Thanks for setting us straight. Now we now that the best schools are not exactly attracting students who are driven and work hard. How in the world did they ever get in!
The most selective schools have it all wrong. Their adcoms should really refocus on the students who work hard to rank in the 10-25 range and miss the top scores by a dozen percentile points.
^Many of them got in for a number of random reasons to satisfy the variety of institutional needs. Almost all are hard working otherwise they would not want to go there. But claiming that all of them represent the top talents would be a giant stretch of truth.
"Dare I add this one: Where do you have a better opportunity to meet your future SO? The dating pool at a no-name community college where most students may be almost like a part time student who commute to the school and the dating pool at an elite college or flagship state college could be quite different. "
Why are we even bringing in community college? This is what’s so frustrating about CC - everything goes from Harvard to the other extreme of community college.
Good point, @Pizzagirl…from now on we should all just assume “other” schools to mean excellent schools that are slightly easier to get in to or maybe even the state flagship schools that offer tons of research opportunities. Comparing to community college or “podunk” is a completely different conversation.
Who did claim that? And who spoke about “all of them”?
On the other hand, are there many people who could disagree that the top schools have little issue showing that their average statistics for GPA and test scores are the most competitive. In simpler terms, the top schools have students with higher average scores. If you want to push the envelope, the top privates have better average statistics than the top public universities, and this at the 75th percentile and surely at the 25th percentile.
And this without any stretch. Giant or minute!. It is what it is!
People have different ideas regarding the purpose of a college education. For some, it is primarily vocational training. For others, it’s a matter of self-discovery. For others, it’s about developing analytical skills.
If you view education as in that old board game called “Life,” the best thing to do is to go around the board to pick up a college degree in as little time as possible at the lowest possible cost and then move on to the next step.OP’s S seems to have this attitude towards education. He doesn’t even know what he wants to do with post college, but in order to “leave his options open” he wants to go to an easy school and not spend much money to do it because he thinks this will give him the best options to go on to law or med school. He has no interest at all in what happens to him during the time he spends in college. If he could fork over $x and get a degree, that’s what he would do. If that’s his attitude, then to him, it doesn’t make sense to apply to top colleges.
Even with this attitude, there are a couple of false assumptions. First, he assumes that due to merit money, he can go to college for a lot less $ than HYPSMC would cost. Until he actually applies and gets a financial aid package, he can’t know that this is true. For many people, HYPSMC are among their cheaper options. And the “other” colleges people are mentioning in this thread–Swarthmore, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Duke, etc.–don’t give out tons of merit money. The most prestigious public universities like Cal and UVa also give limited merit money, especially to OOS students. So, right now, S does not know what the final “bills” at HYPSM would be vs. other colleges of interest to him.
Second, he assumes that he is going to be a star at a less selective school. (I’m not talking about the other colleges listed above because he’s unlikely to get a lot of $ from them.) There are a heck of a lot of people who have made that same assumption and come in for a rude awakening. Personally, I think it’s harder for some people to do well in less selective environments. For some people it’s because they need academic competition to do their best. For others, it’s because the less selective colleges are more likely to have a series of general education prerequisites in which it can actually be harder for a good student to do well. This may because they have more busy work, less discussion, more emphasis on rote regurgitation. It may be because there’s less choice in selecting courses to meet gen ed requirements.If someone is premed, it may also be because a lot of other students have made the same calculated decision and he has more competition than he expected.
Now, it may make sense to save the $ for law or med school if the OP’s S does get a free ride. In law, it DOES make a difference which law school you attend, but for medicine it’s much less important which med school you attend. It’s all right not to be at the top of your class. Maybe you won’t get into Harvard or John’s Hopkins Med Schools if you are middle of your class at H, but you’ll get into med school.
Third, he is assuming that he will WANT to get a JD or MD. Odds are, he won’t. If he doesn’t, would he rather be a graduate of MIT or a much less well known school?
IMO, some of the observations in this thread are untrue. The statement that career services are better at most LACs than at Harvard because they focus solely on UGs is wholly untrue. IMO.I live in NYC and a lot of “kids” have attended HYPSMC–though not much C. Others have chosen top LACs. I think one thing that just about everyone concedes the universities do better than LACs is career services. Additionally, I doubt there are more than a handful of LACs in the nation that come close to matching Harvard’s pre-med advising.
