There is definitely a separation between HYP and the other Ivies in the behaviour of applicants and acceptees. Look at how many students turn down HYP and how many turn down the non-HYP Ivies. It’s not close. </p>
<h1>of students turning the school down, College</h1>
<p>449 Harvard
594 Princeton
591 Yale</p>
<p>1231 U Penn
922 Columbia
1050 Dartmouth
3448 Cornell
1185 Brown</p>
<p>The non-HYP Ivies lose students to HYP and, to varying degrees, each of the non-Northeastern colleges you mention. I would also posit that when HYP lose students, it is very heavily skewed to students selecting one of the other HYPSM schools. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>I don’t how you can speak for all colleges in how they pursue their Early programs as different colleges have different philosophies. My personal view is that many colleges do this to improve their visibility of entering class and protect their yield. I don’t think that any of these schools, Ivy or otherwise, have a tough time attracting sufficient numbers of attractive students in the Early rounds. </p></li>
<li><p>IMO it is highly laudable that colleges offer merit aid. Heck, helping a student pay for college is a good thing. Not everybody is rich, ya know, and I think that this will be increasingly clear to and valued by many formerly high-flying Wall Streeters who might otherwise have automatically enrolled their offspring into an Ivy college. Unfortunately, merit aid is not as broad-based as you infer as the merit numbers at each college are often quite small. Furthermore, your argument about merit aid giving an unfair advantage doesn’t hold water as the FA packages of the 100% colleges, Ivy and otherwise, amount to aid. Why does it matter whether it is merit or need-based aid? </p></li>
<li><p>There is actually plenty of data to support my geographic arguments. Go look at the data from collegeboard about the numbers of SAT scores sent from each state. The numbers for the Ivies are highest in their home region. This is also the case for the top privates in each region.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I tend to concur with hawk on this issue, with one exception: I would posit that those that turn down HYP Ivies do not choose other, non-HYP Ivies but stay closer to home (for whatever reason) or take the merit money for family financial reasons, or accept an 8-year med program. (That full ride at Rhodes (or Vandy) and all the perqs that go with it beats Yale for some.) The exceptions to my posit, of course, would be city-centric folks who just HAVE to be in NYC (Columbia) and the Wall Street wannabes who would take Wharton over anything.</p>
<p>Hi didn’t read this whole thing, but as I saw fin. aid, $ money mentioned, thought I’d once again point out that 20% of cornell’s undergrads are NYS residents attending NYS contract colleges,whose tuitions are consequently reduced by $15,000. That’s a heck of lot of aid right there, that is not factored into your calculations I imagine.</p>
<p>davida, let’s assume you are right. Everyone should ignore the non-ivy schools and apply to HYP etc, because those are <em>clearly</em> the better choices. But oh dear, that doesn’t mean that there will be more room made for them! And here we are with plenty of superqualified students not going to college because there simply was not enough room for them at Harvard.</p>
<p>True, maybe a lot of these top tier schools are filled with HYP wannabes. But most of these students also end up happy with where they are. Just because you were accepted to an ivy, doesn’t mean that there isn’t a student out there with the exact same stats as yours who was rejected simply because there isn’t enough room and the school wants to have a diverse campus. These kids have to go somewhere, and it is the students that make the college/university top-ranked. So all of these students who could have gotten into HYP but simply didn’t because there isn’t enough room, are making other colleges across the nation just as great.</p>
<p>Ivy-league students are great. They are smart and talented. But so are students at non-ivy schools. Each year, ivy admission officers repeat constantly that they receive more qualified applicants than they can accept. So if you get in, it’s simply because one of the officers happened to be having a good day and liked your application in that moment of time. The next app might have had equal stats, but they just accepted one person like that, so why take another? It is all a subjective process.</p>
<p>Whether the yield is low or high, typically at least 80% of students at both ivies and top tier non-ivies are happy with where they are and enjoy great success after graduation. It is the students who make the school, and by no means are the ivies the only universities with bright, talented students.</p>
<p>davida, if you’re happy at your magnificent tower of ivy-league education, wherever that may be, than good for you. ivy league schools are great, but they do not hold a monopoly on fantastic college education. in any case, i fail to see the point in wasting all this time and energy bashing other excellent schools to current and prospective students.</p>
