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<p>That’s absolutely a possibility. No argument. Of the kids I knew who went off to Mizzou and became dispirited for this reason, I don’t know how many of them gave it the fair shake versus how many of them went in with that attitude.</p>
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<p>This may not always be the case. The smartest kids may already have substantial college credits under their belt from dual enrollment and don’t need some of the honors courses as they’ve already met the requirements and have no desire to be held back and take longer to graduate.</p>
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I don’t think social group formation is such a random process. First, time use narrows down the field in a nonrandom way; if you love basketball and spend a lot of time on the basketball court, you’ll interact mostly with other people who like basketball. Then, people form quick first reactions after meeting someone new. If the reaction is negative, we move on.</p>
<p>What am I missing here???</p>
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<p>Maybe the lack of an equivalent to the basketball court.</p>
<p>If you are looking for fellow basketball players, or fellow Asian Americans, or fellow LGBT students, there will be campus organizations that you can seek out. But if you are looking for fellow serious students, it’s harder to tell. Long ago, you could see who’s in the library on a Saturday night, but students don’t physically go to libraries much anymore.</p>
<p>^ The classroom would be the closest equivalent. You can tell when people understand what’s going on in class. Though I think it might be more effective to start with extracurricular interests and then work backwards to academics.</p>
<p>EDIT: I do go to the library and it is fairly full. But I wouldn’t socialize there.</p>
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<p>Wouldn’t it become more obvious if you talk to someone about something the instructor said in class or what you read for class and then listen to the response? I.e. wouldn’t you be able to tell if s/he is genuinely intellectually interested in the material, versus just trying to get through the class?</p>
<p>Of course, whether the student is intellectually interested may depend on the class, and it is not necessarily a given that a high achiever overall will be intellectually interested in every class.</p>
<p>Ummmm, just about every college campus I have ever been to has a ton of academic organizations that are full of people with common interests - that’s in addition to a ton of honors programs.</p>
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<p>This is spot-on, and reflects our experience too. No question that all the kids we know who got into Ivies or other elite schools are incredibly hard-working and driven–impressively so. But I wouldn’t describe them as “smarter” than everyone else, and in some cases they are clearly far less “intellectual.” My son avoided schools with a strongly competitive and/or pre-professional bent because he knew that type of environment wouldn’t suit him. He wanted to be around thinkers and artists and idealists and use his four years of college to explore a wide variety of interests. He didn’t like the tightly wound, aggressively competitive kids in high school and he didn’t want to be surrounded by them in college. I am not saying all students at top-tier schools are like this, but they are certainly “thicker” there than at a laid-back LAC.</p>
<p>* 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>In some circumstances this skill may prove to be more valuable than anticipated.</p>
<p>There is something special about spending four years of your life studying with bright, motivated peers with whom you don’t have to explain or justify your passion for [fill in the blank]. Yes, real life is not like that, but if you are looking for an ideal college experience, then the academic caliber of your peers matters. </p>
<p>The general preparation level, interest, and work habits of your academic peers also determine the pace of the class. The professor cannot move faster than the median ability of the bulk of the students. I know this to be true. I would not want my bright child to be in a class of average students at the university level. </p>
<p>A large state flagship is likely to have a critical mass of committed, well prepared, and bright students for anyone to find his “tribe,” but there are many schools where the bright student who is at the top of the applicant pool and well beyond the bulk of the student body is going to have a poor to mediocre academic experience. He or she may not even realize it because there is no competition or kindred soul about.</p>
