Shotgunning—I'm very confused

DadTwoGirls
Tue, 04 Aug 2020 20:18:57 +0000

One common mistake that students make is to attend the highest ranked university that they can get admitted to. Rankings say almost nothing about whether a university is a good fit for you.

I will admit that the thing that got me over the idea that prestige matters was getting accepted to and attending a highly ranked university.

There are some things that are very good about top universities. There are some things that are not so good. Probably the thing that in retrospect bothers me the most is that I was so busy as an undergrad with my class work that I did not have time to participate in some specific extracurricular activities that I would have wanted to do. Highly ranked universities can also be stressful, particularly for relatively young people who are not ready for it.

I agree with others that applying to this many universities will stop you from doing a good job on your applications.

The top 15 universities in the US plus the few Ivy’s that are not in the top 15 are significantly different from each other. It is not obvious to me that Dartmouth College and Columbia are a good fit for the same students.

If you want to major in mechanical engineering then not all of the top 15 schools are good at ME. If you want to major in music then there is a different subset of the top 15 schools that have a good program. Forestry is a major that not all of the top schools have at all. I know someone who was an animal science major. I can think of at least one Ivy League school (Cornell) that might be a very good choice for an animal science major. I am not sure that MIT even has any cows or horses on campus (I never saw any when I was there).

I did see some students drop out of MIT during their freshman year. These were all very strong students. They would have done better somewhere else.