<p>POIH, hats off to your D who “waited 'til 9th grade to start” and who knew already at that age what type of college setting was appropriate for her. I have rarely met anyone who started the college search in earnest that young or knew exactly what they wanted in a college already.</p>
<p>Are you saying she visited Yale in middle school and eliminated it?</p>
<p>Also, you state that it was eliminated but then in an earlier post you say Yale was one of her “standby” schools that she would have applied to if MIT and CalTech didn’t come through in the EA phase. Why apply to such Ivies (she also had Columbia, Brown and Penn on standby) if they were not good fits or desirable?</p>
<p>soozie, y’all can check my old posts. The lunatic that once lived at my house started keeping an expando folder of college information in the 7th grade. I wanted to have her drug tested but her mother refused.</p>
<p>^^: No the elimination came in summer after 11th grade when we visited college including Yale.</p>
<p>But Yale moved lower on her list as she drifted more into Computer Engineering from the pre-med focus she had during her middle school or when she started her high school</p>
<p>By the way, I missed the edit of post 248 and have never heard of considering Cornell or Dartmouth as “matches” even for stellar students given the very low acceptance rates which means even top students can be denied at these schools.</p>
<p>Well curm, D2 said she wanted to go to NYU/Tisch when she was 12, but it was all she knew (older friends in her field) and hadn’t done any college searching until her college process began in earnest the spring before she applied. She didn’t know the differences between specific colleges at that age but merely heard of NYU/Tisch.</p>
<p>She would have certainly applied in the scenario I described because she wanted to have a choice and would have gone on a second visit to confirm elimination if she had to choose between Yale and UCB EECS.</p>
<p>If you look at her timeline you will see that she had ample time to apply to her stand by colleges if EA results were not affirmative. It was her planning that gave us confidence that come April she will be able to make a right choice.</p>
<p>POIH, thanks for clarifying that Yale was eliminated after 11th grade from your D’s college list But why was this school on standby if she wasn’t interested any longer? I don’t quite understand that if MIT or CalTech didn’t come through, why you would add Yale, Dartmouth or Columbia to the list which you have said didn’t meet her criteria? Why not find non-Ivies that she liked instead?</p>
<p>soozie, iirc my datapoint got interested after the 7th grade SAT for TIPS (is that even what it was called?) . (She actually got college mail! I think that was spark.) It was really just random data collection, showing interest but not much thought.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, POIH, I cross posted with you. Thanks. </p>
<p>I thought your D didn’t really think Yale, Columbia, Penn or Brown met what she wanted in a college…in other posts you have written and so I was curious why they would make a standby list at all for her, other than the fact that they are Ivies. It would seem her standby list would be schools that truly met what she wanted in a college. You already said she didn’t like the open curriculum at Brown. Why bother to apply ever? Why wouldn’t the back up list be other school that really did meet her criteria? This is why it comes across that going to an Ivy or Ivy+ was itself a selection criteria.</p>
<p>But that shows our efforts were always towards DD interests and not colleges or Universities. Had she maintained her interests to do MD, her college choices would have included NW HPME, Brown PLME, Caltech UCSD, Rice Baylor over many of the elite.</p>
<p>POIH, I cross posted yet again with you. You now say if she wanted to be an MD, she may have picked “Brown over many of the elite”. Yikes, are you saying Brown is not elite??? (to many, it is an “elite” college) </p>
<p>But in any case, your D DID have Brown on her standby list (for computer engineering), despite your saying she did not want an open curriculum. Thus, I don’t get that.</p>
<p>You need to understand that elimination of Yale, U. Penn and Columbia had nothing to do with their academics, it was the surroundings.
