<p>FOR EXAMPLE, is it common for a student with great academics (like 10 APs and straight A’s) to prefer his/her state flagship school instead of an Ivy League or similar schools of that caliber?</p>
<p>those are two different questions. The answer to your question in the title is yes, bcos most high achieving students cannot get into the Ivies and that caliber college (since there ain’t no room).</p>
<p>Whether they “prefer” the state flagship is immaterial if the opportunity for an Ivy does not exist. I “prefer” to drive a Lambo, but that ain’t happening. 
</p>
<p>Fairly common around here. State flagship is Penn State which has a good academic reputation and honors college.</p>
<p>Here as well. UCs are very popular.</p>
<p>So much of this depends on what region of the country the student is in. My last college roommate is directly related to an extremely wealthy man, meaning that she could have afforded any school in the country. She was also the one of the top students in her hs class and had excellent scores across the board. BUT she wanted to stay close to home, and chose the University of Oklahoma because that’s “where the smart kids go”. </p>
<p>Many top students are like her, particularly in states where few, if any, top privates exist. </p>
<p>As a practical matter, there are far more spaces in the state flagships than there are in super-selective colleges.</p>
<p>@mamabear1234 do honors colleges provide employment perks and/or networking benefits? I’ve never understood how they benefit the students</p>
<p>Definitely true in my state (Texas). Most top students choose UT-Austin, TAMU, or other state schools that offered them significant merit money. </p>
<p>This depends on what your definition of high achievement is and what state or high school attended. </p>
<p>At the public magnet HS I attended, the highest achieving students didn’t typically flock to state/local public flagship/4-year campuses. It was and from what I still am hearing from younger alums/recent graduates, Ivy/elite college/university or bust. Especially considering for the mostly working/lower-middle class students, the private elite colleges are often better academic and financial deals given their generous levels of FA and/or need & merit based scholarships. </p>
<p>While the institution of CUNY Macaulay Honors has started to change this, the high competitiveness of entering the program plus its stringent academic requirements for staying in* is such that its appeal only goes so far. </p>
<p>For the most part, the state/local public colleges are still mainly considered options for those in the middle to bottom of a given graduating class or those who blew off their college* app process so badly they ended up being rejected from all other places. </p>
<ul>
<li>One can only enter as a matriculating freshman and one can be dropped from the program if he/she fails one of the required Macaulay City seminars or fails to maintain a 3.5 cumulative GPA after 3 semesters or 3.3 cumulative GPA in the first 3 semesters. Once one is dropped, he/she cannot get back into Macaulay Honors.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>** Like a well-off UES classmate with respectable stats who assumed his college applications “would take care of themselves” and ended up having no other options but to attend a CUNY as a regular student until he got his act together and transferred to a top 20 university. </p>
<p>In Texas, yes. Most of the high achievers in my kids’ classes went to UT-Austin, UT-Dallas or TAMU. Second tier (not top 10%) went to Texas Tech or UNT. Very few went to private universities and even fewer went out of state.</p>
<p>In NJ many top students go to Rutgers, attend the honors college, and get great scholarships. My daughter has one pre-med friend who took this route. I know another who did this and graduated in 3 years (using his AP credits) and is now in a masters program in chem engineering. The year before my daughter, the valedictorian went to Rutgers (the sal went to Princeton!) - I think she is pre-med also.</p>
<p>It has been the case for almost everyone we have known in every state we have lived in. (we move a lot and of our 4 high school grads, they graduated in 3 different states.) Most kids we have known do not even think beyond their state borders. Where we live now, it is unusual for kids to think beyond the local regional university. Last yr, our ds was the only teen we knew who applied to other schools.</p>
<p>Also pretty much true in Michigan.</p>
<p>I live in VA, so lots of high achieving students attend UVA (W & M and VTech as well). Many of the students I know who did are those who would not qualify for need based FA and so the state schools are better financially. In addition, a lot of students prefer a school close to home/where their friends attend. </p>
<p>Same in Georgia. Top students wind up at Georgia Tech primarily, University of Georgia secondarily. Quite a few of these top students apply to and gain admission to the prestigious private universities around the country including Ivies, but in the end they “go where the money is,” as one recent graduate advised my teen daughter. They accept scholarships to state universities, and never look back. In Georgia, just about anyone with a B average in high school gets a full tuition scholarship by law, so a student has to have some very good incentives to leave the state.</p>
<p>In my experience, depends on parental income and savings, and whether the student is just pretty good or outstanding.</p>
<p>Outstanding student with poor parents might get admitted to top private and be able to go for next to nothing.
