy hunt of some kind.
The article cited above argues that exceptionally bright kids need a college that is different in academic caliber than high school. This may be especially hard to attain outside of the elites if a student is also in search of merit aid. I know a number of families whose frustrated kids transferred out of directional state universities because the kids said the academics were spoon fed and much easier than at our high school.
But we weren’t talking about directionals. The tippy tops don’t offer merit but many fine colleges do.
The recent link states it doesn’t have to be Harvard but “should offer an enriching, stimulating and accepting environment, filled with like-minded peers.” That opens up the search to many good colleges.