<p>On the debate of GT vs. UCSD, I am not taking sides. However, I would like to provide the following comments:</p>
<p>If you are interested in biological related sciences and like beaches, then UCSD is your school. If you want to study EE and material science, GT is your school. Everyone has his/her career goal and life preferences in mind when choosing school. At the end, everyone is a winner.</p>
<p>My S1 loves biological sciences. We have lived in NC, CA, TX and WI. So his target list of schools is listed in my earlier post. Had we lived in Boston, Key West or Salt Lake City, The list might have been different.</p>
<p>VAMom2015, I hope your S selected UVA if it was one of his choices. My S is in the the class of 2014 at UVA. He received acceptances to Darmouth, Cornell, Duke, U or R, Wake Forest, U of W at St. Louis, and Vanderbilt. In addition to UVA and C of WM. He had worked hard and had his mind made up on attending Cornell’s School of Engineering. After weighing distance and climate, he chose UVA SEAS at the final moment. It’s worked out for him. He’s a Rodman scholar with several private scholarships and a merit scholarship from UVA. His tuition and room & board is covered all 4 years (providing he maintains his GPA). We have visited him several times just to go out for dinner as a family and to simply hang out a football or basketball game. He is happy with his choice and so are we (hubby & I). : )</p>
<p>I knew several kids at William & Mary that turned down Cornell, Yale, Dartmouth, Duke, Chicago. Not offered any special scholarship either, just straight up admitted. Of course it is a fluke of history that W&M is now public. No other school like it. Not your typical state school.</p>
<p>When S1 was looking at colleges, we visited many colleges including UPenn, Cornell, Duke, UVA, Michigan, UCBerkeley. Order of preference if accepted: Berkerley, Michigan, UVA or Duke, Cornell, UPenn. He went early decision to UVA. Ivies were the bottom of his top choices. Definately ivies are not for everyone. S2 with better stats decided on UVA as 1st choice and ivies were even on his radar having visited them with his older brother.</p>
<p>“In a private school, it means marrying someone who came from anywhere and who was admitted with brains (not on the basis of leveraging tax dollars from State taxpayers who demand admittance). In simple terms, would you want your OOS New York kid, accepted OOS to UNC-CH, marrying someone from a rural county in North Carolina who got into UNC-CH because, generally, UNC-CH has programs to admit kids from places like that? In more specific terms, do you want your Manhattan baby marrying a trailer park kid from East Bumblebutt?”</p>
<p>placido240: I happen to to know a black kid from rural Virginia who attended UVA is now a lawyer practing in DC. His girlfriend from the city (Baltimore) is a doctor graduated from Georgetown. Don’t put down rural americans. They do not all live in trailer park and they can succeed if they work hard.</p>
<p>i agree with davh01 completely. being from a very rural area, it gets old when ppl assume we all live in trailer parks and never accomplish anything. i resent that a lot. just because we may not be able to afford to go to a private school doesnt mean we cant be successful. heck, my state school has already offered me more opportunities than i even knew existed there, and i havent even started school yet!</p>
<p>I wonder if all of the people claiming that their state flagship OF COURSE is at least as good a choice as an Ivy or other highly selective private school would say so if they lived in MY state: Maine. </p>
<p>People in Virginia: get a grip. U VA is essentially a highly selective private school at a fabulous price for in-state students, as is W&M. For OOS students, it is on the same list as all of the highly selective privates. People from California: almost the same deal. You wouldn’t send your high-performing kid to my state U for any other reason than $$, I guarantee it. The University of Maine is not Berkeley. It isn’t even UCSD. And if your kid with major FA need was good enough to get into an Ivy, the Ivy would likely be cheaper than my state U due to excellent FA.</p>
<p>It’s just like that jerk who recently wrote a book in which he talked about his son wanting to major in beer and football or something to that effect, and so his kid picked “big state U”–then it turns out the kid is at U VA. What a joke. I know kids here with SATs in the 2100 range plus excellent GPAs and ECs who were rejected from U VA.</p>
<p>Regarding Maine:
By itself, I don’t think Maine could have developed a public university on the same level as California or the Midwestern states, for reasons of its relatively sparse population, geographic isolation, and relative poverty. Also, as in all the New England states, historically there were no state commitments to developing strong public universities due to the number and prominence of private colleges and universities. Even if those states had wanted to do so, the towns that hosted colleges and the private school alumni in the state legislatures would have scuttled any such plans. (Even some other Northeastern states like New York which had the resources and opportunity to develop a public higher education system on a par with California and the Midwestern states failed to do so.)</p>
<p>(Of course, when Maine’s current governor brings back child labor there won’t be much need for schools anyway.) </p>
<p>Regarding California:
To its credit, the State committed to developing world-class flagship public universities that could hold their own with the established Eastern universities. Different approach, imo: higher education as a public good vs. higher education as a private good.