If the OP’s S doesn’t want to go to a Harvard, Stanford, or MIT–that’s fine. I just don’t think he should assume that if he chooses to go to less competitive school he’s going to end up with better options.
Add to it that I personally think that what happens DURING the 4 years of college matters too. I’m not a huge fan of H UG personally but not because it’s so selective.
I don’t necessarily buy that this is all about the OP’s kid not caring where he goes to school. There certainly could be an element of rebellion after too many years of pressure from his parents. OP, give him a copy of the Fiske Guide and step back, see what he thinks when he researches on his own.
When I was young, what I heard was that in the engineering field, the hiring managers thought the graduates from some engineering programs at some big state colleges (in the flyover country) are more “desirable”. The family background and upbringing of these students also made them desirable.
I also heard that if a student attends an elite school, it is kind of “wasteful” if he ends up pursuing a engineering career. I also heard about 40% of graduates from Princeton went to the finance (or consulting as well?) industry. Also, more than a half of MIT graduates with an engineering degree head to some kind of finance related industry rather than the traditional engineering industry. My info may be outdated though because I also heard recently that the Wall Street is out, and some high-tech companies are in.
Seems like the OP has not come back since the OP’s second post.
Without any more details (e.g. net price calculator and debt estimates for the various schools), the discussion will probably just be another endless prestige war.
^ agree.
He’s right. A high GPA will get him into graduate school. If he can go lower tier, get high GPA and full ride (or close to it) he can go to Ivy in grad school. He’ll have much better job prospects.
Some people seem to assume that the education at a high ranked school is harder. Is it really harder or just better? I mean, some classes are going to be hard no matter how you slice it. Maybe the “better” schools just make the education better (i.e., better professors, equipment, etc.) versus the “lower” school that might have disorganized profs, equipment issues, etc.? Don’t know for sure here, I’m just a high school kid, but … comments?
And about the community college and finding a mate - I agree, I think we are talking about schools better than a cc. I even doubt that all the students at Duke, Rutgers, William & Mary, or even state flagships are complete deadbeats and that only Ivy graduates are worthy spouses.
^ Second that. Are classes at ivy league universities (or equivalent) really harder than the same classes at a top tier public universities? I understand that the competition is much more fierce, and it will be more difficult to get an an “A” but the material is all the same, right?
I am not even sure it is harder. I don’t think any Ivy is harder than U of Chicago, Swarthmore, or Harvey Mudd.
Yeah, but those are still considered very good schools @intparent. What about, say, the University of Idaho?
A poster named bernie12 (?) once went though a syllabus and exam comparison for a limited range of courses and described that there was not a consistent pattern of high ranked private versus high ranked public being more rigorous (i.e. it varied by course).
@mcat2
It’s Santa Clara University, not University of Santa Clara (although it did have that name at one point in its long history).
The school has a fine engineering program. DD is an alum.
Thanks for the explanations.
As I vaguely remember, Santa Clara University is very conveniently located (i.e., next to the CalTrain station), unless I mistaken Santa Clara University as San Jose State university.
@HarvestMoon1 in post#136 has the right perspective. OP will do his son a service if he can make him understand what is said in that post. Most others, with good intentions, are just muddying the waters, IMO. Keep it simple.
@SanjayinSanJose do not also forget your responsibility as a parent. Your son may end up living with the biggest regret of his life - “if only had I applied to…”. Think about it.
No… I would say very few students at a school like U of Idaho work as hard as students at top 20 schools. Also, material may be the same, but the pace isn’t. Look at Mudd, for example. In 3 semester, students cover courses in Calculus, Probability & Statistics, Intro to Linear Algebra, Intro to Differential Equations, Multivariable Calculus, and Differential Equations and Linear Algebra II. Each is 1.5 credits (so half a semester of work). At most colleges each of these courses would be a full semester. And students typically have 5 courses at a time for at least 16 credits (to stay on track to graduate). So in the same semester when a student takes 2 of these courses, they might also have a physics class, chem class with a lab, a computer science class, and a humanities class (that is what my kid’s courses looked like 2nd semester last year PLUS she took a bio class). At many colleges, it would be four courses plus maybe a lab.
My kid is taking one of the comp sci classes in her major sequence at another Claremont College this semester, and she says it is a piece of cake. Although it is supposed to be the same class taught at Mudd, they are spending a lot of time on concepts already covered in earlier classes at Mudd. So it sounds like the pace of the CS classes at this other school is slower – less material covered in a semester.