Just for the record, I mentioned Ole Miss and Alabama because I’m from the South and they both have outstanding merit aid and top-notch honors colleges. I’m sure there are similar opportunities in other regions for someone afraid of the culture shock, and both of these schools do present a certain amount of culture shock to non-Southerners.
There’s a book called “Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It,” which cites a study that says that students actually benefit by being well above average at the college they attend. This notion is called The Frog Pond Theory, and it postulates that it is better to be a big frog in a small pond than a small frog in a big pond.
There is, unfortunately, no magic formula for determining what the right mix is. I know I would not want my children to attend a college where their test scores were below the 70-75th percentile of the student body. If the student the OP mentions is getting a full-ride scholarship she will likely be a superstar at her school, and there’s something to be said for that.
BTW, insofar as the book I’ve cited is concerned, the argument is that beneficiaries of affirmative action are actually harmed by being put in an environment where they are invariably the smallest and least able frogs in the pond. I suspect this is true.
Oswego’s software engineering major is not all that different from its CS major. Both majors require CSC 380, an overview software engineering course; the software engineering major requires a few additional courses on software engineering methodology. A CS major could take these additional courses as electives, but is not required to, and may find additional CS topics courses to be more useful.
@twoinanddone look at the average admitted student stats and get back to me. Also, they don’t HAVE to have heard of UNCW, as the location is in the name. You don’t base the quality of a school off of whether or not some average Joe Blow in your neck of the woods has heard of it. Most only know FSU for its football team anyways.
FSU is considered a flagship by most in Florida and many in other places, just like Michigan state or UCLA in states that have more than one big, strong school. I know just as many kids who chose FSU as UF. The average scores and grades don’t really matter all that much, and as you know FSU has to let in all those athletes with so-so grades :-* My daughter goes to a flagship way down in the rankings and lets in almost all applicants; it is perfect for her, which is all that matters. She chose it over the Florida schools because they are huge, and hot, and sometimes dangerous, not because of rankings or stats.
My nephew never applied to FSU because at his hs, it was considered inferior to UF and UCF. He was accepted at Cornell, Brown, NYU, and a few other top schools, but went to UF because, for him, it was the best fit and cheapest. At DDs’ high school, all three were considered equal and some just preferred FSU to UF.
@twoinanddone I don’t have anything against FSU whatsoever, just saying that they only beat UNCW in school spirit and research opportunities due to being so large. It’s a quality school in its own right; I personally consider it Florida’s third-best university behind UMiami and UF. UCF is about the same star rating in my mind but lags a tiny bit behind in name recognition. Then USF comes next, Embry-Riddle, Rollins, Eckerd, Flagler, UTampa, Stetson, FAU, FGCU…you fill in the rest. But while Florida does have good schools, it doesn’t have an academic five-star school.
But yeah, I would never have attended a Florida public, way too large for my taste.
As a non-Floridian, I haven’t a clue about the difference between UF and FSU. Or UCF for that matter. Do you guys down there really think others see a difference?
“You may find they are academic equals for you. I don’t think many of the ranking boards or the people on CC would agree with you. Average people, including those who hire, in the west have never heard of UNCW.”
And average people outside of California have never heard of all those interminable U of California campuses. Now what? Most directionals will “place” in their home region. I personally value national student body / national reputation, but not everybody is me and plenty of people aren’t bothered if their school primarily has drawing power in the region they want to stay in anyway.
I live up north where the Florida schools have gotten very popular in recent years. The kids here attend UF, FSU, and UCF and they do see a big difference in terms of acceptance. The strongest applicants are at UF. These kids are looking for the big rah rah that our state does not have. I am not implying that the Florida schools offer nothing more than “rah rah.” As a side note, some of these kids are not happy in Florida and at least one is transferring back to one of our state schools that has been bashed quite often on CC. The grass is not always greener I guess…
PG, think of it this way: Is there a difference between Michigan and Michigan State? Or between A&M and UT? The Florida schools have substantial differences, just like anywhere else. And yes, anyone who is looking at these schools sees the differences pretty quickly.
BTW, at 60,000+ students, UCF is hardly a directional. It’s as big as Ohio State.
Oh please. MOST colleges and universities lack national recognition. People think Penn is the same as Penn State. USC can be either University of South Carolina or University of Southern California. And people will think all of above are public state universities (yes, I know which ones are private). Even in Maryland, people think St Mary’s College of Maryland is a religious Colrlege instead of the public LAC.
Last night my dd found out that one of the superstar students from the IB school (drum major, very active in the community, on a teen advisory board, etc) has decided to attend the local directional school bc of a full ride offer. From my perspective, there is nothing shocking about it. It is a very common occurrence, a far more typical outcome than some posters on CC realize. She had scholarship offers from other schools, but not a full ride. She is happy with her decision.