Outstanding student with rich parents (say more than $100k a year) … well they might get admitted to the top private but whether they can go depends on whether the parents can afford to pay. If not, to the state uni.</p>
<p>Pretty good students are more likely to get admitted to the state uni, unless there’s some corruption or other factor at work (legacy, development admit, other hook, guy applying to a college with a major sex imbalance, etc.)</p>
<p>Here n our suburban PA district, outstanding students regularly end up attending Penn State or Pitt honors colleges, and some do not even bother applying to elites. (Imagine that - a further influx of applications from students with straight A’s, 2300 plus SAT’s, and a boatload of AP’s.) Some who are admitted to elite universities end up at the honors colleges after careful deliberation. It is not at all unheard of for a student to be admitted to an elite university but turned down at one of the honors colleges if their profile is lopsided or they are hooked, although typically a student who is admitted to an elite will also have an honors college option. </p>
<p>The biggest complaint I have heard is that some desirable corporate recruiters refuse to accept resumes from honors college grads no matter their credentials. But, if they are screening by SAT scores as well as GPA, they will also turn down candidates from elite universities whose SAT scores do not measure up, even if GPA is high. </p>
<p>Very true in Texas. At our big public, there are years when many kids go out of state, but the last two-three years, the top kids have flocked to UT and A&M, even when they are admitted to Ivy League schools. Some of it is Texas patriotism, some of it is cost. I know that the Ivy admits look at the sticker prices and then choose Texas. </p>
<p>Heck, I didn’t even go to the flagship. Worked out just fine, no regrets :)</p>
<p>I lived in a number of state in the Midwest. In what was considered the upscale, but not nationally known high schools, yes, the state flagship was the main venue for the top students with a sprinkling of students going to selective private schools. In those days, the prices for schools like Uof IllinoisUC, Ohio State, PSu, Pitt, IU, UMich, Mich State, were veritable bargains, and the reps were solid. Most of the families I knew did not qualify for fin at at the schools, and if they chose private schools, it was rare they’d get enough aid to bring the cost down so that they were comparable with one student in college. So it was a huge financial decision to have a student go to even schools with great reps like Kenyon, CMU, Case, unless a nice scholarship was in the offering. It didn’t seem to even be a big deal decision as many qualified students simply did not even apply to the privates. They made that decision up front if they came to the conclusion they were not likely to get enough merit, and knew they were not going to qualify for financial aid. They waited for that state school accept and that was it.</p>
<p>My SIL’s family was that way these years. They live in PA, so Pitt and PSU were the main goals. Main campus were the key words. Again, they fall into that category of having to stretch to pay for college but do not qualify for aid. Though they were good students, their stats did not put them at a place where they were likely to get merit money of an significant amounts to bring the cost down to the state school levels at those schools they felt were as “good” or better.</p>
<p>Catholic schools seem to be a major exception. Duquesne does enjoy a following from those who could have gone to Pitt, for instance, and those in the Cleveland area often chose John Carroll over OSU. Rather than going down state to UIll, I saw parents ante up for Loyola and DePaul in Chicago, sometimes sweetened with merit money for the better students. Notre Dame seemed to have little trouble being quite the draw.</p>
<p>Then I moved here. I live in NY, and feel that the SUNYs are terribly underrated. I live in a suburb of NYC, so things are not typical here, given the socio economics being very high, and then very low. It seems to me that the high school grads in most of the suburban schools either choose to go locally to a private, often Catholic school, or go OOS, or go away to schools, without long lists of kids going to the SUNYs. Binghamton and Geneseo tend to show up on the destination lists each year, but not that many, surprisingly, to me. I’ve seen the lists for the pricey, exclusive independent schools, catholic schools and public high schools in my area, and they simply do not have a lot of SUNYs. I’m sure that is not the case in most NYC public schools where CUNYs and community colleges will spot the list, but even then NYU, FOrdham and many other privates schools, most not well known at all nationally are common destinations. But it seems to me, that the top students go for the most selective schools. </p>
<p>Looking at my public high school’s college choices, even there the privates rule. My neighbors all had/have kids in private school, with one OOS public in the mix. I know kids going to UMich, GTEch, and other such OOS, and those seem to be more common destination for the high stats kids than our own SUNYs. My one son was truly an outlier at his school applying to SUNYs, and even more so choosing to go to one. Fordham enjoys a rep and draw over and beyond the SUNYs among kids who have the stats, from what I can see. So NY, iMO has a severely underused, under rated college system. THe main SUNYs are lower in rankings, ratings, reputation than most of the public OOS flaghsips. We don’t have a true flagship, though Buffalo would be the closest to one with its comprehensive offerings at the graduate as well as ug level, size, sports and other EC offerings. BUt still, it tends to get a local draw rather than statewide. Binghamton, though smaller, probably has the best overall representation of students from all over NY state, along with Geneseo, as they ahvfe the best rep. Given the bargain price, and that it is modeled after the California system, it’s always been puzzling to me that it did not get the allure the CA state schools, as well as other state systems such as Virginia’s. But then, the good part of that, is that it’s a lot easier to get accepted. My brother’s DDs, in VA did not get into any of their instate choices, and are at an OOS flagship instead. Puzzling as they were good high school students, and would have been shoo ins at, say PSU, UMD, but not at the VA schools. My BIL’s son’s did not get into their state flagship picks due to the 10% rule Texas has for UT Austin and A&M. Again, strong students, who had some nice choices, including Baylor instate. </p>
<p>Our SUNYs tend to get VERY competitive for grad school, prof school. Some programs are highly selective. Easy to get into them as ugs, but thereafter, it’s very difficult My son’s SO, tried for two years to get into PT, OT programs in NY as a grad student and even with a 3.5 college GPA, and work experience in the fields, did not get slots and is going private because it was that, not doing it. </p>
<p>One son did go to an OOS main school and one did go to a SUNY. The one who went to the SUNY felt like he’d been dropped into a whole new world where he didn’t know a single person. No one from our area, his school went there. My son at the OOS uni, understandably had some of that, but there were large number of OOS kids, so one didn’t entirely feel like everyone knew each other except for oneself, which was kind of how my one son was feeling. The vast, vast majority of kids came from the neighboring area. Exceptions were the international students, and that was a larger than expected group. So he felt out of place in his own state school. Looking at the numbers, he indeed would have been hard pressed to have OOS students, but he had expected more from all through NY, but apparently the SUNYs do have a heavy regional draw. </p>
<p>So it all depends on one state, the schools one state has, where you live in the state, and the school attended. Some public schools, and Scarsdale not far from me, sports a list of college destinations that rival even the most selective private schools. In the same county, there are schools where the local CCs, CUNYs, and local small privates one never sees on this board tend to make up the college lists and destinations. One such school offers free or near free tuition scholarships to good students; my son got one, and actually a number of his peers even from high income families given the same offer took the school up on it It would have been less expensive for him to have gone there than to the nearest community college, as it’s in an easy locale transportation wise. </p>