For what it’s worth, I really love the cozy vibe in Delaware, especially the beaches.
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And to parents like me who feel guilted for letting their kids decide. I had one parent whose son was at UVA that made me feel bad that my daughter wouldn’t apply to UVA, like it was a huge loss for us. But fortunately, another parent fully respected me not putting my daughter in a situation she didn’t want to be in. Like I said, I’m a product of this hyper-competitve area, so it really is a mental shift for me.
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This is what I was going to suggest. I took my daughter on a few tours without my husband to schools that felt like alternates before the visit. He took her on tours for some we thought she’d love. Many of the on-paper favorites fell quickly from the list. Then, an alternate became the dream. My husband was puzzled, so we went back together. He walked around campus for a half an hour saying “look at this!” I feel like the personal connection is important for us as parents, too.
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This is a great post. So true. Big schools have become popularity contests based on athletics. Started with Flutie effect at BC, see Villanova. Clemson a great example. We toured with our daughter (who applied) and it seems like a really nice school, but nothing worthy of the applications it is suddenly getting. No nationally distinguished programs, pipeline to Wall Street or consulting or top tier law firms. I am sure regionally very strong, I am not trying to bash it rather to see it is not more prestigious than DE just because it has gotten hard to get into. I think coming out of COVID, many kids just decided they wanted a better balance of fun, sun, sports and academics (my DD included). Putting aside WVU (which is having major budgetary issues and cutting programs), I would put UD on par or over all of these schools academically. Delaware’s endowment is 2x Clemson’s and a number of the other schools, which must mean they are putting out successful alums who give back!
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I am not sure if it’s mentioned but “where you go is not who you’ll be” by Frank Bruni might be a good read for him. My D24 was sharing that a classmate was low-key dumping on a classmate for being excited to go to a non-selective school to play their sport, and my constant drum beating of “people can succeed (and fail!) anywhere!” has gotten through because she was appalled at the conversation. (and that kid is probably swimming through a pool of merit money by being a high stats kid at a non-selective school…)
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This is strange. Kids from the super fancy schools tend to consider this kind of transparent bias to be rather gauche. There are subtle ways they raise the flag to cash in on the prestige. But openly belittling people from other schools is usually beyond the pale.
Sorry to hear they didn’t get the decency memo.
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Instead they go Ivy+ mixers and don’t have to even deal with others 
(but I do agree, I find that their bias was that transparent very surprising…)
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They didnt belittle. They just walked away. After all, they were star bellied sneetches, and my kid was plain-bellied.
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In our area the joke is
How do you know someone has gone to Harvard?”
Answer:
Because they will mention it with in the first few minutes of meeting them and bring it up every other sentence
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Ditto MIT
People who aren’t too gauche say they went to school “in Boston”. The best response to that is to say "oh you went to UMass?
Or they say they went to college “in New Haven” and the listener responds “oh, Southern Connecticut State, cool!”
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Locals just call it “Southern”. Really messes with the Yalies heads!
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Or University of New Haven?
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Bunker Hill Community College?
Neither Harvard nor MIT is in Boston (they are in Cambridge), so the response can name any of many other colleges in Boston.
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