Thanks for sharing your interesting experience in post #277.
when DS applied to colleges, we might not be as “insightful” and “strong armed” as your father. But when everything had been said and done, he applied and got into much more LACs than national research colleges. The LACs included one of the Claremont Colleges, and several comparable ones in the east. We were “obsessed” with two things around that time: any college which claims to have the “residential colleges” system, and mid-to-small-sized colleges (most of them turned out to be LACs.) I suspect that if he did not get into his college (which we could not resist not going after having got in, of course) at that time, he would most likely attend either Swarthmore or Pomona.
@xiggi thanks for sharing that story-I love King of the Hill so I appreciated that as well!
When you say your father made the choice you don’t mean he decided where you would go-just that you would visit correct?
Interesting that your sister had the same choice and took the route you had planned. Your father exposed you to other options-he guided you along the way. In the end who made the decision? You? Your father?
If your first post was how you had it all figured out and knew where you were going what was your post when you reached your actual decision? How long of a process was that? Tell me more!
intparent, NO ONE knows whether their choice will prove to be “correct”–because there is no way of comparing it to other choices that were turned down. Everyone brings their own confirmation bias to discussions like this.
It is at times amusing to read posts by posters or who are pretty convinced they or their child “could get into an Ivy if they wanted to”. With admission rates in the single digits, there are so many very qualified candidates turned away. IMO a little humility is in order.
I’ve never gauged any kid, including my own, as more than “statistically competitive” for any top ten school, either in or out of the bad basketball league. Without seeing the entire cohort the admissions office evaluates, it is difficult to say more than that.
Re; they or their child “could get into an Ivy if they wanted to”.
In our family, we would never assume that our child could get into an ivy. It is more like: Why not just add a couple of these “lottery schools” there to see if we hit a jackpot. (To “emphasize” that we really never intend to press our child to pursue such schools - don’t want to get his hope high and induce the pressure as a consequence, he had actually completed a grand total of one school out of 8 ivies and their equivalents. Hmm…he chose the same strategy in his “grad” school applications even though we wereinvolved much less by then. We did urge him to do AMCAS in addition to TMDSAS though, convincing him on the ground that he could “fall through the crack” if unlucky. With a LizzyM score of 78 from a top college, he was definitely on the humble side.)
My brother was one of those students, many decades ago, who got into an Ivy despite his HS counselor’s expectation of the opposite outcome. It can happen. But things are quite different now…
"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. "
Thank you for providing this. But honestly, I don’t know how living, breathing adults manage adulthood without realizing that duh, graduates of Avg State U get into HBS (or insert other prominent grad school of your choice). How naive do you have to be to think that your life trajectory depends on a handful of schools?
@JustOneMom,
Yes the parents forum usually is vey anti-ivy biased. This thread at the beginning was more pro-ivy so I was a little disoriented, but now it’s back to normal.
Parent’s forum usually leans towards pay what you can afford for college and pick financial and academic safeties that you would like to attend. These normally lean towards the direction of the op’s son’s position at the first post.
My wife told me a story: An “online” friend of hers has 3 kids. On her blog, she likes to talk about her children a lot, oftentimes a little bit obsessively (Haven’t we all gone through that stage?!)
Her younest child got into a med school in California, UCSF, from Berkeley. From that day on, she stopped talking about that particular child on her blog – as if that child all of a sudden stopped being her child after that day.
Probably not true. Our AGI was less/around that figure the year my D applied for FA for her freshmen year and we were virtually full pay to all schools. Only HPS can give us at least 5K. This according to their NPC calculator.
I left holes in my anecdote and added some confusion. To clear things up, I drove the entire process and did the research from the start to the end. My parents offered support and advice but we’re not making any decision. What my father did say is that HIS favorite school was the unexpected LAC. This was to express that it would be the choice he’d make we’re he the student. It was not an imposition.
The parents who talked about “education lite” were CC parents who described business degrees. My parents talked highly of McCombs at UT. They knew little to nothing about LAC but learned from the brochures sent to the house. I knew my dad was rummaging through my boxes and even moved a couple out of the “no way” box, and especially the Ivy League school he attended. He never pushed as he knew I did not want to travel East of The Miss.
My sister made a choice between the LAC and that farm in Palo Alto. She made her decision in December. Mine was in April.
It is important to know that Texas has automatic admissions and that ranked students can reduce their applications substantially if the Texas schools represent matches or safeties. Schools such as ASU (and Tulane in my days) also offered quick decisions about admissions and scholarships. It is different for residents of most states.
The point of my post was that, despite being very active in preparing my next steps, I was lucky to read the advice and tough words on CC and benefit from the resiliency of a school I was considering a more distant possibility.
But rest assured I thought I knew it all. Just as many kids that age!
