I can share my thoughts on 2 of our kids. They chose the big fish in a little pond 100% out of financial reasons, full rides to state flagships. They were both significantly advanced for their respective depts, but not in situations where the dept could not meet their needs.
From our perspective, being the big fish in the little pond results in the snowball effect. Our ds entered his dept significantly ahead of his peers. His background enabled him to start working in a prof’s lab fall semester freshman yr. That led to his being extremely qualified for REUs (he was accepted to multiple every yr.) He was able to take grad classes as an UG. That meant he was extremely competitive for grad school applications. He was accepted to multiple top grad programs, etc.
His sister’s situation was very similar, just in a different field.
Neither one would change their UG experiences at all. Ds actually says that his UG education was better than what he witnessed in the dept for UGs at his grad school. He had great mentor professors who were easily accessible and really cared about his success.
My son is definitely a big fish in a small pond at an LAC and has been offered many opportunities as the big fish. He has won departmental awards each year, has been a TA for numerous classes and has been invited to join several tutorials and reading groups composed of graduate students and professors. He is working on paid graduate level research with his professor both during the school year and summers and was heavily involved in creating two new advanced & graduate level courses from their research.
He will graduate as a triple major in May with a BA and a Masters. His professors know him well and he should have great recommendation letters for graduate schools. Based on the grad schools to which he is applying, he hopefully will be a very confident big fish among other big fish in a much bigger pond at this time next year.
I did both myself: two years at a very good, small women’s college and two years at an Ivy.
I HATED being a big fish in a little pond. I know for a fact that I was admitted by the skin of my teeth – I was initially denied, and my high school counselor had to beg and plead to get me put on the waitlist. But when I got there, I found that I was way ahead of a lot of the other students. For a number of reasons, I had zero patience waiting for them to catch up. I also had no patience with: that course won’t be offered till your junior year; this professor you don’t like is your only option for any course in XYZ subject; yada yada.
I got straight As and transferred to Harvard, which was paradise for me. I was happy for the first time in my life. My grades actually went up when I was asked to meet a higher standard. I also got into an a cappella group when I hadn’t in the little pond. Everybody got me. I was so normal there, but I graduated Phi Beta Kappa and went to Harvard Law…where I really was average, but still very happy.
After Thanksgiving during my first semester at Harvard, I called my dad to say I’d gotten back to campus safely. He said, “You sound like a fish that fell back in the water.” (I swear he really did say that.) And that was how it felt, too. I’d been a fish on land my whole life. Getting into that big ocean was the best thing that ever happened to me.
This sounds like my son! We are so happy with the pond he chose. When we say little pond, we are really talking an academically little pond. His school accepts just about anyone but some of the majors are VERY challenging and prepare you extremely well for your future. After a year of internship post DVM at a top program he is ready to go back to his little pond (which is extremely high rated in his specialty) for residency - has a meeting about this in 20 minutes! These situations can work out very well.
Wow, this is exactly my concern for my D who is considering math as one possible major. Is she more likely to complete the degree at a school less competitive in STEM fields? I think yes, but who knows. Definitely something for us to keep in mind. Thanks for sharing your experience.
OP, I appreciate this topic. Haven’t read it all but am saving for later. Thank you.
Math is not typically a major that is overloaded enough to need to do intentional weed out through secondary admission or some such.
However, upper level math in college is mostly proofs, so some students may not find that to their liking as much as most math through high school and lower level college (high school geometry may have given a little taste of logic and proofs).
Thank you for mentioning, that’s helpful to know. My kids don’t love geometry and proofs the way I did so, as you mention, this could be a problem. But man oh man, a math degree would be useful to keep in her back pocket, imo.
Just finished the thread. Probably one of the better ones I’ve read in the last couple months. Lots of interesting and helpful things to consider here.
ShawD started out at a big Canadian school which gets some of the top kids in Ontario, though the distribution is much broader than an elite US school. She was doing OK but transferred after a semester to a much smaller school with an accelerated BSN/MSN program where she was clearly in the top 10% of applicants. In her first two years and especially in the Gen Ed classes, she gained great confidence (something she had lacked after growing up following her brother) from easily being at the very top of every course. She took that confidence with her as the competition intensified (students with BAs or BSs typically in science transferred in to get BSNs and then even more so in the MSN program). So, Big Fish in a Little Pond was really good for her.
At one level, ShawSon was also a Big Fish in a Little Pond, but not in a traditional way. He is brilliant (as described by his undergraduate advisor) and has lots of LDs (dyslexia, speech delay and a little bit of ADHD thrown into the mix). I encouraged him not to go to an Ivy but to one of the very top LACs. He found that while the kids were bright, very few were at his level. He learned to be perform very well despite his LDs but choosing his schedule and courses carefully (no more than one course with reading in a semester). He graduated with summa cum laude (the first from his advisor in 18 years), 3.96 GPA, Phi Beta Kappa, several awards for outstanding academic performance. A year after graduation, he was admitted to a MS in Computational and Mathematical Engineering and a MBA at a school where probably both programs could be argued were among the best in the world. It is clear that part of why the hyper-selective business school admitted/pursued him was his outstanding academic performance at his LAC. Again, big fish in smallish pond seemed to work in this case.
@WittgensteinWasSad, as you know, proofs become the essence of math courses after calculus. The earliest course where this really comes to the fore is probably Linear Algebra (it can come in calculus as well but most schools teach calculus as a more functional math for use in physics, economics, etc.). The proofs in HS geometry were sort of formulaic and not stimulating like what math became in college. So, I don’t remember loving HS geometry but did enjoy later math. So the fact that your D does not love the proofs in HS geometry may not mean that she won’t like later math. I think the differentiator is the ability to think abstractly (e.g., can one think in an arbitrary number of dimensions rather than in only three or maybe four dimensions?). ShawSon began to enjoy math when it became proof-heavy. @crankymom, oike calculus, linear algebra can be taught as a functional math course or as a proof-heavy course.
Middle kid majored in applied math, and she didn’t love proofs. Of course, the courses beyond calculus did involve proofs, and she did quite a number of proofs, though fewer than a pure math major. And she took linear algebra in HS, so there were a few proofs in that class.
Middle kid also got an undergrad degree in linguistics, and minored in creative writing, so no need to limit oneself to proof heavy math. She did not attend an elite or prestigious school, though a good school.
I think she would have been fine as a big fish or a little fish, and would have had a similar outcome for grad school, though the good but not elite school allowed her some experiences (ECs) that she might not have had time for/opportunity for at an elite (smaller) school.