<p>deleted…</p>
<p>IxnayBob,In relation to your question about Rutgers faculty and how they can compare to a school like MIT. I randomly pulled a faculty page from Industrial and Systems Engineering from Rutgers. Not too shabby. [Department</a> of Industrial and Systems Engineering (Rutgers University)](<a href=“http://www.ie.rutgers.edu/index.php?id=people]Department”>http://www.ie.rutgers.edu/index.php?id=people)</p>
<p>You know, the discussion here isn’t about whether the PROFESSORS can be good at (fill in your favorite) state flagship. So we needn’t get into a whole “but look! These profs have degrees from fancy-schmancy places!” We KNOW that; that’s not the point of this discussion. The point of this discussion is how someone who wants to be surrounded by similar academically-minded / serious / intense students at a very good school (and for goodness sake, NOT “Ivy or bust” thinking) is going to fare socially at a school where the academic center of gravity is a lot lower and the density of such students is a lot thinner. </p>
<p>And at the risk of belaboring the obvious, we’re not talking “how am I going to handle the inferior minds at Carnegie-Mellon when my beautiful mind should have been at MIT” or other stupidity, so don’t go there.</p>
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I think this problem is hugely exaggerated on CC. Do some schools practice yield management? Probably, but I think it’s much more at the level of match schools. I think most kids who think they have been a victim of yield management have misjudged what a safety is (Yoohoo, Tufts is not a safety for anyone!) or have truly phoned in their application. Most small LACs where your stats put you well in the top 25% will not only accept you, but will also try to lure you in with merit aid.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, IxnayBob asked a question about quality of professors (which apparently he later deleted). I don’t think it’s up to you to dictate the course of this discussion. By the way, it’s Carnegie Mellon , not Carnegie-Mellon. The hyphen was used very briefly.
And also,You did make some rather crass remarks about the quality of Mizzou students on the other thread.</p>
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That’s a problem in K-12, especially non-magnet K-6 with one classroom and one teacher.</p>
<p>A large university with courses all the way up to the graduate level is different.
In my experience, just fine. People naturally gravitate to find a peer group.</p>
<p>Of course, I’ve never demanded ACT scores to verify that people are “academically-minded” enough to be worth my time. So maybe I’m wrong?</p>
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I deleted the thread because a moment after posting, I decided that I was taking the thread off topic. Sorry for the bump in the road :)</p>
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Are you stereotyping “B” as a woman? You don’t think men like fish? Are you saying that no woman might feel like having a steak? Are you saying that only a woman would make this kind of argument? Etc.</p>
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<p>Exactly. This was my son’s experience last year. Nearly every LAC he applied to offered him enough money to make the COA substantially less than our state flagship. They were all great schools where he would have found himself challenged intellectually, with enough of a “tribe” to feel comfortable socially.</p>
<p>In thinking about this issue of whether it’s reasonable or snobbishly elitist for academically accomplished kids to want to be around others of similar accomplishment, it seems to me that it really has to do with context. When my son was in a Boy Scout troop, it really didn’t matter how academically smart anybody was, and some of the very finest young men in the troop were not high academic performers. In the classroom, though, it matters a lot. Where it gets a bit more fraught, though, is when we start talking about friendships and social situations. I think most people these days do want to marry intellectual peers, for example. I don’t think that’s snobbish. When it comes to friends, there may be friends in different contexts–you may not care about this factor for your softball team, but you may care about it for your book group.</p>
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<p>And before they become doctors, once they get to med school they also have to deal with people who went to “regular” undergraduate institutions–as you have pointed out many times before.</p>
<p>So yes, IDEALLY super-smart kids go to college with their intellectual peers. It’s a great thing for them if it works out. But it’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t, except for the very few and very fragile.</p>
<p>there was a post that I now cant find that talked about where MDs went to med school. It isnt really relevant. I’d rather my specialist have gone to the best internship/residency training sites for their specialty,and looking at their diploma will not tell me that.</p>
<p>I have to laugh. I’ve followed a cc thread where academically oriented students were shrugged off as not offering enough to gain admission to a fancy shmancy school. I’ve read many a thread that discusses the various skill sets that contribute to a “best and brightest” school, many of which are not academic ability. Every year, there’s an explosion of disappointment when seemingly brilliant kids–indistinguishable from their peers who are admitted-- are not admitted to the fancy shmancy schools and an ensuing chorus that there are many wonderful alternatives for these brilliant kids. And now we revert to the notion that the smartest, most academically driven and interested students are concentrated in only a few prestigious institutions?</p>
