But in the OP’s situation, it is Furman University versus College of Charleston Honors College so the academics are equal with C of C offering more options academically & socially.
OP: If your daughter has not visited Clemson University, she should as the location & setting are quite different than either C of C or Furman University.
I would choose Furman. I am wary of schools that have introduced honors colleges and are not rigorous across the board, sorry.
There are different honors colleges, my daughters at UDel and Clemson felt there were very helpful, my son at another university didn’t apply to his because it was known to be a waste.
I have been following the creation & development of honors colleges since the early 1990s. Honors colleges can make a very significant difference in the quality of education received.
C of C Honors College provides a lot of meaningful benefits to students that are worth one’s time to research.
Ehhhh - Furman has historically had wealthier students but now they have to discount heavily. Historically it was religious - now it’s not.
In this case, if the student is truly interested in commercial real estate finance and they should look at the curriculum, one has to- and one doesn’t.
just because US News says a school is better doesn’t make it so. Harvard has failures. Hofstra has studs.
My C of C kid is in a job program with many Ivy, top perceived public and top LAC kids.
Look at work - we had a Harvard Law working for a Fairleigh Dickinson til a recent retirement.
Look where you live - my area of 7 figure houses range from Auburn to Ms State to UTK and Bama to Long Beach State and Lipscomb and Vandy. I met a young couple - one graduated Cornell. The parents bought the house.
Long term outcomes are defined by the students, not where they attend.
Budget matters too. The parent noted Furman is cheaper - that matters. Furman has been buying kids. Like other privates, it’s that or have no revenue.
Even if CofC wasn’t Honors, it doesn’t mean it’s worse for the student. Always pick major over school name. The parent also mentioned Poli Sci. Charleston has the Mroz Instutute and is outstanding.
Of course they do. They’ll find eligible guys somewhere. But even when you factor in all of the students at The Citadel, it’s still a 59:41 female:male ratio.
could be different – and I hope they are. 3 schools in New England we looked at were so-so. I would still want to be at a school where virtually all of the students were on the same IQ+EQ level as me.
Nice to hear and hope it is so. I should note that my best friend and his brother went to C of C. I just think being around a complete student body of the same IQ+EQ level would be better. I also think its a bad precedent to have students that are “other” than you at a college/university.
This is pay to play. Who goes to the most expensive, perceived top schools? The wealthy and the poor. Look at the wealthiest schools - typically less than half get need aid, sometimes a third or less. You have Ivy level talent at every flagship in America. Your most NMFs are Bama and Florida. Not sure about today but two years ago 25% plus of Tulsa’s class was NMFs.
There are trade offs - the most common is money - as you’re experiencing on your other thread.
Typically those thinking their kid is smartest will find out it’s not close to the truth, especially in fields like engineering. And there’s brilliance, frankly everywhere. And there kids that can’t cut it - pretty much everywhere too. Some, like Harvard, give out so many As….i think 60% or 2/3 mandated that they hide the less successful.
But this is a case where a finance major and a “commercial real estate finance major” will compete head to head. The former gives many options professionally; the latter is narrow and limiting AND for many employers in commercial real estate, offers no clear advantage.
You just can’t slice the bologna so thin. There is no silver bullet here- and no guarantees that with such a narrow major, you’re going to get a great job in commercial real estate (a volatile industry by anyone’s math). What happens when a kid graduates into a job market like 2009/2010/2011 when developers were sitting on their hands and banks weren’t writing loans and mall/hotel/Class A and B office space operators were waiting out the recession?
I put the two curriculums above to see. They are very different.
Interestingly, at Furman the student was going to be in Poli Sci which tells me they need to dig deeper into is a business degree truly right for them. What sounds interesting at the macro level and from a tour may not be when the student goes deeper.
OP knows this is about the boyfriend. In this case, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
It could be, though, the student visited Charleston, which is vastly different than Furman and fell in love. We went to 30 or so schools. Charleston was 4th. I told my better half that day - this is where she’ll end up no matter where she gets in. Some kids just - upon visiting - they just know. My daughter cut her list - 16 to 8, 8 to 4, 4 to two - when she told us, even though she had schools like W&L - it was a big yawn. We already knew.
Maybe this student truly had a similar feel, forgetting the bf…no different than my other kid and Bama when he was going to Purdue engineering. The feeling he had after visiting Bama was so overwhelming that it became the - I don’t care where I get into - this is it.
So maybe this happened to the daughter ?
In the end, they can study finance or Poli Sci at both and commercial real estate finance, which has a very different and interdisciplinary curriculum at only one. So I don’t think it’s substitutional to finance.
Whether you think it’s too narrow or they can get to the same place as a finance degree isn’t relevant if it’s truly what the student wants.
And you will find excellent students at every school, not all families can pay for more selective schools, which is why many chose publics with merit and honors colleges. My UDel student was 8th in her class of 300+, 9 AP’s with 5’s, 34 act, turned down Villanova (the reachiest school she applied to) due to cost. My Clemson daughter had almost the same stats (9.95 uw but 33 act), only applied to target/safeties and was accepted with merit to 20 schools. There are very bright students without wealthy parents (but parents who do not qualify for FA).
Yes you are absolutely right – The wealthy and the poor. The middle class can get in but has to pay full price despite many schools amazing endowments.
Typically those thinking their kid is smartest will find out it’s not close to the truth, especially in fields like engineering.
Agree
And there’s brilliance, frankly everywhere.
To some degree yes – but I believe being at a college where the whole student body has a similar intelligence as a cohort is really important.
I would still choose Furman over C of C.
I have to agree with this. While I don’t share Publisher’s strong preference for large universities over LAC’s, there are definitely pros and cons to consider; so now that the student has realized that a larger school could have advantages, it only makes sense to give her other larger-school options due consideration. Clemson, while it’s more than double the size of CoC, has a very strong reputation and a range of programs that should check all of the boxes. I realize she got a great pitch for the real estate finance program at CoC, but (as with tsbna’s rather exhaustive comparison with Furman’s course offerings), I suspect they’re overselling its uniqueness. The Financial Management major at Clemson offers multiple emphasis areas, including real estate. Being even more specialized than this, in undergrad, would not be an advantage for a pre-law student, and (as Blossom already pointed out) likely isn’t a true advantage for an aspiring real estate finance professional either. Clemson appears to have strong pre-law advising and could prepare her well, whether she pursues a business/real estate career or sticks with the law school plan, or both.
Presumably she would have gotten an Honors offer from USC too, correct? This is also worth considering, as the Honors College has a great reputation. The business school here has a real estate major too, if that’s really the focus she’s looking for (although the merits of a broader degree should be considered).
If I were in your position, I wouldn’t be indulging the refusal to visit these schools anymore. It was one thing when she was laser-focused on Furman. But now that she has been swayed by the visit to CofC, Clemson and USC deserve the same opportunity to win her over. I’m not some strong-arm-tactics authoritarian parent, but at this juncture I would be comfortable making visits to all four schools a condition of funding the one she chooses. It’s not too much to ask.