<p>Much of the trick in life is not letting the external define your level of happiness. Are you going to see a situation as desolate or a fantastic opportunity to pioneer the first this, that, and the other club? Is it too crowded or an awesome chance to make friends with a range of people? Do you have the skills to seek out what you want and need if it’s not placed right in front of you? If not, developing those skills might be exactly what you need most. Yes, it might be nicer initially to have what you want right there, boom, without having to look up, down, or to the side to get it, but you’ll feel pretty good about yourself when <em>you</em> make it happen. Take an active role in creating the life you want.</p>
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<p>Safeties are not necessarily compromises. If a student’s first choice is a safety, then s/he may apply to just the one school. An example would be a top 7% rank student in Texas whose first choice is an affordable public university in Texas (other than engineering at Austin, which is not a safety for the engineering division, although it would be a safety for the campus).</p>
<p>But that obviously would not be the type of high performing student who would object to going to a school with lower performing students. (Also, the Texas top N% admissions can mean that a student for whom a Texas public university is an admissions safety is not necessarily among to top achieving students in terms of high school academic achievements, unlike the usual notion of admissions safety at most other colleges.)</p>
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<p>Yes, I was serious about the question, since the following apparently orthodox opinions on these forums contradict each other:</p>
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<li>A high achiever may not fit in well at a school with many lower achievers, even if it also has a decent number of high achievers.</li>
<li>Your application list must include a safety that you like.</li>
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<p>The four schools on your list are NOT safeties for anyone. They are all highly selective for all students, and especially so for OOS. Also, even if admitted, they might not be affordable: UCBerkely is notorious for poor FA for OOS and UMich and UIUC do not guarantee to meet need for OOS.</p>
<p>I guess it’s a question of how much a student has to like a school that he/she “likes.” I think it’s also a question of the point in time when the student likes the school–when admissions decisions come out, when the student leaves for school in the fall, after one year?</p>
<p>If the university is large enough, then I truly do not think that the lack of a high density of like-minded students is a problem, as long as there is a sufficient number of like-minded students. This view would not hold for the extraordinarily gregarious person, who plans to have 10,000 college friends, all of whom need to be at the same intellectual level. I doubt that as many as 0.01% of incoming freshman fit that description.</p>
<p>rmidad makes a good point with regard to financial aid. That is a problem, and I should have taken that into account. Affordabiility is unquestionably an aspect of a safety school. </p>
<p>In responding to the question about the lack of a true safety, I envisioned a student who is sufficiently strong to meet the OOS selection criteria at any of those schools, though. I think that a student who could not be admitted OOS to those schools would actually have a true safety elsewhere.</p>
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<p>Agreed, but this falls under “asked and answered.” We already know that both the academic experience AND the ability to find the tribe-of-super-smart-and-academically-serious will be high at the Berkeleys/Michigans/UNC’s of the world. That hasn’t been in dispute at all. </p>
<p>This thread arose in response to a very specific discussion on another thread that ucb and I were participating in, in which I cited Mizzou as an example of a state flagship (it was my state flagship when I was in hs) and intimated that I would have been dispirited to attend because it was my belief, at least during that time frame, that I would have had a harder time finding my “tribe” socially than at a school where I could count on a thicker density of super-smart-and-academically-serious folks. We aren’t talking about the Berkeleys and Michigans here. We are talking about the state flagships that aren’t the “star” state flagships.</p>
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Well I’d modify that a bit.</li>
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<p>A high achiever may not fit in well at a school with many low achievers so it behooves him/her to find alternatives. (Math science types may find some of the tech schools will be safeties. Humanities boys may find pretty good LACs especially ones that used to be women’s colleges. Young women may have better odds at some of the single sex schools.)</p>
<p>Your application list should include a safety you don’t hate, but you don’t have to love it. You should, however, like something about it. (It’s got a great department in my major! It’s on the beach! It has an honors program! It’s small and my professors will really get to know me - I’ll be a star there.)</p>
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<p>I do – see Marian’s posts above about the “lack of a basketball court.” I also agree with Hunt that I’m not really sure that I can agree that every state flagship has an “embedded Macalester” (or Amherst, or Harvard, or whatever) within it.</p>
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<p>The disagreement seems to arise from the word “picky”.</p>
<p>Please forgive me if I am putting words in your mouth, but I suspect you might be willing to substitute these synonyms for “picky” - “high standards”, or “accomplished”.</p>
<p>On the other hand, some posters might choose synonyms more like - “unrealistic”, “spoiled” or “elitist”.</p>
<p>Both sets of words offer equivalent substitutions, but start from vastly different backgrounds to arrive at opposing viewpoints.</p>
<p>For some majors, I disagree with Marian’s post #205. A math or physics major is very likely to find similarly serious students in all of the higher-level math and physics courses, at the least. Then it’s just a question of making some connection with them.</p>