<p>I see accomplished, driven kids everywhere I look. I took my middle D to look at so-called safety schools when she was applying to college and what really struck me was how very bright and very motivated the kids seemed to be. The other Ivy-bound kids my eldest knew well were the least intellectually curious of her friends. The hardest working, yes. The most driven, maybe. But definitely not the smartest. There’s no guarantee that going to a fancy shmancy, competitive school brings you the peer group you seek.</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that there aren’t schools that offer a better fit for a person’s temperament and interest. I just don’t think there’s such a clean correlation with prestige.</p>
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<p>That’s not what’s being said here, though. This thread isn’t about “you’ve got to go to a top 20, prestige-heavy institution to find a sufficient number of your tribe.” The thread is about how there is a level of academic quality and seriousness of purpose – center of intellectual gravity, to use Hunt’s term – below which it does become difficult, dispiriting, whatever word you want to use for a really strong student to find his or her tribe. But no one said it’s related to prestige or how well known a school may be. </p>
<p>Just to pick on a a particular set of schools, more people know Mizzou than Macalester, but I’d give the nod to Macalester for having a stronger density of the kind of student I’m talking about.</p>
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<p>Mizzou is 13 times as big as Macalester for undergraduate enrollment. Do you think that the top 13th of the students at Mizzou is as strong or stronger in terms of academic quality and seriousness of purposes compared to the students at Macalester? I.e. is there an “embedded Macalester” at Mizzou? If so, then wouldn’t a student looking for a Macalester peer group be able to find such a peer group as Mizzou?</p>
<p>Yes they would but it’s not as concentrated. That’s the key point. I’ve been to both types of schools, and there is a huge difference between the two, both in terms of average academic expectations and extracurricular involvement.</p>
<p>As Pizzagirl pointed out, there’s a reason that honors colleges exist.</p>
<p>Am I really misreading this? I may well be because I didn’t read every post and I’m learning that threads take twists and turns as they evolve. But the original post said:</p>
<p>“For example, suppose a high achieving student would be dispirited by attending a school with a large number of lower achieving students, even though there would be a significant number of other high achieving students (e.g. many state flagships) and would only be satisfied with the type of student peer group found at super-selective schools.”</p>
<p>My reaction? The student peer group found at super-selective schools:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>may not be that different from the one found at the state flagship, especially if there is an honors college at the state flagship</p></li>
<li><p>may not be exceptionally intelligent</p></li>
<li><p>may not be the peer group that best suits the particular high achieving student</p></li>
</ol>
<p>The Macalester/Mizzou example is interesting. Macalester is definitely the type of school I associate with interesting, intelligent people. But then…my journalist D says that she’s met peers from Mizzou who are extremely talented and extremely bright. It’s a sought after school for journalism students and very well known in the field.</p>
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<p>Actually I think the thread is about what these students ought to do to prepare for the possibility that they may have to go tribeless if the admissions gods at the elite school don’t smile on them. The choices as I see them are a) no college; b) community college; c) lesser college. If they child has decided in advance that “c” is not an option–and has not even applied to safety schools–that leaves “a” and “b” as the only choices in the short term.</p>
<p>Another possibility is that such a kid goes off to what they perceive as a “lesser” school with preconceived notions that they will not be able to find their “tribe.” This, in turn, could manifest in some kids in a bad attitude before even stepping foot on campus.</p>
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<p>AGAIN, yes, no one is saying there aren’t bright students at Mizzou – and possibly in raw numbers comparable to the size of Macalester. But the concentration isn’t as dense. And some of us believe, and have said repeatedly (but must be speaking Swahili) that it’s far more difficult (and potentially dispiriting) to try to find that peer group when they are thin on the ground. It requires a lot of effort for those who aren’t naturally extroverted, to look past the 12 students that aren’t of like minds in this regard and find the 13th. </p>
<p>Look. You roll out of bed, you look down the hall and you see a group of students gathering to go eat dinner or go out or whatever. If you’re at Macalester, it’s a reasonable bet that most of them will have that academic seriousness of purpose. If you’re at Mizzou, your embedded Macalester is only 1 out of the 13 students down the hall. That doesn’t mean you can’t go eat dinner or go out with them. But it means that it is harder to find the tribe. </p>
<p>The fact that Mizzou is bigger and the raw number may be equivalent to Macalester isn’t really the point here – you can only interact with X number of people at any one given time. </p>
<p>The very fact that honors colleges exist tells you that enough smart students couldn’t immediately find their tribe such that the colleges decided to segregate those tribes for them in order to be appealing. The whole APPEAL of an honors college is - you’re now in with the smartest kids.</p>