Since academics were more important to her so in case of compromising a lower academic institute with better surrounding instead of the above was not something she would have gone for. So that is why these were at standby.</p>
<p>DD liked Brown as a college setting, so even though the open curriculumn is something that is not appealing the other colleges like Duke, JHU, Rice, USC were not visited and she would like to make her final decision after visiting the colleges on her acceptance list later.</p>
<p>We as a family were very supportive of the fact that she should not make a descision without visiting the colleges.</p>
<p>We visited 10 before applying and would have visited all the accepted college if none of the 10 had given her the acceptance.</p>
<p>I’m not fully understanding why your D had this long “standby” list if CalTech and MIT did not come through in EA as she had a sufficiently long list of colleges she was applying to already. For instance, she had Cornell and CMU on her list (both highly regarded for computer engineering), not to mention USC, Olin, Rice, Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Dartmouth. There were plenty of schools left. Why would she have had to add Columbia, Yale, Penn, Brown, Duke, JHU, Northwestern and Chicago after the EA round even though these schools were not as appealing to her as the ones on her true list? All the schools on her regular college list of 12 are ELITE (at least most people would think so). NONE would be compromising academics.</p>
<p>Well, here is where I think your family DID consider college rankings. In most people’s view, Brown is an elite college with a very low acceptance rate, and for those who even care, it is actually an Ivy. I guess this is where your “lower Ivy” comes into focus or wanting HYMPS (whatever way you order the letters) was a “must.” Did you really think that academics would be “compromised” if she had attended Brown? This is not something I can wrap my head around, sorry. And on the other hand, if your D wanted to be a doctor, you say she would have applied to Brown/PLME which means her UG would be in Brown, which apparently isn’t elite in your view or the academics not strong enough.</p>
<p>In the end, I am happy for your D that she landed at MIT which is within your coveted HYPMS group because had she not gotten into one of these five schools, she would have had to deal with “compromised” academics. Frankly, I don’t see how one can discern the quality of academics as being different between a school ranked 4 or a school ranked 16. In my view, the level of academics at the approximately top 20 colleges on USNews is not all that different. Where you start seeing difference is when maybe you compare a top 20 school to a school ranked something like 40. But to differentiate among a handful of places on the college rankings? not something I understand.</p>
<p>^^^: The answer is choice and your reasoning will make sense if it was a guranteed admission to all the schools she applied.</p>
<p>But why would she go to USC over Columbia or U. Penn. DD strategy to apply to USC, Olin, Rice in November to qualify for merit scholarship.</p>
<p>DD thought Yale, Columbia, U. Penn need more time so she left it for post 15 in case she doesn’t get affirmative decision from EA. Duke, JHU, Brown were there to provide a school better than USC/UCSD the lowest choice schools on her list.</p>
<p>The landscape of admissions changed drastically from her 10th (2007) to 2009. If it has been same like 2007 she would have almost a guranteed admission to UCB/LA.
DD high shcool recomended more than UCB/UCLA for 2009 batch as safeties and that forced DD to put more schools on the standby.</p>
<p>Because USC made her original final list based on fit I imagine and Columbia and Penn did not. Why go to Columbia or Penn over a school she chose for fit on the original list? Or did she really not want to go to USC?</p>
<p>And if Duke, Columbia, Penn, or Brown really were not good enough to make the original list of colleges in terms of her selection criteria, why EVER apply to them? You are saying she would have added them because they are “better” schools than a few on her original list (like Rice, USC). What does “better” mean? Higher ranked? I’m thinking that is what you mean because if they fit her better, those schools would have been on her original list and not standby.</p>
<p>It does come across that your child was picking by ranking more than fit.</p>
<p>That is why I think college visits are very important.
DD attendted 1/2 day presentation at the department of her interests at most colleges she visited. Metting with Prof. student representatives and others. There were drastic differences between MIT and Columbia Engineering department. So comparing Brown with MIT is not even that close.
We would have compared Brown to USC or UCSD not to UCB EECS.</p>
<p>I would recommend visiting the department of interest at any college you children would like to matriculate. Reality is always different from what it seems on paper or websites.</p>
(to many, it is an “elite” college) </p>