http://www.gradeinflation.com/
Also, the sequenced prerequisites mean that if an instructor inflates grades too much, other instructors may wonder why students who got good grades in the prerequisite course struggle in the subsequent course due to weak prerequisite knowledge.
“The connections he could make there will greatly help him. But I should caution you about this point: Daniel Golden, in his famous book “Price of Admissions” about admission to Ivy League schools, said that a lot of people think Ivy League schools are great for making connections. Then they arrive on campus and realize that that only applies to those who are already well connected. The middle class kids on campus tend to socialize with the rich kids, who have their own social clubs that exclude those who aren’t rich/good looking enough.”
The other point to note about connections is that there are equally strong connections made at state flagships, etc. They are just different connections, that’s all. There are plenty of rich and powerful families who have kids at Ole Miss, Alabama, Texas A&M, etc. as well as any state flagship. There is often a not-very-worldly stereotype on CC that all-the-rich-kids-cluster-at-the-Ivies-or-similar, which is really silly and demonstrates an immense lack of how the world works.
The last sentence seems to have a typo.
I think what you meant to write is:
“The middle class kids on campus tend to NOT socialize with…”
Not all rich kids are like this if they are into some activities that the middle class kids could are also into. The “ski” may not be what the non-upper-class kids may get into, but the music or religion may be. Because the admission criteria of many ivies include ECs, there must be some ECs that the not-so-upper-class kids could excel at just like some upper-class kids. Around the time time DS was there, many kids were obsessed with Sam Tsui, who, together with his “music is fun” team member, Kurt, was very much “welcomed” by both many rich kids and many not-so-rich kids. The class day speaker in Sam’s graduation class (Is he Tom Hank in the class of 2011, who starred in Cast away and Forest Gump?) even openly mentioned how many of the class like him in his joke.
Sometimes it could be more fun to hang out with some rich kids who also have the similar kind of interests than with not-rich kids who do not share the same interests and are prone to be too pre-professional even early in college. They really live their lives doing only what they are enthusiastic about. Some members in DS’s club were like that. At least 3 of them pursued some careers related to music after graduation, I think. One of them was graduated as a PBK in a STEM major. I guess it could be fun to be with these kids in or out of the class room.
I did tell our S not to dream of relying on the connections though. Rather, I encourage him to reach out to socialize with his peers on campus while there. His life experience before college with us as our S could be quite limited, and “boring”.
Seriously?
All that is needed is a few lines about how to land a husband after graduating from a finishing school a la Wellesley! Or lines about how the GC can get you in any school with a couple of rotary phone calls to his fraternity brothers.
I have to wonder how many opinions are anchored in a distant past and an overly romantic view of today’s colleges. The distinctions (and lack thereof) made between the HYPMS of the world and their lesser counterparts are mindboggling. Or, at least, would appear so to most anyone who graduated in this century.
@xiggi…why so mean-spirited and crass?
Civility does not last long against (self-assured, prolonged, and belligerent) folly.
Apologies. I’m not xiggi.
@vandyeyes - There is nothing crass about pointing out the lack of realism and timeliness in certain comments.
This thread has been really fascinating.
I’m not sure what disturbs me more–the purely mercenary-- “to heck with taking interesting classes, protect the precious GPA” or the sense that success only comes from a narrow subset of schools.
I steered my kids to CTCL (or similar size/temperment) schools where they could learn and not be 1 of 500 kids in a lecture hall. The kind of school where a kid posts on FB “Went to an amazing lecture last night” and the 1st response is from a professor agreeing " I’m so glad you liked it, and it was lots of fun to see it with you!" IMHO, these are the schools that can lead to great graduate school opportunities.
Your son’s line of thinking is pretty good - however - this kind of bothers me a bit:
While he’s correct about GPA being “everything” (a big factor, if not “everything”) when it comes to graduate admissions, to go to a school where he’s “far above” the average student might cost him - graduate admissions will consider the academic strength of a school, and if he sets the bar too low, it can hurt. Especially if his goal is a top-tier grad school - if he wants to attend Harvard Business School, very little chance of that happening if he attends CSU Chico, for example, no matter how high his grades.
And academic reputation will play an even larger role if he plans to go directly into the workforce after his undergrad degree - a CS graduate from Stanford will have a far easier time placing than a CS grad from, say, Dominguez Hills.