<p>For an English major, I would suggest courses that by their description seem geared toward serious students. Chaucer, maybe? Milton?–almost for sure, and a great choice in any event. A student’s academic adviser can also help steer the student to the appropriate types of courses. Serious philosophy courses would be another place to meet like-minded students. Seminars offered by the academic departments are another.</p>
<p>At large public universities, honors colleges help with this. Some colleges have honors mixers, or other programs for honors students. Some colleges have honors floors in the dorms; some colleges do not have honors floors, but do have “quiet” floors, which tend to attract serious students.</p>
<p>The Tolkien society and the Society for Creative Anachronism are likely to attract somewhat intellectual students at least, to say nothing of the Society for Physics Students.</p>
<p>If you attended a school with a high proportion of academically strong students, you may take a more negative view of the possibilities elsewhere than is warranted.</p>
<p>Also in response to PG’s #268: I can’t say much about Missouri. I have colleagues there whose work I respect, but I know little about the school. There are a lot of high quality state flagships, though.</p>
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We liked the fact that the safety would have been free (or nearly free).</p>
<p>Surely it had more than that going for it, Hunt. If not, the viewer, and I would hope the viewer isn’t just the parent, probably wasn’t looking very closely or else needs to find a different safety (or safeties).</p>
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<p>I decided to run through the list. These are schools where S would have qualified for their biggest scholarship, leaving a residual cost of $5K or less. (There weren’t any where he wouldn’t have qualified. I didn’t bother to look at the ones with $10K residual cost, since that was not affordable. I’m sure that a couple of them would have been much better fits.)</p>
<p>Troy University – Has no language departments or philosophy department. Can’t find CDS.</p>
<p>AL State U – Doesn’t have a language major or a philosophy dept. He would have placed out of the their entire French offerings (minor only) upon entry.</p>
<p>LA Tech – No majors in languages or philosophy.</p>
<p>U of LA Monroe – Has a French major, but would have placed out of all but about 3 or 4 courses.</p>
<p>Coppin State – Doesn’t have his majors, would have placed out of complete list of offerings in both languages they offer.</p>
<p>Newberry – Doesn’t offer majors and strong religious focus not appropriate for him.</p>
<p>I skipped a few that appeared to be very similar to the above: probably historically-black colleges with a strong vocational bent. </p>
<p>Nope, no realistic safeties for my kid on that list. Sure, it is likely that if he went to one of them he would have majored in something else, but I think anyone would admit that a person who wanted to study multiple languages and had a strong bent towards philosophy would not be well served at any of them.</p>
<p>You know, when I say that I like something, that doesn’t mean it’s the ONLY thing I like. This is sort of my problem with this whole conversation.</p>
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<p>Not all high achievers need a high critical mass of fellow high achievers to have a wonderful college experience.</p>
<p>Moreover, having a serious attitude towards prioritizing academics like PG discusses isn’t necessarily near-perfectly correlated with high stats students…though it can help. </p>
<p>There’s also a campus culture aspect to this as many Duke* alums have recounted from their campus experiences with some preferring that culture. One which would be polar opposite of campus cultures at somewhat less selective schools like Oberlin or Vassar. </p>
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<li>Duke was ranked #5 in USNWR when I was in HS so students who were top 15% were clamoring to get in as with HYPS back then. It was such that plenty of students turned down for Duke were admitted…sometimes with substantial scholarships/FA to Ivies like Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Columbia.</li>
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<p>Re: #276</p>
<p>Howard? Has languages and philosophy majors, plus cross registration agreements with several other DC-area colleges and UMCP. It is an HBU, but you don’t have to be black to attend an HBU.</p>
<p>Rashomon. I liked post #271.</p>
<p>I understand it’s important for some smart people only to socialize with other smart people. Lucky for me, since I really like smart people, my smart friends are willing to socialize with those much less intelligent. </p>
<p>I have very smart children and it always seemed to me important they not limit their social group only to those as smart or smarter. I think it is important for them to understand people are born with different abilities and be very aware what may seem easy and obvious to them could be a struggle for others - that those struggles may be more admirable than their own ease of accomplishment. If they were serious musicians, we would have discussed not judging others who didn’t have natural talent, perfect pitch, etc. - if they were athletes, yet again a different discussion. I also talked with them a whole lot about some people just being born nicer and the need to be charitable to those who had to struggle when niceness isn’t their “normal”. (I have never claimed to my children or anyone else niceness is my normal any more than smartness) </p>
<p>I am partial to the idea of a tribe but for myself have a tribe that includes amazingly different sorts of friends with different interests and ability levels in a wide variety of subjects and endeavors. Very different people enrich my life in very different ways.</p>
<p>I am very sympathetic to the super smart students who want to be at a college with appropriate academic resources, not so sympathetic to those wanting to avoid the less smart. That is why I “get” that someone may feel the need to go to a certain college for a certain department or professor, but don’t “get” a student who feels the need to go to a college where there is an extremely high concentration of similar ability smart students. I think we all benefit from some friends who are very much “like” us, but how many do we really need?</p>