@romanigypsyeyes Post #156 You kidding me? You went to Michigan. Surely you didn’t suffer in the elite or prestigious category. Stop it.
I chose NU because it was harder. If I were you, I wouldn’t brag about not wanting be around people who want an academic challenge.
@texaspg where on earth are you getting this from??? Low income minorities are steered to black studies by elite colleges???
“”, a “low-level” position is one that both (1) pays significantly less than the person could have been paid and (2) does not require an elite degree to obtain."
That’s just stupid. This is a foreign idea to you and your money-chasing, but people choose various fields/jobs because of passions, interests, talents and the desire to make a difference. I wouldn’t think less of someone who chose, say, working for a non-profit that helps people get health care versus working for a hedge fund, but it’s clear that you would, (protip: “maximizes the money he makes” and “elite” are two different concepts)
@Pizzagirl, again, please read a bit more carefully.
There is an “AND” between clauses (1) and (2). Low pay is not the sole criterion for a “low-level” jobs, as simply reading my post shows. A “low-level” job is inherently one that also requires less of an education that the employee has.
For example:
If someone goes to Princeton and gets a low-paying job that you need only an associates’ degree from a community college to obtain, then it is a “low-level” job because the person didn’t need to go to Princeton to get the job.
If someone goes to Princeton and gets a low-paying job as a fellow in a very selective institution, then it’s not a “low-level” job because going to Princeton was necessary to get the low-paying job.
Now do you understand? I have been extremely gracious to you and it would serve you well to read more clearly before using terms such as “stupid”. Time to cut out the animosity towards others, please.
@menefrega, Such assumptions! You really don’t know what his intentions were. Maybe, like SO MANY other applicants, he applied to all the ivy’s in hopes that he would be accepted to just one … and that by some stroke of luck, his family would be able to/would choose to afford that one. He did what SO MANY people do. Instead, he got into all 8. And he got into Fellows at Alabama – something else he didn’t know would happen when he applied. And then, he and his family ultimately decided that the UFE program at Alabama was economically and academically a more practical, more viable, best choice in the end.
Seeing as my family went through a similar process with MIT and the other elite favorite on my son’s list, and that my son ultimately chose the big state public instead, I can easily assume a whole lot of other scenarios than the one, single, self-absorbed scenario that you suggest. (My son is not URM, btw.)
Perhaps all of the URM’s in our country should simply acknowledge their place. There should be special rules for them – limitations to the number of elite schools to which they can apply. I mean, otherwise, they might get in and take someone else’s (white person’s) well-deserved slot! To think that our nation’s URM’s would feel entitled to shoot for the stars and then selfishly choose from amongst their options in the end, as if they were regular people like everybody else. Shameful.
I am not going to get into the "whys and “hows” of this kid’s decision but this I know for a fact: University of Alabama treats their smart kids incredibly well- end of story! He will probably get much, much more individualized attention at Bama and major research opportunities if he chooses to go that route. For pre-med, this is an excellent choice. It is good to be the big fish even in the big pond!
The study you referenced found lower income persons would benefit more from the degree, but that doesn’t apply to the student in the a student in the article. His dad is an engineering manager, and his mom also works in management. He almost certainly comes from an upper income family. This fits with wanting to attend Alabama for financial reasons. HYPSM essentially gives free rides for students with incomes less than ~$65k and typical assets, and charges the equivalent of no tuition for students with incomes of less than ~$110k and typical assets. The non-international HYPSM students who have especially high cost of attendance, like the student in the news story, rarely come from lower income families.
The NYT article you referenced also suggests a different position than your posts, as quoted below:
The student in the news story falls into this group of students who applied to elite colleges, but didn’t attend, who were more likely to have high incomes later than students who attended the elite schools.
All we have to go on is the article. The article says that he made this choice because it was the only affordable option, and he’s making the best of the upsides that he’ll find at his only choice. According to the article, he didn’t make the choice because of football, hot girls, proximity to home, whatever.
Having only one affordable option should not happen to a student this well qualified who applied to over a dozen schools. We need better counseling in this country. That’s all I care about – not whether he’ll make the same amount of money as a doctor, or have more fun at Bama, or whatever. He should have been in a position to make a real choice, and based on the information we have, he wasn’t.
This could be true (to some extent.)
This reminds me of one previous premed at an ivy (norcalguy) once said (likely semi-jokingly): I am a premed. So I am ashamed while I am walking on campus.
Why would a top research school not like to treat preprofessionally-minded student better? To put it more bluntly, there is a chance that if students (undergrad, grad, med school students, or even “career post-docs”) goes to a place where such students are ranked lower in a powerful research group, the kind of research job they may get is more low level (grunt) work. I heard that even for those career researchers (including research assistant professors, if they move from another well-recognized and respectful research institute to, say, Hardvard, even their job rank and the “nature” of the research job could be different.
