<p>Right. So why is so much of this thread–about safeties–focused on disparaging people’s choices?</p>
<p>Hunt, One-third of S2’s senior IB class (2010) went to UMD…the numbers have gone up at the math/sci program, too. We know a lot of kids with tippy-top scores who took the full ride and went there (and turned down MIT, H, P, Caltech, et al). Of one cohort I know, the grad programs those students now attend are MIT (x3), Caltech, H, P, Duke and Cambridge.</p>
<p>Neither of my kids wound up at UMD, but for them, the school was just too big. Midsize worked better for them.</p>
<p>Every large lecture class I took also had small intimate discussion sessions along with it.</p>
<p>My younger son liked American (which has an honors college), but felt uncomfortable with that college within a college approach. He felt like it set some students up as better than others. He preferred to just be at a selective college where everyone at the college was treated equally.</p>
<p>For my older son we looked at the offerings of a few honors programs and there was nothing of interest to him. At a school supposedly known for its science offerings the honors college emphasized interdisciplinary courses with lots of writing - his idea of torture.</p>
<p>I didnt need an extra/separate discussion section because the class itself WAS the intimate discussion section. For me, I wanted a LAC, and my safeties were also LACs. I got into the Ivy I applied to, but realized I didnt want a bigger school. </p>
<p>Some breakout sessions are taught by grad students who dont want to teach or for whom English is not their native language. Some students dont want that experience. And that fine.</p>
<p>The point is, there ARE safeties for ALL students, if they are willing to broaden their scope. They can find affordable colleges that offer a learning environment they will enjoy and have peers (though perhaps a lesser “density”) who are interested in learning for learning sake.</p>
<p>Exactly! Well put.</p>
<p>Thank you, sally.</p>
<p>Thats the best almost (10 minutes and counting) birthday present a cc’er could hope for ;)</p>
<p>Questions to ponder:</p>
<p>Are there necessarily more students who want to learn for the sake of learning attending elite schools than other schools? </p>
<p>What motivates students to go to the schools they choose?</p>
<p>Do people who want to learn for the sake of learning necessarily choose to do so by attending college?</p>
<p>Happy B-Day (in 10 minutes), Jym!</p>
<p>Happy bday, jym!! I am a Cancer too. :)</p>
<p>Thanks, sally! Happy almost birthday to you!!</p>
<p>Deborah-
Interesting questions. Perhaps a separate thread dedicated to those questions might be in order?</p>
<p>Happy birthday, jym!
Happy birthday, sally!</p>
<p>Happy official birthday, jym626!</p>
<p>Thanks, sev & jym. Still have a few weeks to go. :)</p>
<p>While I knew many HS classmates who complained about this issue and ended up at our local public college system due to abysmal HS GPAs or because of parents who felt “all colleges are the same” despite the fact that system was at its nadir academically back then, they did something about it by persevering for 1-2 years before transferring out to institutions with more of “their tribe” like Reed and Columbia. </p>
<p>However, not all topflight students necessarily need/want to be with a critical mass of other students like themselves. </p>
<p>Moreover, seriousness in prioritizing academics/intellectualism in one’s campus life has just as much or possibly more to do with the prevailing local campus cultures with little/no relation to whether they have a critical mass of topflight students. </p>
<p>For instance, several Duke alums I’ve known have admitted(with some liking it) the fact that being too engaged in classroom discussions or worse, continuing to discuss such topics outside of class is strongly frowned upon by most students when they attended. </p>
<p>On the flipside, a student having that attitude reportedly prevalent at Duke by those alums would be strongly frowned upon at Reed, Oberlin, or other LACs/universities with similar campus cultures as an anti-intellectual philistine…though most Obies would regard my use of the “p” word as un-PC.</p>
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<p>When I went to college, the big state flagship university was nowhere near as selective as it is now. To give an idea of what the students were like then, more than half of entering frosh failed the English composition placement test and had to take a remedial English composition course (this also meant that they scored less than 600 on the predecessor of the SAT writing section, and did not take an AP English test or scored less than 3 on it).</p>
<p>Yet it was not that hard to encounter brilliant students of various types, like math majors taking graduate level math courses as sophomores or juniors. Then and now, there was/is no “honors college”, though there were/are honors courses that any student can choose. Yes, taking honors courses was one way to encounter brilliant students, but not the only way (some of the most brilliant students were already more advanced than the frosh/soph level honors courses).</p>
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<p>Berkeley has been considered an academically elite institution in its own right for decades along with UVA, UMich, UNC-Chapel Hill, etc…cannot be considered in the same light as an “average state flagship”. This was probably a factor in why there was no honors college.</p>
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<p>However, the entering frosh at Berkeley a few decades ago were not particularly elite overall when more than half of them needed to take remedial English composition courses (also, the four year graduation rate was well under 50% back then). Back then, it was nowhere near as selective as it is now (the same goes for other UCs and CSUs back then, most of which back then admitted students at the UC or CSU baseline eligibility levels of HS GPA and test scores).</p>
<p>In other words, the Berkeley of a few decades ago probably resembles what a “typical state flagship” is like today in terms of the undergraduate student population more than it resembles Berkeley today in that respect.</p>
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<p>It’s not disparaging other choices. If I say that I value the dense mass of certain types of students and I don’t think <em>I</em> would have easily found that density at my state flagship – a state flagship that admitted / admits by the numbers and isn’t one of the “better” flagships – that’s not saying that everyone who was a good student needs to think like me. We “allow” for students to have different preferences regarding such things as campus size, look and feel, sports presence, Greek life, etc. This is just another criteria. No one is saying that attending such a school is the end of the world or that you wouldn’t have to put on your big-boy or big-girl pants and figure out a way around it – but it wouldn’t be the same as a college where there is that thicker concentration from the get-go. Especially for students who are introverted.</p>
<p>Thanks, Deborah T.</p>
<p>Also agree that a few decades ago many of the flagships that are now quite strong were not at all. UGA is a prime example. It was a bit of a joke.</p>
<p>I think that the overwhelming majority of students could find the course rigor they desire and a community of like-minded students at any of UC Berkeley, UIUC, UMich, or UNC Chapel Hill. There are probably others that are comparable (I’m partial to Wisconsin), but with which I’m less familiar. It is true that the “density” of highly academic students will be lower, in general–but for most of the opportunities that a student might be seeking, the presence of a reasonable number of academically focused, highly talented students will suffice. None of these universities has an LAC atmosphere, if that is what a student wants, and none of them will have small introductory classes, although they will all tend to have quite small upper-division classes in some fields.</p>
<p>As always, I exclude students who are prepared to start at the graduate level in mathematics from the set who would be perfectly well served by these schools. But I will avoid going off on that tangent.</p>
<p>Right. Graduate school/classes are a whole other story. That said, what some look for in an undergrad experience (eg an LAC) are small classes taught by faculty (not grad students) as would be the case for most if not all grad programs. But yes, this thread is about undergrad safety schools.</p>