While academic quality matches selective privates in some respects, undergrad education is adversely affected by size, crowding, and other factors.</p>
<p>Which flagship universities are considered “world-class” in California? UC Berekely and UCLA? I’m not seeing what others see in our state and UC system. I’m seeing overcrowding, less qualified students being admitted and really strong candidates being rejected, standards lowering, prices skyrocketing, stressed professors.</p>
<p>I think there are still good choices like CalPoly SLO but even that is out of reach financially for many people. A good friend of my son’s got accepted to SLO. He’s from a very large family with a lower middle income. He’ll still have to take out significant loans for room and board-not sure if it’s worth it.</p>
<p>My son’s local choice is UCSD which he will apply to, but all other schools are cost prohibitive. (SDSU doesn’t count since my son’s doing senior level work there as a high school junior and academically, it wouldn’t work) It makes a whole lot more sense for my son to apply to OOS privates with great financial aid or NMSF schools with great aid.</p>
<p>Let me preface this by saying if you can get into MIT or Princeton with heaps of aid, well (to quote Charlie Sheen) “duh”. If your kid is that advanced he may very well end up at a place like this.</p>
<p>But after getting that little caveat out of the way, whether a school is “world class” may depend on what you plan to study. For Physics, I think UCSB would be considered world class. It’s got a couple Nobel Prize winners on the Physics faculty. Its grad school is ranked tenth I think. Now, granted that’s grad school, but for an advanced, motivated kid I think that matters. He may well end up participating in research and taking grad level classes. </p>
<p>I was in Biophysics at UCSD many moons ago. I don’t know if I would call it world class, but it was pretty good and I’ll bet it’s still okay. At the time I went, I think it was pretty well known for plasma physics. If you look at the website you’ll see professors with big mucky muck awards (maybe not Nobel prizes but awards they all seem to recognize). My classmates who chose that route went almost everywhere for grad school, and I’m sure that’s still true. </p>
<p>At the time I went to school there, and probably still for all I know, UCSD was overflowing with pre-meds, most of whom were some permutation of bio major. The number of UG Physics majors was comparatively small which meant we got more attention. I had classes taught by Herb York (who was on the Manhattan Project and becamse a Chancellor), and George Feher who was fairly well known in Biophys.</p>
<p>Interesting discussion!! Thank you for everyone’s point of view. All the points of view are valid, coming from different perspectives. I was unwilling to send my son to an IVY/Ivy calibur (Duke, Vanderbilt) because of cost: We were not eligible for ANY need based, even though I do not consider ourselves wealthy. Therefore, our decision was our state flagship (Illinois) or other state schools that were offering gobs and gobs of merit scholarship. My son was going into engineering, so I looked at Illinois, which is <em>ONLY</em> a state school, at a different level since it is considered World class in that particular field. </p>
<p>It was a tough decision. THe other 2 out-of-state schools (not going to share…don’t want to insult anyone) were not the flagships of their particular state (but still very respected), and for my son, I truly was concerned that he would be brought down to the level of mediocrity. My son REQUIRES fierce competition to do his best.</p>
<p>My point is that not all big state U’s are the same, and each of us has different goals and reasons for choosing what we did. A real motivated student might do well wherever they went, but others, like my son, probably did need a good dose of competition to keep him on track.</p>
<p>I have not read through the whole thread so what I am about to suggest might have been discussed already? Have you considered many of the excellent “Honors College” within some of these State U’s? Many of them consist of bright and motivated students being nurtured with special perks by those Universities. They might be a good fit for your son.</p>
<p>You make some good points. I think my son just doesn’t care for UCSD-too big for him. He’s there every week for math circle and there are just too many students. He’s looking for a small/medium size college/research univ. We toured the physics dept. a few years ago when they opened a new graduate building. It was an interesting tour but we both get the feeling that the math department is more open and inviting than the physics department. When he was looking into taking classes there a year or two ago, math profs were very inviting and we got a less fuzzy feeling from the physics dept; thus, he ended up at SDSU. It’s a better fit-free (audit) and 2 trolley stops away. Fits our modest budget a lot better.</p>
<p>Yeah, when I went to UCSD I think it was about 1/4 or 1/5 the size it is now, so obviously the experience was different.</p>
<p>I wasn’t really extolling UCSD as much as UCSB. I’m sure UCSB has grown too of course, and everything I know about it is word of mouth and out of ranking data. But the main reason I mentioned UCSB is because I know it has a very highly rated graduate Physics department. A kid who is taking the most advanced Physics class at SDSU as a high school junior (assuming he/she is similarly advanced in math) is likely to eventually run out of UG physics classes almost no matter where they attend. So I think it is valid to consider the graduate school when making your decision.</p>
