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<p>Gag me with a spoon… please. Am I to believe a HS student has something so unique to offer versus other highly qualified HS students? What - did their essay move me to tears?</p>
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<p>This is just sour-grapes nonsense. The coursework at Brown, for example, is far far more difficult than similar classes at our local state university. My son rarely had to crack open his textbook to get near-100% averages in his state university classes. By contrast, he has to work his bottom off for each A he gets at Brown.</p>
<p>And we certainly don’t feel entitled, we feel grateful for him being able to get a world-class education for a mere $5k a year after financial aid.</p>
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<p>Er, yes. Certainly my daughter’s college apps were structured around pitching a strength that was likely to stand out and set her app apart from the others. That’s why she could get into reach colleges – she had something they were looking for and her apps made that clear.</p>
<p>It’s why “well-lopsided” kids often tend to do better than the “well rounded” ones.</p>
<p>“Am I to believe a HS student has something so unique to offer versus other highly qualified HS students? What - did their essay move me to tears?”</p>
<p>More likely it moved the admissions officer to laughter, but tears can work too. Most importantly, the essays that tip the scale are just good reads, whether funny, sad, or interesting.</p>
<p>The first thing I ask HSers who don’t know where to begin their essay is, “Why is your best friend best friends with you, and not with someone else?” When you know people well, they really are unique, right? The catch with the essay is to capture the unique humanness of that one kid. It can be done.</p>
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<p>Really - I thought Brown was known to be easy with their As and allowed students to take all their classes pass/fail (Satisfactory/No Credit). The State U must have been really easy.</p>
<p>Here’s an example of one of Brown’s tough classes:</p>
<p>* 1280R Puppet Theatre Workshop
This class is designed to provide students with an introduction to puppet theatre and performance.*</p>
<p>LakeClouds is correct about Brown. You can either get into an Ivy, or get into Brown.
Second; to Sue22…depends on how you define middle class. All I know is that there are lots of parents who can’t get a dime due to FAFSA, and still cannot afford the $55k per year schools, and it ISN’T because they aren’t willing to change their lifestyle. They simply can’t afford it.</p>
<p>What about those people who claim only the rich kids get in?</p>
<p>MitchKreyben-
Perhaps part of the problem is the use of the word middle class. When parents are defining middle class as families with incomes up to $200,000 (which incidentally place them in the top 5 percent nationally) it skews the conversation.</p>
<p><a href=“What Percent Are You? - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com”>What Percent Are You? - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com;
<p>For instance, a family with an income in the top quartile in most of the country ($100,000) would go to Dartmouth for FREE with no loans.</p>
<p>[Financial</a> Aid Office](<a href=“Home | Financial Aid”>Home | Financial Aid)</p>
<p>A family with a kid at Harvard earning $150,000, placing them in the top 9 percent nationally, would pay $15,000 or less per year. That would add up to $60,000, or about $3,000 (2 percent of income) put aside in college savings each year of the student’s life.
Furthermore, there are hundreds of students with family incomes over $200,000 receiving finaid at Harvard based on extenuating financial circumstances.
<a href=“http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic551531.files/Financial%20Aid%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf[/url]”>http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic551531.files/Financial%20Aid%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf</a></p>
<p>I don’t doubt that some families don’t feel they can pay the cost of an Ivy League education. There’s no shame in that. I’m just pointing out that if they’re not getting financial aid it’s not because they are truly middle class.</p>
<p>People seem to think admitted % is a random distribution</p>
<p>Is this satire?</p>
<p>How is Brown not an amazing school?
I don’t know about their grading policies but I do know thousands of students apply to brown and, like any other college, only a select number of people get As, so Brown, even IF it doesn’t have hard classes, certainly isn’t a walk in the park, grade inflation or no grade inflation.</p>
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<p>For the vast majority if students, it is a walk in the park and has been for a long time. You can take hard programs, like engineering, but that’s the small minority.</p>
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<p>Most of Ivy-mania is self-perpetuating. More people apply, which makes the school seem more desirable, which makes yet more people apply, etc. It has little to do with the experience once there.</p>
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<p>Yes, you can take any or all classes pass/fail (Satisfactory/No Credit). Interestingly, relatively few students use it frequently and when they do it’s usually in a optional course outside of their experience and intended major. Also, there are no distribution requirements, thus there are no lame general-intro classes and every class is filled up with students who want to be there.</p>
<p>These elements, in turn, lead to a situation where there are frequent A’s, which is the not the same as easy A’s. Consider: the student body is filled with exceptional students who learned to optimize their overall grades in high school – otherwise they would not have been accepted. Allow them to only take classes in subjects they will enjoy and allow them to take classes pass-fail where they have limited experience or ability, thus freeing up time to focus on core classes first. Why wouldn’t this group as a whole earn a lot of A’s, even with higher-than-usual grading standards?</p>
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<p>When did you last go to school? The state schools nowadays are easy everywhere. I went back for my bachelor’s after 25 years in the mid-2000s and classes are much, much easier than they used to be.</p>
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<p>Around half if not more of Brown’s current student body is majoring in a STEM field; this is not the Brown from the late 1960’s anymore – today’s students are driven, they know the future won’t be handed to them on a silver platter. All but one of my son’s classes so far have been in either computer science, applied math or physics. No gimme-A’s there!</p>