I don’t think there is a complete anti-Ivy bias on this forum. But it is exhausting to see so many students and parents (and the parents should know better!) who think if you don’t go to an Ivy, it isn’t worth going. Or that an Ivy would be the best fit for EVERY high performing student. Or that you can’t possibly find success in graduate school or the working world without an Ivy education, or at least that it somehow almost never happens. Or that going to an Ivy makes the choirs sing and all doors open. And every year we see posters out here who are “Ivy or bust” in their mentality. It is ridiculous, honestly.
We all have our own experiences and motivations and things that influence us. This topic is really fresh for us as our daughter is a freshman in college. I wasn’t entirely clear as to what the OP son’s motivation was, the OP did mention that his son was a hard worker and not a slacker but I had a sense that the OP’s son was looking to not be in an intense academic environment so as to have a more balanced college experience. This of course is fine, but not necessarily a recipe for academic or professional success. I do respect the OP son’s consideration of the financial considerations.
The best and the brightest are going to be the best and the brightest no matter where they go, if they have the desire and the drive their success will manifest itself.
These decisions are hard because of all of the variables that come in to play, there are no lack of challenges when it comes to making these decisions. The cost to attend college is obscenely expensive and everyone has their own sense of value in regard to what certain educational opportunities are worth, how ever that is quantified.
The application process for students and their families is an evolution. It is a process and student and parents do their best to have it all come together in the most positive way possible. I believe that there should be a variety of the type of schools that are applied to. The more gifted the student the more options that will be available to them. I believe the OP’s son should apply to a couple of State Flagships, a few schools where he would likely secure significant merit aid awards and at least two reaches. You want to have options and the thought processes will evolve along the way. I believe at the very least many top notch students would want to know if they would be admitted at some of the most selective schools in the country. Yes they may not be and that will be a temporary bruise to their self esteem, but they will get over it and it will contribute to their fortitude.
Our daughter’s list of schools that she applied to was reach heavy but she applied to 15 schools. She was the Valedictorian of her High School class and had everything else necessary to be worthy of consideration at highly selective schools. As reaches she applied to four Ivies and Georgetown, Bowdoin, Williams and Middlebury. She also applied to seven other schools,two state flagships, and five schools where significant merit aid was likely. She was accepted at 10 of the 15 schools, wait listed at three and rejected at two.
You don’t know how all of this will unfold. We believed we had it covered, the flagships were the least expensive, with the exception of one school that offered a $40,000 a year merit scholarship. We had the right array of academic and financial options for she as a student and for us as parents.
Re: “if you don’t go to an Ivy, it isn’t worth going.”
There is another twist of the above statement:
“If you go to an Ivy but do not major in one among a few majors, it isn’t worth going.”
Which one of the two is more ridiculous?!
It is all about money! money!! money!!!
It may be fine to be concerned about the career and money some time during the second half, or preferably in the last third of your college career, but there is no need to start to worry about this in the freshman year or even before setting your foot on campus.
“Why is there such an anti-Ivy bias in the Parents Forum compared to the rest of CC?”
There is no “anti-Ivy bias.” The Ivy League schools are all terrific, top notch schools that offer amazing opportunities. No one on this thread is arguing any differently, and there are few parents on the Parents Forum who would disagree with the above statement.
We’re just more than a little tired of people who are naive, who just fell off the turnip truck, who act as though either “HYPSM” or “the 8 Ivies” are some kind of head and shoulders above plenty of other elite LAC’s and universities that offer much the same experiences and opportunities – just in slightly different flavors. We’re tired of people that they don’t realize that the vast majority of the grads of HYPSM and / or the Ivies are not changing the world (nor should they) - they’[re just going off, going to work, doing their thing, coming home and living their lives. We’re tired of people who think that one set of schools is the Very Meaning of Life (or “Heaven on Earth”) and the students outside of those particular schools are barely capable of adding 2+2 and getting 4 without a calculator, or that their precious pumpkin would be in any way “disadvantaged” if they wound up at Tufts or Georgetown or Carnegie-Mellon or Haverford compared to Harvard or Yale or Princeton or Dartmouth.
That is not “anti-Ivy” bias.
Post was edited to eliminate negative epithets. Please refrain from calling other members “stupid” or “fools”, even as a narrowly defined group as opposed to a direct individual. - FC
I really like @greatkids approach which mirrors very closely that of my son’s last year. At the end of the day, there are no guarantees…for admission or merit at any given school. I also saw significant growth and change for my son during his senior year and admission process. So for us, in hindsight, the best thing we did was apply with the intent of hopefully having choices (of actual admissions) for our son to pick from at the end of the process.
At the end of this exchange of opinions, what can we say about the DIFFERENCES in the approach of Greatkid and the ones that were … applauded? Isn’t Greatkid’s list a potential poster child for CC version 2015? Why? It encompasses reaches and academic and financial safeties. With careful balancing, it SHOULD yield a number of options. What is wrong with hoping for an acceptance at an Ivy and praying for a doable financial aid package. In today’s world of hardly restrictive early admissions (including the often misunderstood ED) there are solid opportunities for strategic applications at selective schools.
So … are we still certain that eliminating possibilities from the get go is the smart way to go?
