<p>I am watching the Bachelor show (in Mexico) while reading this post (very shallow of me)…Are we saying that students who are headed to Baylor(instead of HYPS) are some how placing less emphasis on personal “success,” more likely to put his/her faith into practice by volunteering and helping other people more, and not a “young person baying at money”?</p>
<p>Oh, please. We may all have a very nice debate and discussion on this thread about why someone would choose to go to a school affiliated with a religion, how someone maybe looking for “moral compass.” My read on this is that Lizzy parents wanted her to go to school where there is a heavy religious component because they wanted Lizzy to continue to live in an environment that was similar to their home. Why would they have agreed to drive 14 hours to visit Baylor and not HY. I grew up in MN and WI, never have I ever thought I (or my friends) would need to go to a school in TX (great state, but I had to be there?).</p>
<p>Good for her for choosing Baylor over other schools, but I believe it was more of Lizzy’s parents decision than hers.</p>
<p>oldfort, my understanding from the article was that she has Texas roots that go way back. I didn’t get the impression she had any roots in Mass. or CT.</p>
<p>I just read the article again, her family has Texas roots, and that’s probably why the family drove to Texas. I have niece and nephews who have roots in NJ, not single one has said, “I must go to Fairleigh Dickson,” or any school in NJ for that matter.</p>
<p>MOWC, I would imagine more kids would prefer Rice (finances being equal) but apparently Rice just didn’t do it for her and Baylor did. Good for her if she found the college that she felt worked for her .</p>
<p>No, oldfort, your summary was not quite what I was saying. I was saying that I thought that students at a Christian college might experience more frequent reminders/suggestions/encouragement to volunteer. I noted that students at Harvard do quite a lot of volunteering in the community–they do a lot of work with a well-organized homeless shelter, from what I hear, and have other forms of service. However, I don’t think that the Crimson puts a lot of emphasis on encouraging students to volunteer.</p>
<p>Yes, I do think that there is a lot of emphasis on personal success at Harvard, and a student might feel somewhat left out if he/she is not a type-A striver. That’s not to say that everyone there is in that category. </p>
<p>There are a lot of posts by students who are concerned about being left out of i-banking and high-level consulting firms if they are not admitted to an Ivy League school. (Many of the parents have pointed out limitations in this way of thinking.) I think quite a few of these students want to go to Harvard (or other Ivies). Some of them get in, and judging by the number who are recruited for those firms, some of them graduate having maintained that interest. I realize that there are some “cool” challenges connected with this work, and it’s not all about the money. But part of it is about the money. I really doubt that many Baylor students are oriented that way.</p>
<p>oldfort, My guess would be that Texas might have a stronger hold for most uprooted Texans than would happen for the average Jersey kid . But of course could be wrong.</p>
<p>On the contrary, I would not be in the least surprised to discover that Baylor was viewed as a way to make local business connections by many people who share a Joel Osteen-like “prosperity gospel” POV. Yeah, they don’t want to work for Goldman Sachs or McKinsey. But they haven’t taken a vow of poverty either.</p>
<p>"YOU may think it is an accepted norm, but I don’t. I would not send my kid to a religious school without thinking twice and thrice about it. In fact, we rejected a corporate move to Tennessee largely because the public schools in the area were lousy, the sole non-religious school was mediocre, and all the rest were affiliated with religious groups. "</p>
<p>Thats your choice. I have my kids in a public school but I know people locally who sent their kids to religious private schools (not their religion) just based on the schools’ reputation to feed the Ivies or whatever else. There are only so many private schools in town and only 20% are non-denominational. Its not like they had a lot of choice if they wanted to go to a private school.</p>
<p>I agree ,oldfort - New Jersey has a hold as well. I’m from Pittsburgh originally for generations and Pittsburgh certainly has a hold on me. Too bad I can’t say Go Steelers but we’re done this year!</p>
