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I’m not surprise since she went to a really competitive HS so she has a lot of competition. Also we don’t know if the GPA that the Mom quoted is UC or what the HS reported as the GPA. UC GPA only counts Sophomore and Junior grades and a-g courses only. If the 3.8 is the HS GPA, then the UC GPA UW might be lower.</p>
<p>Not getting into UC Davis with those stats seems more of a surprise, although one of more of applying to a popular major or division and/or writing a poor essay may be reasons. The difference between GPA as reported by the high school and UC-recalculated GPA, as noted above, could also matter – particularly if the student had a 4.0 in 9th grade and declining trend in 10th-11th grades (which are the grades that count in UC-recalculated GPA).</p>
<p>I’ve known several kids who got “shut out” from all the private, selective colleges they applied to, and went to their one safety, the state flagship. </p>
<p>In April, there are always a handful of threads on CC from students who didn’t get in anywhere. They are almost always international students. (And there will also be a bunch of threads from students who say they got in nowhere, but when you start reading you’ll see that they did get into schools like Colgate or Bates but not into HYP.)</p>
<p>This whole “well, not everyone has a decent flagship” talk is a little ridiculous. It’s not like all the good faculty are only at top-tier schools and everyone who goes elsewhere is destined to be taught by substandard professors. Anyone who knows anything about the academic job market knows there just aren’t enough jobs out there for all the PhDs to teach at schools of the caliber that they got their degree from. So where do these people go?</p>
<p>I randomly pulled up the history department of one of the least-mentioned flagships on this site, in the low-population flyover state of Wyoming. Just looking at the first three faculty members listed there–my child would be taught by people who got their PhDs from Penn, Harvard and University of Chicago–all three of which are top 10 programs. Are these people suddenly failures because they are not at more prestigious schools? Of course not. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.uwyo.edu/history/faculty-and-staff/kamp.html”>http://www.uwyo.edu/history/faculty-and-staff/kamp.html</a></p>
<p>I happen to know the University of Wyoming well. If a kid wants to study history there, his professors might be brilliant but his classmates will almost certainly not be. If the Harvard educated professor assigns just ten pages of reading, what’s the likelihood that even half of the students in the class will have done it, let alone understood it? </p>
<p>^^My daughter is going to Wyoming as an OOS student! It is her first choice, her safety, her (now) dream school. In fact, it’s the only school she applied to.</p>
<p>It has everything she needs, and there are no budget cuts in fracking states so the faculty is happy and well paid. Her department is adding a 40M building, and all the facilities are up to date. It has a hockey team for her to play on, is 2 hours from her grandparents’ home, and she doesn’t care that there is no mall in town. I didn’t notice a mall near Smith either.</p>
<p>Will it be ‘just like high school?’ For some kids it might since many of them are in-state, but unlike high school most college kids are in college because they want to be. The class isn’t English 3 full of kids who would rather be playing video games than reading Catcher in the Rye, but comparative French poets with other students who are excited to meet and discuss the subject.</p>
<p>Yes, where are these unacceptable flagship universities? I can’t think of one state that doesn’t have ONE good school.</p>
<p>Same can be said of non-flagships. I did the sally test and found an amazing conglomeration of history professors at University of Houston. (OSU, UCLA, Harvard, Columbia, Penn, American, Wisconsin, Stanford (this person had an MA from UT El Paso which did not hold her back), Chicago, Johns Hopkins - the list goes on).</p>
<p><a href=“Faculty - University of Houston”>http://www.uh.edu/class/history/faculty-and-staff/index.php</a></p>
<p>Everything is relative. If I wanted to improve my golf game, I wouldn’t need the same coach that Tiger Woods uses. The golf coach equivalent of the lowest-level directional university would be fine for me, and the other students wouldn’t hold me back (I would hold them back). But Tiger probably wouldn’t learn much in that environment. That’s not an insult to the teachers or the students.</p>
<p>But that’s not the point, whenhen. The brilliant student can and should be able to receive personal attention from his brilliant professor. He can find other brilliant students to study and socialize with. If there is a general lack of ambition among his classmates, he should be in a better position to take advantage of opportunities that are harder to get at more competitive schools (scholarships, internships, etc.).</p>