That said, trying to graduate debt-free, and having a high GPA for grad school admissions is smart, provided he doesn’t take it too far.
@gingeroo, I came back to this thread to applaud you. You went into this search with a clear head and with a good sense of yourself, including your priorities and challenges. I wish I’d been so self-aware at your age. The point is not whether this was the only possible route or even the best possible route but whether the thinking behind it was mature and reasoned. I hope the responses you got didn’t bother you-don’t let them.
To the people who were quick to tell us that we should not praise this kid until after he finished his undergrad education, life can be full of 20/20 hindsight if you choose to approach it that way. If you’ve never made a mistake along the way, well, kudos to you, you are rare people. The best we can do is to think things through, be very honest with ourselves, assess our priorities, take a deep breath, and hope for the best. Or perhaps we should withhold all praise for all decisions made until life is over and we see how it all turned out. I prefer to join @Pepper03 and share that I too am impressed by gingeroo for the way he’s approached things to date.
I have no idea what your comment on hindsight even means in this context. A student who hasn’t been to college yet really has no idea if they have made the right choice or not. You will note that no one said @gingeroo has made a mistake – but instead that there is no way to know if they did or not without actual data on the outcome. Which will be available in a few years.
@gingeroo, I’d also like to applaud you and tell you not to take any harsh responses to your post seriously. You took a very thoughtful and clearheaded approach to your search. You were NOT swayed by the glitter of big names and prestige, which is hard to resist for many people. As @3girls3cats pointed out there are many paths to a destination, and I’m not so sure there is a single “best” path. Just ones with different experiences. I think this student should be praised for his approach to and satisfaction with his college application process ending in selecting a good, solid school with some pretty amazing programs. Will he be happy and succeed at his chosen school? Well, that’s a different question. For now, this one part of his life, I think @gingeroo acquitted himself well.
Well, it is becoming clear that some are determined to play the proverbial strawmen game.
What is it exactly considered “harsh” in the responses to Gingeroo. I assume that this refers to posts made by intparent and myself. For the record, here is what I wrote:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/18143256/#Comment_18143256
Amazingly enough, the same people who applaud the different paths are the same who seem to criticize the suggestions to maintain all options open as opposed to preclude some based on a set of individual criteria that might might translate well to … others. In simple words, what is good about declining to even apply to reachy schools, and what good is there to rely on partial information?
And, what is even more amazing is that most people who come back to find fault in the **more open minded suggestions ** are also truly oblivious to the choice … “we” might have made. Do you think that intparent’s daughter was impressed by the glitter of an Ivy League school? Pizzagirls’ kids? Or … myself?
Do you think that we are supporters of the Ivy or bust motto? One does not need to be familiar with years of posts to know that that is hardly the case.
What some of us HAVE learned is that there many decisions that have been based on flawed assumptions. And such flawed assumptions can be none other than a romantic view on the value of the Ivy League et al schools in terms of contacts, paths to riches, and other non-sense. Or they can be a massive and deliberate overlooking at the issues related to attending overcrowded and underfunded public schools.
What one has to do is weigh those options the best HE or SHE can but realize that those choices are for a N=1, and stop pretending the individual decision are universal, or applicable to more than the individual.
One can be applauded to make the best choice for himself and at the same time note that the same person is making a bunch of false assumptions in describing his choice. Something that is both understandable and excusable for a 17 years old, but not necessarily valid.
This thread is skidding way off tracks. Remember, we are to address the OP’s concerns about his son, not to belabor the projected quality of Gingeroo’s college plans. Chill, people…
I think the OP made it clear he was not talking about CSU Chico type schools, just not elite private HYPSM types. That said, Harvard Business School keeps a list of undergrad colleges that their class attended at http://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/class-profile/Pages/undergraduate-institutions.aspx . It’s not just a bunch of elite privates. For example I see Ohio Northern University, Georgia Southern University, Florida State, Louisiana State, Montana State, etc. HBS’s website claims they are looking for students who come from a diverse range of undergraduate backgrounds. I’m sure they get a larger number of admits from ivies and other colleges wither a larger number of highly qualified applicants, but that does prove that those applicants are favored over similarly qualified applicants from other colleges.
@gingeroo again good for you. Good for the son of the OP. I love seeing students actively involved in making decisions that will impact their lives. It seems like the OP has good reasons for their feelings. So do you @gingeroo.