<p>I am reluctant to wade into this discussion but what the heck…I think that part of the problem is that ‘Christian’ and ‘everything else’ are given equal weight as points of view. Someone back on p. 15 (jc40?) decried the hypocrisy that says that a kid in a Christian-leaning classroom is being narrow while a kid in a typical catch-all-everything-else classroom is being broad-minded. The problem is that a professor trying to teach multiple perspectives will, for example, talk about the Christian basis for the Crusades as well as the Muslim POV. I am not sure a professor who has been vetted to ensure that he or she is sufficiently religious will cover both of those POVs. The idea is that at a Christian college you get the Christian POV, while at others, you should get multiple. It’s like reading the Chronicles of Narnia–if you’re alerted to it, you hear the faint disdain with which he speaks of all the dark-colored people. If not, you just accept it. And sure, the same could happen with a liberal professor who dislikes religion, but hopefully, it’s easier to call him/her on it than it is to call out a religious professor at a religious school.</p>
<p>Here’s a relevant snippet from the @wis75 post #26:</p>
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</p>
<p>Now, I suppose one way you could read it is that @wis75 objects only to the nonthinkers who follow religion. That’s a generous reading. Another way you could read it is that anyone who subscribes (or, as @wis75 says it, “prescribes”; let us assume there is no subtle word choice there, but simply an inadvertent error) to religion is a nonthinker and has been brainwashed. @wis75 admits a “bias” against these people. So how is this, either way you read it, not being intolerant of people who do not share his/her point of view? What am I missing? Regardless of how you wish to parse out the meaning, this type of language is rhetorically incendiary. It does not emit a tolerant vibe. Calling anyone “brainwashed” or a “nonthinker” rarely does.</p>
<p>texaspg - people locally to you may not have a choice, but Consolation did. His/her family decided if the sole non-religious school at the new town was mediocre then they didn’t want to move. If your town had more options, would they have sent their kids to religious private schools?</p>
<p>oldfort - I live in the 4 largest city in the US. It is as choicy as any other major city but choices are 80% tied to a religion and they are EXTREMELY popular with the top colleges (I did list them in an earlier page to show that). Xiggi pointed out they were all private school conference athletic powerhouses.</p>
<p>If you have not read what I have been saying, let me say it again. In order to get to the so called top colleges that are predominantly non-religious, the parents choose to send the kids to the religious schools that happen to be feeders to the top colleges.</p>
<p>I raised my family in NJ and NY. In NYC there are some very good private religious schools, but there are even more non-religious schools. It is also the case in NJ. I would say top prep schools in NJ are non-religious schools - Lawrenceville, Kent Place, Far Hills, Montclaire-Kimberley, Pingry, Newark Academy… It is not the norm that 80% are tied to a religion, at least not where I lived.</p>
<p>“I just keep hoping someone will come on here and actually explain why a Christian college education is preferable to one that is not connected to a religion.”</p>
<p>I think the student would probably say that her salvation comes first, and a Christian education protects her commitment to God. She might also say that she wants her daily life to be filled with Christian fellowship, and she wouldn’t get nearly as much of that outside Waco. She’d be right on both counts. I think it’s a great pity that she doesn’t want to see the worlds beyond her home planet, but I don’t think it’s surprising or strange.</p>
<p>I think Harvard is paradise on earth, but if I were her, I don’t think I’d want to go to Harvard.</p>
<p>“Hanna, I really hope that this was an oversight on your part and not your belief that this is typical Christian behavior.”</p>
<p>Of course not. I meant only what I said: that women being silent in the church is an anti-feminist concept from the Christian tradition. We’ve got a whole lot of Christian biblical literalists in this country who take that admonition seriously – they just don’t go to Bryn Mawr. In fact, I would bet that there are more young women in this country who believe Paul’s instruction is a clear mandate from God than there are young women who label themselves as feminists. If some of the former did show up at BMC, the matter-antimatter explosion would take out most of suburban Philadelphia.</p>
<p>I’ve poked around the Baylor website idly today looking for evidence that it is a monolithic community that brooks no discussion of non-Christian views. That doesn’t appear to be the case. (I didn’t assume it would be the case but I didn’t think it would be so easy, with a few googly keystrokes, to find evidence of open dialogue on controversial topics.) There are policies that I find objectionable that also have opponents within the community: faculty speaking out against the prohibition of hiring professors who are not Christian or Jewish; gay students fighting to have their unofficial organization recognized; an Agnostic/Atheist Society, presumably unrecognized (“a secular oasis for Godless Bears”). I offer just as an FYI.</p>