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Well, I hesitate to say this, but I’m not convinced that the honors college at someplace like Mizzou is an “embedded Macalester.” I don’t think the honors college at Maryland is that, because the smart kids I know who went there were, by and large, just not the same kind of super-motivated kids who end up at the super-selective schools. There will be some who are, but I don’t think just because there are thousands of kids at a school, including some with really good stats, that this also means that those schools are able to recruit the kind of kids that go to the most selective schools. So, for example, I don’t think there’s an embedded Amherst at Maryland. Others may disagree, but having seen a number of years of kids from a competitive high school in Maryland, and where they go to college, there were only a tiny handful who went to Maryland instead of someplace much more selective. There were lots of kids who went to Maryland because they didn’t get into more selective places, and some who didn’t try for more selective places. But the idea that there’s a little Amherst (or whatever) at the flagship is not, in my opinion, likely to be the case except perhaps at schools like Michigan and Virginia, which are pretty selective for everybody.</p>
<p>There was a recent article in the Washington Post about Maryland. Can’t figure out the link but it is easy enough to google. “I once thought Maryland was below me.” The author talks about her appreciation of the peers, faculty and staff there .</p>
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I guess I don’t buy the premise that we can divide kids up into neat little boxes such that there is a “kind of kid” at the most selective schools. Am I breaking with CC dogma by saying that? :)</p>
<p>People from my graduating class went to a large range of different schools. I’m sure there was a correlation between H.S. stats and university selectivity but in a social sense I can’t draw lines.</p>
<p>Maybe this perception is a regional difference, or a generational divide?</p>
<p>^Probably both.</p>
<p>Hunt, what do you want? I don’t understand the persistence around “dissing” state flagship honors programs, nor do I think your personal observations are substantiated by facts. Here is some information about the honors programs at University of Georgia that was posted on this site (three years old):</p>
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<p>How is this any less impressive than Amherst’s profile, where the 25th percentile had an average 1320 SAT and the 75th had a 1530? That’s out of an entire student body of some 1700 kids compared with Georgia’s 2350 in the honors program. NOT a substantial difference.</p>
<p>Also, is it possible to accept that there are actually super-smart kids who prefer the culture of large state universities with great school spirit, gigantic campuses, and big-time sports programs? That people can be multi-dimensional that way? I just don’t get why posters here view some of our brightest young people so narrowly.</p>
<p>I have no dog in this fight, but I’ll bite. The UGA honors program is quite good (offers some smaller classes, preferential registration, honors dorm, etc) and the Foundation Fellows is an exceptionally remarkable scholarship offering opportunities and connections that can’t be beat. I personally know of a colleague whose son turned down Harvard for the Foundation Fellows scholarship. That said, not all the classes are small. There are still going to be many classes the honors students will take with hundreds of other students in large lecture halls with breakout sessions. So while there are opportunities available just to the honors students, the honors students will not be taking all of their classes just within the honors program. At a small LAC like Amherst, there will be few large lecture classes with hundreds of other students.</p>
<p>OK, but so what? At my elite university I had plenty of huge lecture classes with zero student participation, especially the first two years. I didn’t have many engaging small classes until my junior year–and most of that engagement came from my interactions with the professors, not with other students.</p>
<p>I guess I don’t see why so many of these threads have to end up as vehement defense of the status quo, with only a small number of institutions being worthy of our best and brightest kids. Why is it so hard for people to accept that there are many paths to success (academic and otherwise), and that it isn’t an either/or proposition?</p>
<p>For some students (like myself, when I was in college when dinosaurs roamed the campus) attending big lecture hall type classes with limited class participation and a professor who cannot possibly know all the students is a real turn off.</p>
<p>I think there is a lot to be said for honors programs. But they aren’t little pseudo-LAC oases in a sea of giant U’s. Thats all my point was. I personally never, in all 4 years, had a class larger than about 20. And I cant imagine it, speaking only for myself, any other way.</p>
<p>"Also, is it possible to accept that there are actually super-smart kids who prefer the culture of large state universities with great school spirit, gigantic campuses, and big-time sports programs? "</p>
<p>Of course. No one was suggesting that all super smart kids had to prefer certain types of schools. People have their own tastes.</p>
<p>“guess I don’t see why so many of these threads have to end up as vehement defense of the status quo, with only a small number of institutions being worthy of our best and brightest kids”</p>
<p>No one is saying it’s only a small number. There are lots of schools that fit this criteria. But there are plenty that don’t.</p>
<p>Yes , sally, my sons had no interest at all in LAC’s. Wanted a big school, sports scene, etc.
Similarly, as jym says, there will be kids who love places like Amherst and want or need a smaller environment. To each his or her own.</p>