By “hidden value” is he mean these schools are a good value or is he using it more to mean “hidden gem”. Many of these schools, such as Elon, Bentley, and Denison only give merit $$ to the top students and they are expensive.
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Part of what Jeff is suggesting is that by aiming “low” in terms of selectivity, applicants are in a better position to get a good financial package. So, yes, a top student could get a merit scholarship at the schools you mention rather than pay sticker price at a bigger name school.
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Agree with this. The random element just means more work for kids to research an allegedly “curated” group of schools, only to discover that the curation is haphazard. Rutgers and Spelman are like each other how exactly? These categories seem crazy to me.
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Hmm, I can imagine a nice girl from NJ who is 100% sure her “dream school” is Barnard, but who would do well to consider Rutgers and Spelman in addition (or instead.)
Same way Columbia and Dartmouth are in the same group 
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Sure. And Smith and Mt Holyoke and Agnes Scott and Wheaton….
Positing that there are zero young women in NJ who need to be told that Rutgers is a university. And very few of those young women who think that the Rutgers Experience is at all similar to Barnard.
I am a HUGE Rutgers fan, btw. So this is no diss of Rutgers. Just that having these random universities show up on these lists as if there’s some deep game of “one of these things is just like other” strikes me as not helpful for HS kids.
The list printed here taken from Selingo’s book. In the book, every college comes with a comment. So, the list above is out of context as presented here. My apologies to the author.
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They used to use the terminology of 4 University Centers - Buffalo, Binghamton, Albany, Stony Brook. They have had funding priority this century, and all moved up to D1 sports. All have good USNWR rankings, but that has not helped them draw OOS students. Neither did being the #1 North Regional school help TCNJ draw OOS. Non-flagships are frequently overlooked.
Although if you go to the Binghamton page here, there are very active OOS groups hoping to get their kids into Binghamton for nursing, business, and engineering. The people who know, know.
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I have not read the book, but we have 2 kids in college at 2 of the schools on the list - one ‘hidden value’ and one ‘large leader’ and both are having amazing experiences, so maybe he’s onto something?
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Asheville is also on Fiske’s short list of 4-5 schools, forget what they call it.
I’m stealing your idea!
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I have also have kids at two of the “hidden value” schools, and like Islandmama1, both are having incredible experiences. Both were admitted to higher ranked schools, but went with the school they saw as the best fit, and receiving merit money was certainly an added bonus.
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But to another poster’s point, there may be many on the west coast who need to hear it. It is interesting to me how some schools that are pretty popular on CC (like Pitt) have tiny numbers of people from our Bay Area high school applying. Even a relatively well known college like UIUC has some people here saying “what does that stand for”? For context, less than 10 a year applying to these out of a senior class of around 300, of which something like 90% go on to 4 year colleges. Some other schools have 80+ a year applying.
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I agree with you in theory– more knowledge about more schools is better for everyone.
But is it realistic to assume that a kid in California who has a wide range of public, in-state options, really needs to know that New Jersey has a flagship university? Can’t one assume that the kids in CA who are ready to attend and pay for their “not instate” public option already know that there are 49 states NOT California- and each has a public university system which can be easily researched online???
Is New Jersey that obscure?