…small warning, just saw a comment:"He would rather have a 4.0 from an easier school than struggle to make a 3.5 " - NO, tthis will not be true, no such thing as “easier school”, pure perception by high schooler. Huge adjustment upward in effort will be required at absolutely any place, any so called “easiest” place. D. witnessed many HS valedictorians derailed from the pre-med track at her “easy” in-state public. She said, that she realized that the adjustment was required and she did whatever was necessary to maintain that 4.0, she graduated from college with 3.98. And yes, your S. is correct. if Med. School is a future, they do not care about the name of UG, they care to see very high GPA, min. 3.6+ and a resoanble MCAT score, while participating in various medical ECs…etc., they want to see mature and involved applicant who can related to various people easily.
You have made your son a project. Now he wants to be a human being. Please back off and let him go where he wants to go.
I just sent you a private message. Please read!!
HYPSM are not the center of the universe…at all.
Please let your son be in the driver’s seat. He sounds smart enough to make some good choices.
His HS guidance counselor might help him as well.
So…let him pick a varied list of schools. Then…as I said upstream…ask for one parent pick…ONE. And you can put your “dream school” in that spot.
In terms of that spring break college trip…let your son have a hand in choosing the schools. Believe me, it will be a much nicer trip if you do.
So says, Anderson Cooper, for all the rich irony that he attended Yale and lived in the Vanderbilt suite, which until then was only for female students…
Much has already been said. Still some info missing. What were his PSAT (or SAT / ACT) scores? AP scores? Not that it really makes a difference because there are probably 10 applicants for every slot at a HYPSM school with the exact same stats … Your son sounds very, very sage. It’s a good approach, for a multitude of reasons (including zero debt). And there are plenty of schools out there (top 50ish) where he could conceivably earn a free ride and be a star and gain admission to a top grad school.
What are his preferences re: geography (north? south? midwest? / urban or rural?) … size (large or small?) … liberal or conservative, etc? What does he want to study??? That, alone, should drive where he applies. I do think, however, that he can humor you a bit. Pick 2 (or maybe 3) of your “dream” schools and apply. Someone said earlier “humor each other” and I agree. I know that what my own kids were looking for shifted radically from spring of junior year to spring of senior year (at which point the train had left the station …) I’m a big believer in keeping your options open.
Good luck.
As a foreign student who is in US with my mom(not in same place though), let your son be!
One of the most fatal mistakes that immigrant students make(particularly Asian students) is that they pine for specific groups of school, most likely “top schools”(=Ivy leagues) only to be hugely disappointed and either to g backto motherland or waste money on another year to apply to colleges again(which,in this time, will be much lower tier than “top” schools). I know this because I myself am a member of a Korea website cafe for Korean students in US(and owned by Korean website) and there are many, MANY students and parents who panic after being rejected from Ivy leagues or other top schools, and virtually ruin 4 years of effort.Such mistake mainly comes from an assumption that only Ivy league or equally top schools offer good educations, while the other schools are just “no-name,time-waste, money-waste, overall worthless” schools.Heck, I would be surprised if I see any Korean in Korea who has ever heard of schools like Swarthmore or Amherst, two of the top liberal arts colleges. They would scoff and say “what are they, never heard of them” and walk away until they realize these two schools are not inferior to schools like Harvard at all. While I understand your attachment to name value(almost all Asian communities stick to name value), you need to dump that idea and advance…
Safe and except that the EXACT opposite of the coin minted with HYPS or bust is the myth of plentiful of “free rides” and how easy one becomes a star at a “lower school” that will make the top graduate schools … drool!
A lot of the myth stems from sensationalistic headlines such as 3,000,000,000 of unclaimed scholarships. Inasmuch as there are a number of schools that “acquire” their NMF students with generous scholarships, that number is hardly a proxy for “plenty of” and, most always, such schools come with a rapid fall from the proverbial cliff in terms of selectivity or prestige.
What appears to be too good is often a fool’s errand.
"Heck, I would be surprised if I see any Korean in Korea who has ever heard of schools like Swarthmore or Amherst, two of the top liberal arts colleges. They would scoff and say “what are they, never heard of them” and walk away until they realize these two schools are not inferior to schools like Harvard at all. "
Why do these cultures persist in this? Why is there no cultural transmission back to them, or to their newly arrived immigrants here in the US, that their fetishization of a handful of schools bears zero relationship to reality in America?
Because the kids who figure this out and get a great education at those other schools are about as likely to move back to Korea as I am to go home to Appalachia.
Right, I get that part - but there’s a community here. Why do the more assimilated not seem to have any luck telling the more recently arrived ones what’s up? I find it hard to believe there isn’t cultural transmission of other “look what it’s like here in the US” topics going on.
My doctor’s son did this. Got into a few Ivies but took the full ride to the state school because he “didn’t want to have to work hard”. He wised up while he was there, and with a slight delay, is graduating from an Ivy this May. He had to figure out for himself where he wanted to be, and going to the state school made him realize that wasn’t where he wanted to be.
