<p>Do any of you have stories of people passing up great schools for academically inferior ones? I want to “pass up” Caltech for Cornell (even though I’m just on the waitlist at Caltech), but my dad wants me to go to the former for the starting salary. </p>
<p>Did any of you or your friends have to make the decision between spending the next four years where you want to be and wherever will earn you the most money?</p>
<p>I don’t think these can be considered “inferior” to each other, but a friend passed up on Harvard and MIT to go to Stanford. I think if an employer was on the fence between Harvard and Stanford, he would pick Harvard.</p>
<p>I also knew a girl who gave up UCLA for CSU Fullerton. She said that CSU Fullerton had a program she wanted to be in.</p>
<p>Cornell not inferior to Caltech, but Stanford inferior to MIT? Are you out of your mind?</p>
<p>Re Stanford vs. MIT, undergrad vs. grad school makes a difference for some fields. Stanford is a world class grad school, but MIT seems to provide a bit better undergrad prep for advanced degrees. </p>
<p>Percentage of PhDs per graduate
Academic field: ALL
PhDs and Doctoral Degrees: ten years (1994 to 2003) from NSF database
Number of Undergraduates: ten years (1989 to 1998) from IPEDS database</p>
<p>Note: Does not include colleges with less than 1000 graduates over the ten year period
Note: Includes all NSF doctoral degrees inc. PhD, Divinity, etc., but not M.D. or Law. </p>
<p>1 35.8% California Institute of Technology<br>
2 24.7% Harvey Mudd College
3 21.1% Swarthmore College<br>
4 19.9% Reed College<br>
5 18.3% Massachusetts Institute of Technology<br>
6 16.8% Carleton College<br>
7 15.8% Bryn Mawr College<br>
8 15.7% Oberlin College
9 15.3% University of Chicago<br>
10 14.5% Yale University
11 14.3% Princeton University<br>
12 14.3% Harvard University<br>
13 14.1% Grinnell College<br>
14 13.8% Haverford College<br>
15 13.8% Pomona College<br>
16 13.1% Rice University
17 12.7% Williams College<br>
18 12.4% Amherst College
19 11.4% Stanford University<br>
20 11.3% Kalamazoo College</p>
<p>^ Those kinds of statistics are deceiving imo.</p>
<p>My cousin chose Georgetown over Harvard. She said she wanted more social life and a little less work. Plus she lived in Cambridge for 10 years and wanted something new. It worked out great for her though :)</p>
<p>Cornell is not inferior to CalTech. These are pretty different schools. I can see a lot of reasons to chose Cornell ver Caltech. The major one - Cornell is a university, which makes it amuch better place for a well-rounded education.
Also, I find discussion of superiority/inferiority of closely ranked schools pointless. It’s a matter of particular programs and personal references. The median starting salary has very little to do with your future starting salary. It will be a combination of many factors.</p>
<p>Our son passed up Penn for Vanderbilt. He never regretted it.</p>
<p>I should add, how do you define better?</p>
<p>My dad passed up MIT for Penn State.</p>
<p>Two comments:</p>
<p>First, I know several students who have gone/are going to Caltech and to Cornell. The students at Caltech are working extremely hard and feel under immense pressure to keep up with the “competition”. They all seem to feel that they are competing with the smartest math/science students in the world. The students at Cornell are having a more traditional college experience - some work hard, some don’t, some are enjoying it, some aren’t.</p>
<p>Second, I remember seeing a study a few years back that tracked the career paths of students who were accepted to the very elite schools (Harvard, Yale, etc.) but elected, for various reasons, to go elsewhere. The students who turned down the elite schools did pretty much just as well in the their careers as students who did attend the elite schools. From personal knowledge, however, several friends of mine who did attend one of the elite schools made life contacts with the “rich and powerful” that have, on occassion, had a special impact in their lives in terms of life/career opportunities.</p>
<p>My friend chose UC Davis over Cornell and Cambridge.</p>
<p>maybe you won’t even have to make the decision, being on the waitlist at Caltech. I guess it could be said I “passed up” the opportunity to apply to more academically prestigious schools than Cornell by applying there ED, but because college is an experience of living somewhere, there were so many other factors beyond SAT percentiles to consider. there’s so much to be said for personal fit, and it’s not like you’d be shortchanging yourself intellectually at Cornell or at a whole slew of other great universities in the country.</p>
<p>Friend gave up Yale for Northwestern for financial reasons - never regretted it and had money for Harvard grad school four years later :)</p>
<p>i know someone who passed up brown, yale and cornell for northeastern.
