<p>TheGFG, your post #877 is hilarious! :D</p>
<p>Marite, your post #854 aligns with my thoughts exactly though you wrote them more eloquently. I also believe the top students at most colleges, including state U’s, would rival students at the top elite schools in the land. It reminds me of the public high school vs. private prep school issue. Some often claim that someone coming out of some exclusive prep school is more capable of performing or more qualified to attend a top college. However, I believe that the top students in an unknown public high school are just as capable, prepared and qualified for a top college. Simply, there are far less students of that calibur at an unknown public high school like the ones my kids went to. But the cream of the graduating class surely are as good as the much larger number of strong students coming out of prep schools and tend to hold their own at the elite colleges. </p>
<p>I also agree with you that there are colleges out there to meet every kind of learning need and the important thing is choosing a college that meets one’s personal college criteria (such as the example of your son’s needs in math). Similarly to how your son picked a college, my child chose not to apply to Harvard because as much as there were appealing aspects to her (location, challenge, residential housing system, ski team, and way more), that once she decided she was leaning toward studying architecture, Harvard just didn’t have it (though has a great school for grad school and she has since done their summer intensive). Harvard did not meet her criteria. </p>
<p>My kids never picked schools by ranking. I had not even heard of college rankings until I visited CC when my oldest started looking into colleges. We live in the boonies and NOBODY here talks of college rankings. When she was a junior or senior, I once bought USNews college issue when taking a plane because I saw that it discussed colleges. Dumb of me to not realize it involved rankings but I wasn’t so interested in that aspect. I read it once. I am very unaware of rankings and couldn’t even tell you where my children’s schools ranked on that list. My own children have never seen the rankings and I am not sure they know they exist. It was and would continue to be unimportant in their college choice. Did they want well regarded schools that were challenging and selective? Yes, because that is the kind of learning environment they crave and frankly, NEED. But where each school ranks, they do not care or need to know. For one of my kids, the one pursuing a BFA in musical theater, there are no rankings. She wanted a well regarded program but other than that being one of her criteria, she had many other specific criteria and would not end up picking X school over Y school if it ranked two places higher even if it did. My other kid narrowed her final choices after acceptances were rendered and knocked Penn off and put Smith and Tufts before it because she liked them better. </p>
<p>My kids college lists were ranked two ways…one way was reach, match, safety (except D2’s list were all reach because all BFA in MT programs are reaches for anyone), and the other way was “most favorite”, “favorite”, and “like a lot and would be happy to attend but not like as much as the favorites on the list”. These three piles or continuim did not correlate with USNEWs rankings, nor necessarily with their reach/match/safety subcategoires. My child had Tufts and Brown above Princeton on her list, for example and Smith and Tufts above Penn. Both kids had a list of individualized college criteria and picked their schools with which school matched that criteria the best for THEM, not which schools are the best in the land. Selectivity or level of challenge was one criteria, just like they wished to take the hardest classes in HS, due to where they fit best in an academic environment. But since many schools are selective, it mattered less if X college was ranked five places higher or lower than Y college, as long as the college was challenging and very selective in general. Then way more other criteria came into play. Like Marite’s son who needed and desired a certain level of math program, my kids had lists of what they wanted and needed in a college.</p>