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<p>I think the point of this thread is that they are indistinguishable from students at any of the top 100 or so colleges/universities and are there as a basis of a crap-shoot.</p>
<p>In terms of difficulty, Brown is the easiest of the Ivies and for CS/Physics/etc. a lot easier than top schools like MIT/CMU/Berkeley/Cal Tech/UIUC/etc.</p>
<p>LakeClouds, you are simply misinformed, especially if you think UIUC’s undergrad CS classes are harder than the ones at Brown. My one son attends Brown and the other son lives down in Champaign and has a CS degree. Do you have any direct knowledge or are you just repeating online babble you’ve heard second- and third-hand?</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, my son at Brown turned down a $15,000 a year 4-year engineering dept. scholarship from UIUC plus multiple honors designations to attend Brown, so it’s not as if we hadn’t looked into this.</p>
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<p>Yes and yes.</p>
<p>UIUC is 5th ranked and Brown is 20th:</p>
<p>[Best</a> Computer Science Programs | Top Computer Science Schools | US News Best Graduate Schools](<a href=“http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/computer-science-rankings]Best”>http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/computer-science-rankings)</p>
<p>In world rankings, UIUC is 28th and Brown >50th</p>
<p>[Top</a> 100 QS World University Rankings for computer science and information systems 2011 | Higher Education Network | Guardian Professional](<a href=“http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/2011/sep/05/top-100-universities-world-computer-science-and-information-systems-2011]Top”>Top 100 QS World University Rankings for computer science and information systems 2011 | Higher Education Network | Guardian Professional)</p>
<p>And numerous other surveys from previous CC post:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/136925-list-top-computer-science-schools.html?highlight=brown+uiuc+computer+science[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/136925-list-top-computer-science-schools.html?highlight=brown+uiuc+computer+science</a></p>
<p>I think you’re one the one whose misinformed and repeating biased-babble. Remember - the plural of anecdote is not data. Can you find one survey that places Brown ahead of UIUC?</p>
<p>We’re talking about undergrad quality, not the computer science graduate programs.</p>
<p>USNWR: Brown 15, UIUC 46
[National</a> University Rankings | Top National Universities | US News Best Colleges](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/page+2]National”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/page+2)</p>
<p>Forbes: Brown 19, UIUC 86
[America’s</a> Top Colleges List](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/list/]America’s”>Forbes America’s Top Colleges List 2022)</p>
<p>Payscale: Brown 45, UIUC 88
[College</a> Education Value Rankings - PayScale 2013 College ROI Report](<a href=“http://www.payscale.com/college-education-value-2013]College”>College Education Value Rankings - PayScale 2013 College ROI Report)</p>
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<p>Last time I checked, people don’t study “undergrad” but rather something more specific. For CS, UIUC is better, for puppet theater, I’d say Brown.</p>
<p>@calmom: You appear to lean on a couple of strawmen.</p>
<p>First, being in-range of course doesn’t mean that you’re going to get in, only that you have a chance. If you’re solidly in-range on standardized test scores and grades as well as extracurriculars and essay quality, you’ll have an average chance. Perhaps you wished to imply that this average chance is still only around 5-20% at the most competitive universities, making in-range-ness not all that meaningful.</p>
<p>Second, of course the process isn’t random, but that doesn’t mean that applicants can possibly predict it. Nothing is truly random. The admission process feeds largely from its adcoms’ personal preferences and biases; while not random in the sense of not being influenced by anything, these are still not possible to be known.</p>
<p>emberjed nails it. Random is not the correct work. Opaque is. The only thing students can try to control are their grades, test scores, and EC’s. As to all of the other “important” things that the admiss committees consider? Forget it. You can try to guess, but 9/10 times you’ll be wrong. EXCEPT, for ethnic diversity. That is predictable. Two kids, equal scores, grades, EC’s …ethnically diverse wins. Just the way it is. It may be justice, or not. I’m not here to judge. All i know is that white kids have to be better in order to break ties. The good news is there are plenty of good schools out there from which kids can graduate and have stellar careers, even if they aren’t $55,000/year prestige sheepskins. Only one of my grandparents had a degree at all. Both of my parents did, and were extremely proud of their accomplishments at “big state U”. Sometimes we have to step back and check reality. Getting in to these prestige schools reminds me of Real Housewives…fighting about everything except the things that matter.</p>
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<p>Based on what? A list created by some random journalist with no direct experience? Something is correct just because it appears in print? Have you ever read the National Enquirer? I used to be editor-in-chief of my college paper, and it never ceased to amaze me how often my peers would ho-hum what I told them and then emphatically repeat the same thing back to me the following week after I had published it in the college paper – it’s not like they didn’t know I was in charge of the paper, but seeing something in print somehow made it indisputable.</p>
<p>Consider: the rankings of the top few dozen schools out of thousands are really instances of hair-splitting where minor factors can hold significant sway. A larger school is likely to get more peer endorsements and thus list higher; an engineering department is likely to come to mind first and most often when a subject such as CS is considered. A school’s graduate school reputation will also heavily influence its ranking, disadvantaging colleges where the primary focus is the undergraduate body.</p>
<p>I think an honest comparison would be cross-admit rates for those students who have been offered admission by both schools. I’d guess that MIT and CalTech would frequently but not always beat out Brown for a CS major; CMU might be close; but Brown would surely win the selection battle the vast majority of the time against UIUC and Berkeley.</p>
<p>I have nothing against UIUC. My oldest son moved to Champaign so that he could take a couple of graduate-level CS courses to see if he should apply to their graduate program in pursuit of a masters/phD. But I get so weary of Brown-bashing by people who don’t know the school and the true strength of its academics.</p>
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<p>Mitch, you sound like you are 14, whatever your chronological age is. Leave the adults alone to discuss the issue in peace.</p>