Did your son show a lot of demonstrated interest in Syracuse? It was a late add for S25. I didn’t realize how important DI was and now S25 seems to really like it. We’re on the west coast, didn’t visit and he only attended a virtual info session (and he was 30 minutes late). He’s applying to Newhouse which I don’t think he’ll get, but second choice is VPA so maybe he has a shot? I have no idea. I wish I had discovered this forum sooner!
Yeah, I hear you. My D25 doesn’t want to go to our local honor’s college either (though I am glad she has it as a fallback). Luckily, we meticulously honed her application list with her, so she applied almost exclusively to schools in the sweet spot, and they are all throwing merit her way - and we removed any schools we would be unwilling to pay for or that didn’t give merit. It is way too hard to have that conversation after an acceptance!! It took a while to get her on board at the beginning - everyone was expecting / telling her to apply to top 20 schools. She is a 4.0, valedictorian, I.B. diploma, club president, national merit scholar finalist, etc, etc. But in the end only applied to two reaches. The rest were targets and safeties, and she is getting great results and great merit, all of which we would be very willing to pay for.
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I work at an open-access (not open-admissions, but nearly so) university that has a lot of underprepared students.
When I teach my lower-division classes, do I have a lot of students who are disengaged? Sure! But most of them are there to learn, and are fully there. And when I teach my upper-division courses, are all of my students fully engaged? No! There’s always going to be one or two who are pretty much checked out, but by that point they’re nearly all on board with everything.
But you know what? My answers to those questions would have been exactly the same (louder, for those in the back: exactly the same) earlier in my career when I worked at a selective private university with a solid reputation for academic rigor both in terms of admissions and the classroom.
My conclusion—samples of one, et cetera, but still—is that there really isn’t a difference in “student quality” at different colleges. The main meaningful difference between Highly Selective Universities™ and their lower-prestigiosity cousins is usually in terms of resources available, not in terms of quality of the faculty or students.
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And I think you’d find that selective schools often have a large number of disengaged students as well. I think a lot of bright and engaged high school students think of elite colleges as places where intellectual conversations are happening constantly when the reality is that beer pong is a constant that crosses all SAT scores.
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This is such a good point. And coming from a very under resourced high school, the draw of resources at the more prestigious colleges is strong. But it’s a double-edged sword. Many of them will meet full need (however they’re defining it) but are need aware. And some of the LACs with the best merit she hasn’t heard of, so she assumes they aren’t good.
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That brings back memories of the thread about the Princeton student who complained that the classes were too focused on academic rigor and didn’t leave enough time for activism…
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When I first started at the college where I presently work, there was a story an administrator once told me about a parent’s complaint about the work life balance of their child. They called the administrator to complain that the academic requirements were interfering with their daughter’s ability to properly socialize and that she was here to build networks.
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At least they didn’t say that she was there to find a husband…so it could have been even worse
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Good question and one many of us will be struggling with I’m sure. I’ll caveat my response by saying that (as you know) 40% can be many thousands or not many thousands, depending on your baseline. IMO if the 40% will require debt, it’s never worth it.
If we’re talking ROI alone, for a degree where you come out with hard skills (engineering or nursing come to mind), I’m not sure 40% is worth it. You’re either a qualified nurse or you’re not. A job will likely be waiting for you at the end of your 4 years, regardless of what school you matriculate from.
On the other hand, for a degree where job prospects could rely significantly on the personal connections of professors or other mentors (maybe political science or something like that?)… The 40% difference to have access to some of the most respected minds in your field might be worth it if the outcome is better job placement for the student. That’s not something that’s easy to quantify with hard numbers, of course.
Lastly, as a parent, assuming that the lower cost and higher cost schools are both within your budget(!), if I thought my child would fit and be happier at the higher cost school, I’d pay it without hesitation. As they say, you’re only as happy as your most unhappy child.
ETA: I’m not saying giving your child unlimited options/budget is worth it for the social scene or finding a husband or whatever 
. More like, if I as a parent, feel that my child will thrive emotionally, scholastically and physically at one school over another.
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This is such an interesting observation. Do you think this observation applies at the very tippy top end of the spectrum of universities (I have MIT specifically in mind here), or are we mostly talking about typical selective privates vs. typical public universities?
I mean, the likelihood of my specific kid getting into MIT is of course quite small. But the reason he applied (and the reason thinks he would be willing to pay something like double the price to go there vs. the large public universities that is he has already been admitted to), is because he thinks it would be the most amazing experience to be with a cohort of other math undergrads that are arguably some of the best math undergrads in the world if they were also admitted to MIT. He’s not sure he is going to find a community of people who are truly as passionate about math as he is at the places he has already been admitted. It might be a misplaced fear on his part (I really have no way to judge this for the schools we’ve visited), but it is definitely a concern he has.
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But sometimes those “personal connections” and mentorship might be more available to a tippy top student at a lower ranking (cheaper) college when that same student wouldn’t have stood out so much at an elite college. I think an “average student at elite college” could benefit most from those connections, but if they can leverage the benefits of being a tippy top student at a lower ranking college then that’s potentially as valuable. However, if you have a choice between “average at elite college” and “good but not picked out as the most outstanding student at mid range college” then that tilts the other way.