<p>And actually, I was also answering your question about which schools in the UC system were world class. I think the UCSB Physics department would be considered world class. That’s a different issue than size or fit for your son. Good luck.</p>
<p>UCSB’s CCS program was originally on my son’s list. He was actually pretty excited about it but it’s that darn cost thing again. Our income is such (78K) that we would be expected to contribute far more than we have. If my son comes up with some great scholarships in his senior year, it might be a different story. Also, it’s been a little hard to gage the party scene vs. strong Christian presence at UCSB. My son wants a school with minimal (or at least less obvious) partying, wants to be able to have a great music experience with other students (these two qualities he sees very lacking at SDSU obviously), and yes, wants a smaller campus with strong Christian support. I believe the CCS program would offer that but overall, I think UCSB will probably not go on the list.</p>
<p>I totally agree, though, that UCSB’s physics is world class and if my son was determined to major in physics (he’s leaning towards math for sure, and yes, he’s studying real analysis this year, so he will also need a really selective college or a good math graduate school as an undergrad), it would make sense to at least visit the CCS department and look into scholarships, etc. but for now it remains off the list.</p>
<p>I grew up in NY state and my mom keeps talking about Geneseo (am I spelling it right) as an up and coming NY state school. Apparently it’s small and it considered the liberal arts/honors college of the SUNY system. (only drawback is it’s near Buffalo, I believe and COLDDD in winter.)</p>
<p>It is interesting but I feel I actually have to apologize for my son going to Carnegie Mellon instead of an instate school. Yes, we are from Virginia so we have great choices for IS. </p>
<p>My son wanted to major in Fine Arts and had 2250 SAT, won national art awards and is a minority. He was a guaranteed admission at almost every state school (except UVA which is not a shoe in for anyone). He had an external scholarship for his art that would pay for 4 years at an instate school…all tuition and fees X 4 years or he could take the cash to pay for one year tuition at CMU. Then he won another all tuition paid scholarship to our mediocre university but very good art school–Virginia Commonwealth U. The second scholarship meant that he could actually save the first scholarship plus his very substantial 529 for grad school or even (gasp) give the left overs to his little sister… He also won scholarships to Ohio State and some of the best private art schools in the country that cut costs by about half. However the decisions came down to VCU or CMU.</p>
<p>Why CMU with no aid and for FINE ARTS (are we insane?)? He agonized and we agonized. He chose CMU and knows there will be zero help for grad school …but…at CMU he will likely graduate in 4 years while few make it through VCU in 4 years–either he or many of his peers were going to fail to graduate in 4 years (same with Chicago Art Institute and MICA)…At CMU he found himself surrounded by ambitious, hardworking, creative and smart kids…certainly there were some at VCU but, as his art teacher said…“if he goes to VCU he will become lazy…lazy about art, lazy about academics…it is just too easy for him”. Also, he wanted to do a robotics minor at CMU…the best place in the country for it. Now after almost two semesters at CMU I asked if he regretted it, would like to transfer, etc…nope. He is absolutely sure that he made the right choice.</p>
<p>Unexpected benefits…S is aware of the costs to us and him. He has become very frugal and has not asked for money once for his expenses, materials or books. He got a job on campus and is amused at all the kids with work study who don’t take advantage of the opportunity and are constantly asking mom and dad for help. Has this been an expensive way to get him to appreciate his education and the value of money? Yes it has been expensive, but a priceless gift for his future. We will never know if it is the right decision…he could become a pot-head drop out at either CMU or VCU but he also could become the next master of special effects in Hollywood also…who knows?! the point is that choice of school is a idiosyncratic and private mixture of family finances, personal preferences and the dreams of a 17 year old child/adult…how can anyone possibly judge whether the choice is “right”.</p>
<p>“It is interesting but I feel I actually have to apologize for my son going to Carnegie Mellon instead of an instate school. Yes, we are from Virginia so we have great choices for IS.”</p>
<p>Apologize to whom?? I don’t get it. To whom do you owe an explanation?</p>
<p>Are you saying CMU was full pay because your income is too high to qualify for aid but that you set up a great 529 account for him to use? That sounds great! And no need to apologize. The fact that you could afford to do that and send him to a great school like CMU is wonderful. I wish we had the income and resources to do that. No apologies necessary! Your son sounds amazing and I am sure we’ll hear about him one day. :-)</p>
Fits our modest budget a lot better.</p>