@albert69 I don’t think this thread is off track at all. I believe part of what adults should do is let their children have a say in their lives. I’m not sure what the problem is with letting a mature child decide from a range of schools that have acceptable academics. Isn’t this what we are talking about with fit?
Maybe OP your son and maybe @gingeroo are tired of being part of this out of control process and understand that there is such a thing in life as balance? Maybe they are maxed out and would prefer to enjoy at least part of being young and able to try many things? I do not know. I do know what I meant when I said @gingeroo was ahead of the game. The game I was referring to was the game of life.
I am impressed when I see someone that age who appears to know themselves as well as these kids seem to.
You all have no idea if @gingeroo is ahead or not at this stage… in fact, I don’t think the real impact of undergrad educational choices are often known for quite a long time. Until you have been out in the working world, been through a couple of promotion cycles, possibly applied to and competed against other students in graduate level programs, and eventually thought through whether the major you chose was even the right thing to do with your life (and therefore whether the school even made sense for you), no one has any idea. I also think it takes some time for the economic value of the choices made vs. the cost to play themselves out. I would put forward the thought that it may be 15+ years after college graduation before an individual has a true perspective on whether the choice they made was right for them. I feel like those of you who are praising @gingeroo are doing so because you or your kids made a similar choice, or you want them to. Stop projecting on a kid who hasn’t done anything yet on whether that choice will prove to be correct or not. Maybe, maybe not. But none of you have any idea.
Pepper03, allow me to add a couple of thoughts in the form of a long story!
If the search function worked better, I’d try to dig out my first post in the Parent’s forum. After spending some time reading about the PSAT and SAT in the kiddies’ forum, I decided to jump in and share how I viewed my own future. That post, which I remember vividly, was all about how I had concluded that there were no better paths that rely on the wonderful education available at the flagship university in my state. It did not hurt that it so happened that a certain Honors’ college at that school did indeed rival the best business program available in the entire Ivy League. I spoke with (I think) candor and assurance that it would be a great deal for my parents and for me. I probably used words like unsurpassable proposal. With a few scholarships, I would graduate debt free and by using credits, I could even be “done” with the undergraduate In the regular program.
Oh trust me that I spoke with the confidence of a teenager who knew it all – courtesy of Google searches and the input for my peers! And, then the unexpected happened: the parents threw terms at me such as “lite education” when I dare to mention schools such as Arizona State. Sounded I had become Bobby Hill talking about attending a Clown College!
Was I happy? Nope! Impressed by the reaction? Even less. But I was puzzled and wanted to understand why some spoke about weird animals such as LACs. What were those Williams or Swarthmore and how could they possibly be compared to universities that offer plenty of opportunities, and especially great football and great looking members of the other sex? In a matter of weeks, I set aside the brochures of the “great schools” that I found uninspiring (yep those East Coast wonders) or totally off-putting and oozing pretentiousness (Chicago, anyone?) I ended up applying to one of those mysterious LACs but never abandoned the idea of enrolling at a better known school. And this all the while reading more and more posts from my “peers” on CC or their parents. I read about the Yale CC massacre of 2003 when so many hopes were dashed and probably thought … Well, ain’t those rolling and automatic admissions great!
Around the same time, my father announced he had made his choice. It was the little LAC and I was surprised. When the invitation to attend the scholarship weekend hit the mailbox, I did HIDE it. But the school was persistent and my trick was exposed when they called home to discuss my travel plans. Reluctantly I relented and did go. And, as expected, the rest is history. I committed within 1 hour and did not even consider the offer of a much more impressive school that came later. With plenty of friends who followed the path I was planning for myself, I had plenty of chances to “compare” and weigh what it could have been. A few years later, my younger sister did just the … opposite as she picked the “other school.” Both of us could not have been happier and both of us could not have made a better personal choice.
Is there a bottom line? Yes! Despite being very vocal and assured in my choices, I learned that there were people who … knew better. People who could talk about Smith or Reed just as well as knowing what UCLA or USC had to offer. And I will be eternally grateful to the people who DID irritate me with telling there was more culture in a jar of Dannon than in the entire State of Texas! Not to mention that I still think that few people have all the RIGHT answers at the tender age of 17 or 18. Not impossible, but doubtful!
@xiggi
I didn’t read your entire post, but I love you for that King of the Hill reference.
Thanks, TRG. I cannot hide my roots! One of the greatest shows ever! And Connie Souphanousinphone could have been on CC! 