I’m particularly a fan of cohort scholarships, my D had one of these named full rides at a mid-ranking state flagship and her freshman year roommate was given enormous amounts of support, including positions as assistant to the University President etc, as their Rhodes scholarship candidate (she did actually win).
On the other side of the fence, my S interned at a very famous DC policy think tank and noted that he was virtually the only person who had applied through the open application process on the website. The vast majority of the 30-40 other interns were from elite schools and had got their places through recommendations/introductions from their professors. And generally speaking he didn’t think most of them were that good. There’s a level of institutional corruption there, because the research fellows who hire these interns also want invitations to speak or future fellowships at those campuses (think Harvard Kennedy School etc).
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Oh, I 100% agree. I didn’t mean to imply that only professors at more expensive schools have those connections available. What I meant is that IF a school has those top minds and connections available but it happens to be more expensive than another option with fewer potential connections, it might be worth the extra expense to go to the school where the student might be able to shine and take advantage of those potential connections and the opportunities that arise from them. I completely agree that pricetag does not in any way correlate with quality of education or opportunities from it. Sorry, I didn’t mean to come off as elitist!
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I think universities with a strong technical orientation may be somewhat different, because they have the luxury of admitting based on a narrower set of talents, but I would suggest that there really isn’t that much difference in skill level between the top students at MIT and the top students in MIT’s sorts of technical fields at the University of BigState, even though the average student’s skill level might be higher at the former. (But my very strong suspicion would be that average levels of student engagement are probably the same both places.)
And of course, given MIT’s focus, the average students in the humanities and fine arts may well be higher in terms of skill level at University of BigState than at MIT. (Though again, I expect that student engagement levels would be somewhere between similar and identical.)
And—a very few exceptions like investment banking aside—professors as a rule don’t have great contacts in the nonacademic world no matter the university.
(And the ones that do are spread pretty widely across the sector.)
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I think this is 100% correct. The tippy-top students in my kid’s big urban high school (including the “math geniuses”) got into a handful of the tippy-top national colleges and didn’t go because of finances. And they are almost all at the big local public kicking ass and taking names and will, without question, rise to the top of whatever field they choose from there. 
[adding - at big state schools in the “difficult” technical fields, the mediocre kids tend to wash out pretty early. It is hard to hang tough in large classes if you aren’t really capable. So by the time you get to graduation, I would guess the kids graduating in “difficult fields” from big state schools might be overall “better” than the average kids from a more selective smaller school that held their hands and made sure they made it through. ]
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Our situation is similar, but different. I went to Clemson. The kids have gone to games (not many because we live so far away), but they are used to Clemson things being around the house, sports on tv, etc.
Our D has a choice between several schools in the low $30’s, Clemson at the unknown $ after merit aid (could be in the $50s), and that school that shall not be named that is coming in not higher than the high $20s and could be lower when they give their final merit amount to her.
D25 keeps wearing Clemson shirts and dropping hints. I know that is the one she really loves the most in terms of “fit” for her. But it just doesn’t make sense given cost and other programs in her major are more highly regarded. No arguments in the house yet, but likely there is going to be one very disappointed D25. I wish they would just release the merit so that she can make her final decision and let this go.
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My son did a virtual audition through vpa but no other demonstrated interest.
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Although given we are talking about the same school, I’d note that choices after graduation for some of those tippy top students were quite different compared to the ambition of a top student at an elite school in the northeast or California. Many of them were interested in lifestyle and staying in the Mountain West, so another of my D’s roommates who was a nationally ranked mountain biker went to Mines rather than UCB for her PhD with a NSF GRF. In contrast my S’s peers all wanted to go to DC, NY, SF, Boston or LA.
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Ugh I made a mom mistake today and feel bad about it.
One of my S25’s colleges asks for Tri 2 grades before RD is sent. He found out he’ll probably have a B+ and a B mixed in with mainly A/A-s. Not horrible but it won’t help with this tough school and it’s a slight dip.
The B+ is from a class that you can’t get 100% on tests, even if that’s what you earned. They reduce it to a 96.5 I think.
He did get a 100% on his last test but it was reduced and his overall grade dipped below a 90 as a result. I don’t like this policy, it can hurt students, especially when we’re dealing with small margins. I emailed the teacher and questioned the policy (it’s dept-wide, not just in this class) and I explained why it was harmful in this scenario. The teacher did not respond to me but pulled my kid aside to talk about my email, saying I was asking to change my son’s grade. That was not the point of my email. My kid was mortified. I made the mistake of not telling my kid about the email so he was blindsided. 
. I wish the teacher had reached out to me instead. Lesson learned.
That said, this is a pricey private school and I do think parents should be able to question school policies if we disagree. Any experience with this kind of situation?
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I would probably just send a response clarifying that your child did not know about your email and that you just wanted to understand the policy, but were not requesting a grade change.
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Also, if this policy is school wide, probably best to address with the academic dean.
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