she had two other siblings who still had to go to college, so she went to northeastern with a full ride.
as far as i know, shes been doing great! :)</p>
<p>My best friend’s older brother turned down Harvard three years ago in favor of University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) medical program. He basically chose this school bc it costs much less and he is guarnateed to go to their medical school and graduate from medical school and undergrad combined in just 6 and half years. </p>
<p>To the OP:</p>
<p>Choosing to go to Caltech over Cornell just bc it will give you slightly more starting salary isn’t a good reason to attend a school like Caltech. Caltech is arguably the most academically intense school in the country along MIT and if you don’t go there for your passion in math or sciences, you will be utterly miserable and will regret your choice. Cornell, on the other hand, offers more variety of majors and academic courses for you to explore and the work here isn’t as ridiculous as Caltech or MIT. Even at Cornell, I see many engieers switch out of Engineering to other majors. If you are at Caltech, you won’t have the luxury of exploring your academic passions.</p>
<p>This is an interesting debate. Someone as motivated and qualified to be accepted to an elite ivy school will likely succeed wherever they go to school, as long as the school as academically competitive (U of M v Harvard etc…). Often, if a college accepts you because you are that smart and will do well in the future.</p>
<p>So, the question becomes will going to X elite college provide a significant income-benefit. (I am evaluating this entirely based on economic calculation). If an education at NYU costs you 60,000 dollars more than an education at Michigan State University is it worth it? Will the education at NYU net a gain of more than 60,000. The answer is up for debate. The higher mean salary for students at NYU is because they are more selective. But, does that mean the school is better?</p>
<p>Here are the arguments I’ve read.
Yes:
More academically competitive environment –> better education
Better professors
Better prestige/ name/ networking</p>
<p>No:
The best will rise to the top no matter where they are
If you were good enough for an Ivy, you will be good enough for a great job in the future</p>
<p>I can’t decide. If I were to get into a great school, it would be a tough decision. Right now, I have only been accepted to the University of Michigan, so I am focused on that. But, were it to happen that I am accepted into my reach school, I would have to come to a resolution to the above argument.</p>
<p>–My 2 cents–</p>
<p>My friend can’t make up her mind between…
Stanford
and Michigan State, but with an admittance to their medical school.
i’ll see what she does.</p>
<p>I also heard someone to pass over Harvard for a small school (ranked in the 200’s) with full ride.</p>
<p>There was a story about kids passing up harvard for other school in Time a few years ago. </p>
<p>It depends on the person. If I was interested in computers (which I am 
) and I was accepted to Princeton and Stanford, I would be more inclined to go to Stanford.</p>
<p>I would be really surprised if anyone would pass up a school like Yale for their local state school or something like that for any other reason besides financial.</p>
<p>The thing is, I am very passionate about science and math, but I don’t want to be at school with a bunch of mes. I think it would be much more broadening to be at a diverse school like Cornell. However, I am feeling much better about Cornell since looking at the US News engineering specialty lists this morning. I discovered that in two of my primary interests (I don’t know exactly which area of engineering I’d like to choose), Cornell edges out Caltech:</p>
<p>Materials Engineering:
Cornell: 6
Caltech: not ranked</p>
<p>Engineering Science/Engineering Physics:
Cornell: 1
Caltech: 4</p>