Your son is admitted to nowhere now. The options are to:
- let him only apply to schools that meet your exacting criteria, and either he may fall short or refuse to go
- let him apply to schools where he would get a great scholarship and go to an honors college, as well as the Ivies and other top schools
The first choice will make you and him miserable. Note that unless he has his own credit card, he will have to depend on you to pay for his application fees.
The second choice does not rule out him attending one of HYPSM. It just means he feels like he may have some control.
My suggestion to help turn him around:
a) first make sure he knows you will let him apply to non-HYPSM non-top schools
b) next, send him to a summer program at a school you are interested in
c) finally, have him visit your top two and his top two schools.
For choice c), it became clear to my son which type of campus he liked. He has never liked spread out campuses where you have to take a bus to classes. A lot of state schools have buses to get to class. Some state schools don’t guarantee on-campus housing.
I think you need to approach this carefully. Not everyone belongs at an Ivy, but a lot of high-achieving kids will realize when they do campus tours and find about the resources at Ivies (and Stanford and MIT), they would not be as happy at a state school. I’m not trying to sound snobby (and certainly many on CC are anti-Ivy), but the environment is more like “college” meant in the past. State schools are where people used to go to learn agriculture and become a manager.
The post that said “humor each other” is correct. If you can both give a little, with you having some say in his non-HYPSM schools (maybe there are famous researchers he can find at non-HYPSM that you would want him to be associated with?), and him having some say in which HYPSM or Ivies to apply to, then you can end up with choices.
Your top two choices, his top two choices, and some that you both agree on. I would hope that you can agree on some, if you take into account:
- high GPA is necessary for med school or grad school
- there are Nobel Prize winners at non-HYPSM non-Ivy universities in many fields
You’re still going way too blunt, rhandco. The options aren’t “HYPSM/Ivies” and “state universities.” There’s a lot of gray in between, some of which is quite dark gray that 's virtually indistinguishable from black.
This makes it sound like this student would not have been successful if he hadn’t transferred to an Ivy. Poppycock, I say. That was his perception. I’m not saying his Ivy education isn’t a wonderful one. I’m saying that he probably would have been successful wherever he planted himself.
He wised up? Oh please. There are plenty of very smart students who attend public universities in every state…and they are just fine. Glad the student you mentioned did what he felt he needed to do…but that doesn’t mean every student would do the same…or would feel the need to.
You’re son is breaking free, which is his right. Especially in light that that he will not be tied to your wallet. Everything that I’ve read makes me think, because of his independent mind, that good things will be heading your son’s way. He should consider USC, it’s of some prestige and it comes with the half NMF scholarship. Congrats to you and your son.
^^ That also means that not every student should focus on the “cheaper” route and … pretend that the education is monolithic throughout the world of colleges. People here mention high GPA and also MCAT. Does anyone really believe that the precise instruction and the caliber of the faculty has nothing to do with the results on MCAT? How about the variances in lab access, research, or the fact that the resources available have to be shared by plenty more Stepford children?
The is a distinct undercurrent in discussions here: the fact that the cost of an education is not directly proportional to its quality. And along the way as PG hinted to, there are way more “grey areas” to reflect the different offerings in college. Between the words of the University of Alabama and Yale, there are “things” such as Vanderbilt or Rhodes College for the aspiring medical school students. As an example, should we assume that Cur’s daughter did not pick up a couple of things at Rhodes to help her excel on the MCAT? And should we assume she’d have done the same at the University of Waxahachie? Again, we are back to faulty assumptions.
And, in the end, there are plenty of law schools and medical schools that could not care where one student graduated from.
It so happened that those “other” schools might not exactly please every one!
@Pizzagirl I dont know about the other Asian societies, but for Korean, the immigration societies are very isolated; for example, when you first interact with immigrant society, all you would hear is information that is 20 years outdated.
Also, because of such isolated atmosphere, those who succeeded in going to top colleges(not just Ivys you know) don’t want to go back to the immigration society. It would be a waste of time there.
That’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking, when people come here, figure out that American society does not bow down to HYPSM but that there are a lot of good schools, why doesn’t that culturally get transmitted.
Look - if I went to go live in a foreign country as an expat, the expat community there would be clued in to what the culture was like. They would say to me - I realize that in the US such-and-such is like X, but here in this new country that’s actually not true, such-and-such is like Y. I wouldn’t be getting 20-year-out-of-date info from US expats living abroad. So why is there such dated information? Why does no one bother to update them and help the newbies by disabusing them of myths?
Xiggi…I think we agree. One size does not fit all. And therefore Ivies are not a necessity for all. There are plenty of schools between State University Of Nowhere and HYPSM. Plenty. And plenty with terrific opportunities for the right students.
ETA…to the OP, I would be be interested in hearing what colleges your son is considering. As his parent, I would want him to go to a great school…but for all we know, he is choosing great schools that just don’t happen to be Ivies.
So…what is your son considering?
Well it will, gradually, @Pizzagirl . In fact it IS changing now fortunately.
Mostly because many immigrants don’t really put much effort to break the myth for the newbies. They are just simply too busy to live their lives(unless they want to be college counselors for foreign students) Well there are those who are trying,(like me), but the problem is that most immigrant students don’t blend in mainstream society and fail to learn the right facts, so there aren’t that many people who actually know about it.