It is all about the “fit” or “match” factor.
You can’t beat the prestige of the Ivy league if you want to be the very, very, best. He made the right choice.
@albert69 , What you wrote that I read "The horror! " in response to “he did not do the recommended safety/match/reach strategy.” That is a useless post. And you have several other useless posts also, like slamming someone who thinks NU is a better school than Alabama. I have news for you – it IS better. Most Bama students are watching football games when they aren’t drinking or hazing each other.
Look, the parents BLEW it, and the kid got stuck at U Alabama as a result. I know a kid who had five full tuition offers from better schools than Alabama, and he was white. But he took the offer that had full tuition, full room and board, and a $5k a year stipend. And it is also better than Bama. He applied to TWO Ivys (not eight), and turned them down after the aid wasn’t great. Could he have gotten into all of them – hard to say? But he left himself lots of other options, not ONE.
And I said earlier that I was surprised he didn’t get full rides from a couple of the other schools on his list that were ALSO BETTER THAN ALABAMA. I suspect it was because he applied too late, because he was too worried about his Ivy applications.
Regarding the armchair quarterbacking, you couldn’t be further from the truth. I have a kid going through the same thing at this moment. I started with a list of all the need-blind, full need schools, knowing we would need financial aid. I have run at least 100 Net Price calculators for 40 different schools for three income/"# kids in school" scenarios. And I threw out a number of schools because my in-state public honors program is as good and cheaper, or because their typical loan was so high it would be too expensive, even meeting full need. For as much money as college costs, not doing research before the application process is irresponsible and I stand by that.
@Daddio3, you’re exactly right. If the student in the story in the original post had planned better (i.e., if his parents had planned better), surely he could have gotten a very generous scholarship from Duke.
This was posted in the past when the issue of whether attending a top school is/is not worth the investment:
As for the subject of this thread, I agree with those who said there are many other schools that likely would have given this student a lot of scholarship money (eg U Miami (Fl) perhaps Duke, UNC-Ch Hill, OSU, and many others) that might have been worth exploring. Oh qwell- water under the bridge.
@HappyAlumnus My daughter had better scores (GPA, SAT, ACT) than the student being discussed and she wasn’t offered any merit scholarships at all by Duke. She did get some merit offers from other schools though. Merit offers seem to be quite a crapshoot.
Are you comparing similar students at the different colleges… ones like the student in the news story who could have been admitted to ivies but chose to attend elsewhere? Or are you instead finding that the stellar students that ivies tend to admit are often different from less academically inclined students that less selective colleges often admit and as such have very different rates of graduating college, different median earnings, different rates of becoming corporate leaders, etc.?
The research from the study “How College Affects Students, Volume 2: A Third Decade of Research that annasdad referenced earlier in the thread found quite different results, as quoted below:
The research that HappyAlmumnus referenced at http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/11/29/does-it-matter-where-you-go-to-college/what-you-do-vs-where-you-go found that students who applied to highly selective colleges and attended elsewhere, like the student in the news story, actually had higher incomes than ones who attended the highly selective colleges:
@anomander, fair enough-- there are then other schools, higher up the food chain than Alabama, where he could have gotten merit aid.
Yes he could have gotten merit aid elsewhere, and maybe he did apply, but did not get the big full-ride awards, we really don’t know…Bama is just one of the great options where smart kids who can’t afford full freight can apply and hope for a fantastic financial package. So he took it…good for him! Thank goodness he was smart enough to apply to Bama. 
Yes, the University of Alabama is a top-5 school (in Alabama, where it’s the fourth-best in the state) and is ranked #335 in the US by Forbes, #88 by US News, #194 by Washington Monthly, etc.
There’s not the least bit of difference between it and Yale.
@Daddio3 why shoot! I sure do hope me and my schoolmates has the time for all that fancy book learning next year when we ain’t hazing or watching football or shootin at each other!
=))
You just sound ridiculous.
Maybe he read “David and Goliath” by Malcolm Gladwell. In his book, Gladwell profiled 2 super gifted kids who excelled in high school and went on to elite schools, one a would-be physics major at Harvard, the other a would-be engineering major at Brown. Both ended up changing their major to less challenging fields in liberal arts because they couldn’t handle the competition at Harvard and Brown, i.e. better to be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond.
This kid’s stats put him in the middle of the pack at HYPS, perhaps even in the 3rd quartile. With 16-20% of their seniors (probably the top of the graduating class) applying to med school, compared to 2% at Bama, there’s a good chance he won’t survive the intense pre-med competition at these schools and end up having to change major.
But I agree with those who said if that’s the case he should’ve thought of that before applying to all these schools. Maybe it’s just for bragging rights, or maybe he surprised himself, didn’t think he would get all those acceptances.