<p>I just don’t buy that very smart students wither up and die if they are not in the perfect environment. The world has produced brilliant people for centuries who did not all go to HYP. I am not saying that we as parents should not want our kids to be in the best possible environment for them (meaning, with a lot of like-minded peers)–only that it is not the end of the world if they can’t for four years of college.</p>
<p>There are plenty of things that wouldn’t be the end of the world that I would still strongly prefer not to experience.</p>
<p>I think there’s a big difference between a kid who has to give up Harvard for, say, the honors college at the University of Maryland, and a kid who has to give up Harvard for, say, Towson University. At Maryland, the student will still have plenty of opportunities, and there will still be many motivated students–it may take more effort to find them. At Towson, the level of teaching will be aimed at students with significantly less preparation. At Maryland, 21% of the students have SATs above 700; at Towson it’s 2%. To me, that’s a big difference. A really brilliant student may well still be able to put together an excellent education at Towson, but it will be a challenge, and it won’t be nearly as enjoyable. If that’s what you have to do because of finances, then you just have to make the most of it. But it’s far from optimal.</p>
<p>Great point, sally. Our son attends a very competitive high school with great college counselors, but the school has a policy that requires each senior to apply to safeties and the state flagship.</p>
<p>Believe me, our state flagship is on no one’s wish list, but it has a well-rated honors college and has faculty in every department from top schools. Our son will be touring this school tomorrow and will give it the respect it deserves. He will put his best into this application, the same as the other schools on his list. Though it is unlikely that our state flagship will be his only choice, if it is, he will give it his all knowing that college is what you make of it.</p>
<p>I attended College Info Weekend at his school last month and had to chuckle as, once again same as last year, the keynote address was preceded by a silent, looping “Where Did They Go To College?” trivia game projected on the massive screen as everyone filed in to find a seat–all famous faces, no famous colleges. The not-so-subliminal message of course is that college and life beyond are both what you make of them. Attending a particular college is not what makes anyone successful . The CC office works very hard to help each student craft a list of colleges that match that student with the unspoken goal of having no one shut out. Even at this well-known high school, the message is clear that there are no guarantees in college admission, and every student must be realistic in his/her approach to the application process.</p>
<p>^^ Requires each senior to apply?</p>
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<p>Define “brilliant” please. An 800/800/800 SAT score is indicative of a good test taker, yes. Is that the sum total of the definition of brilliance? Are perfect SAT scores all that top tier universities look for in a student (meaning if you have those scores, you’re a guaranteed admit), or do they consider other qualities as well? </p>
<p>Yes, requires. Why the question mark?</p>
<p>How can you require a student to apply to a specific school?</p>
<p>Hunt, Towson also has history faculty from Penn (at least three), Chicago, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, NYU and other respected schools. I am confident that any of these professors would take a personal interest in a bright, high-potential student with ample intellectual curiosity and motivation. And I don’t buy that professors necessarily “dumb down” the content simply because there are so few students who scored over 700 on their SATs. I think where you mostly see the responsiveness to student ability (at least in the liberal arts) is in grading, which shouldn’t affect the smartest kids adversely. It just confounds me that so many people here treat the brightest students like hothouse flowers that need to be constantly coddled. Adaptability and self-direction are important factors in success too.</p>
<p>Require is not the same as force. You can’t force anyone to do anything, but applying to the state flagship is part of CC policy at his school.</p>
<p>Thanks for the clarification, ChoatieMom. I’d love to see the verbiage written in the policy…that would never fly at my D’s school.</p>
<p>Until two years ago, the school policy was no more than ten applications and those apps were distributed across three reaches, three matches, three “safeties” and your state flagship. The competitive landscape has forced a loosening of those requirements, but the purpose of the strategy is to focus students on attainable schools and to avoid shut-out. The written language is not as bold as I’ve stated it here, but that’s it in a nutshell.</p>
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<p>Ah, the perennial CC question. Those with kids who are great test takers tend to want the scores to matter more than they do. Those whose kids have other gifts are grateful that colleges, even the most competitive ones, look at the whole package.</p>
<p>ChoatieMom, I like how your son’s school addresses the college-application process.</p>