I suspect she didn’t apply to any OOS schools. Amg my kids’ friends, local and in-state schools are definitely the norm. The kids applying to top schools or even any OOS schools are definitely in the minority. The yr my ds applied, I think he knew 2 other kids applying to a range of schools. Most planned on the local school.
“PG, think of it this way: Is there a difference between Michigan and Michigan State? Or between A&M and UT? The Florida schools have substantial differences, just like anywhere else. And yes, anyone who is looking at these schools sees the differences pretty quickly.”
Yes. ANYONE LOOKING at those schools may see differences. But it’s just folly to think that the average person not in that geographical area or without a personal connection, who isn’t involved in college selection, is going to know the difference. I mean, I don’t pretend that all of you know the difference between Northern Illinois University and Illinois State University, just because I do.
I confess I’ve never heard of FSU or UNCW, before frequenting CC. (I don’t watch much college football.)
A funny anecdote about this - when my D was touring colleges last spring and summer, we visited my parents - neither who went to college (or finished high school for that matter.) But my Dad not only knew of every single state college in the Midwest - I’m talking every regional one, not just flagships and Big Ten - but also knew what they were known for, academically!!
I’d been obsessing about colleges for D the past few months and he was telling me about schools I had never heard of.
I asked him, “How do you all know about all of these colleges?” (Because he did not help me at all during my own college search, way back…) He said, “Oh, I watch college football every weekend…”
eta: Alright, he didn’t know everything about ALL of them, but he knew about quite a few…
I thought of this thread last night while watching the Patriots/Broncos game. A commentator mentioned the reason one of the football players chose Arizona State (currently #129 on US News rankings) over Stanford (currently at #4) was because he wanted his parents to continue to be able to attend all of his home games. Sometimes, it’s not all about the school.
For 24 years I’ve been living in states where no one knows the difference between the state quasi-flagship out West (which I attended) and that state’s flagship. In fact it’s amusing because the mascot / name of sports teams at that state’s flagship is the same as at the flagship of my current state of residence, but with different colors.
It doesn’t make a hill of beans worth of difference. I tell colleagues where I went to school and they’re like, okay. One person only heard of it because they just got NCAA hockey. I could have gone to one of the directionals in that state and no one here would have known the difference.
FWIW, I got my undergrad and grad degrees at the same school, which many also think of as a no-no, and that hasn’t hurt me either. I think people worry too much. A strong student has the potential to perform well anywhere, so why not stand out a little more easily and not be treading water furiously every single day just to keep up and be average. I worked with an MIT grad who said he wanted to quit every day. Why spend 4-5 years like that?
If the kid is a “rockstar” wouldn’t that imply that she’d be a NMF and be eligible for scholarship money at lots of places? It seems a bit early for NMF scholarships to be announced; I don’t think my D got her offers until after Christmas.
I wouldn’t describe my D as “THE rockstar” at her school, although she did quite well. But she did get large scholarship offers, some as a result of NMF and others I think “just because”. So assuming the OP’s story is true and this kid has better grades and ECs than my D, I wouldn’t think choosing the local directional was only based on money.
The valedictorian of my second child’s high school class chose to go to a local non-flagship, not-very-selective (at the time) public university, something that was very unusual for that school. Almost a fifth of his class went to the same college, but no one else from the top 10% of the class.
The reasons, however, were perfectly transparent: He was guaranteed a full ride scholarship without having to submit multiple applications or wait for an answer. At the higher prestige universities to some of which he surely would have been admitted he would have had to pay something, and he would have had to devote more energy to the application process even where he was effectively guaranteed admission. He was the oldest child of an immigrant family, and did not want to be far from his family (and in fact affirmatively wanted to live at home, at least for a few more years, something that would not have been permitted at higher prestige colleges). He was committed to a specific, relatively small religious community that had very little representation at prestige colleges. He wanted to study a particular engineering discipline, and was not convinced that the nearby higher-prestige colleges would teach it any better than the college he chose. He wanted to remain in the local area when he graduated; he had no interest in national or international job markets. He was not overwhelmingly ambitious in general – he wanted to be a successful engineer and to earn a good living, but he did not see himself as a future mover and shaker of anything. Nor was he all that intellectual – he was smart and hardworking, and got the best grades in the class by a few hundredths of points, but none of his classmates would have described him as an intellectual leader. (The clearest intellectual leaders in the class went to Harvard, Yale, and Smith, the latter with a full-tuition merit scholarship.)
The school administration – which cared quite a bit about the list of where its top students went to college – wrung its hands a bit, and begged him to submit at least one application to an Ivy, but basically everyone understood that he was making a perfectly valid choice for himself, and more power to him.
But while Florida does have good schools, it doesn’t have an academic five-star school.