<p>lol this guy is just a ■■■■■. Take everything he says with a grain of salt and don’t put any effort into arguing with him. This is just a waste of everyone’s time.</p>
<p>bluebayou – one obvious flaw in your comment…If a student wanted to remain close to home they wouldn’t apply to Stanford, so it wouldn’t impact the cross-admit data.</p>
<p>Sam Lee, your argument that peer schools to HYPSMBCCDP are more fiscally conservative with financial aid is only an additional reason why those ten schools should be applauded. Being stingy with packages is not a good thing, especially now.</p>
<p>newprov29 – a prestigious school is a prestigious school. Stanford and Duke are prestigious. MIT is prestigious. They aren’t ivies. You are making the argument that there is a difference between “prestige” and “ivy prestige,” despite having the same amount of prestige or essentially equal academic reputations, which I think is unfounded. Prestige is prestige, whether or not it is “ivy prestige.”</p>
<p>bluebayou – I don’t know what type of high school you went to, but I went to one that sent loads of kids to HYPSMBCCDP, and I know MANY students that chose BCCDP over HYPSM. And, it wasn’t because they wanted to stay close to home. The whole obsession with HYPSMC (“C” meaning Caltech) in my experience tends to come from public school students. At elite prep schools, people do not think of HYPSMC as a separate category like other students do to the same extent I don’t think. Remember (this is just off the top of my head), Harvard loses 1/5 of its admits, Yale and Stanford about 1/4, Princeton and MIT about 1/3, and Caltech LOTS, and they choose other schools not usually for the reasons you mentioned but because of fit and an understanding that picking Princeton over Dartmouth or Yale over Brown or Caltech over Penn or whatever is going to make that big of a difference in the long scheme of things. Campuses, campus cultures, and educational programs differ, and many students only realize where they fit after applying to a lot of different places by visiting, meeting students, thinking about where they would be happiest, etc. The list goes on of people I know choosing other schools over HYPSM. I have friends that picked Columbia over Princeton, Cornell over MIT, Dartmouth over Stanford, U Pennsylvania (non-Wharton) over Harvard, etc.</p>
<p>Hawkette, there is a big difference I believe between merit aid and need-based aid and what the choice to offer merit aid says about an institution. At schools that are truly the top of the top, it doesn’t make sense to offer merit aid to a few students out of a pool of essentially equally outstanding students. Should someone get a huge package because they score a 1530 instead of a 1480 (combined math/critical reading) and took a few extra AP courses and earned A’s instead of A-'s and B+'s in them. Truly elite colleges are accepting PEOPLE not numbers, and these packages tend to go to students that boost the admissions numbers of a given institution – not students that actually add something extra special to the freshmen class. They are used essentially to steal top students from more desirable colleges for top applicants. I don’t believe peer schools of the ten I mentioned should create a hierarchy and say this small group of students are the elite and deserve extra merit-aid and the rest of your are not, which is what they are saying. I think that is off-putting and bad admissions policy for an educational community. </p>
<p>Caltech offers merit aid to students once they get there which is as bad if not maybe worse because it creates unnecessary extra competition particularly for middle class kids that are having a hard time paying for college because they don’t qualify for the same aid as low income students.</p>
<p>Oh come on… deep down, we’re all prestige whores. They are internationally recognized institutes and there is some deep rooted psychological motivation in people to gain recognition in society. On the plus their programs are among the best in the world, so when push comes to shove, various factors tip the yield in their favor.</p>
<p>Your examples make my point; thank you. Y over non-HYP Ivy? Yup. P over non-HYP IVy? doh! </p>
<p>As I posted, Columbia has NYC and no one else does; it also has a Core. It takes a special individual to attend MIT and even more special to attend Caltech, and I would understand any kid choosing to go elsewhere (in Caltech’s case, just to be around more girls!). Did your friend who chose Dartmouth over S live in the eastern US? I’m willing to bet that Harvard loses very few to Penn CAS in any given year, but no doubt that it happens. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Sure, mostly to each other, and a few that take merit money elsewhere! Quoting you:</p>
<p>I’m not quite sure I understand why the OP thinks it is “wrong” for universities to reward top-performing students with merit aid?</p>
<p>This isn’t a “battle” between schools…it’s the individual choices of individual students. Many, many students turn down substantial scholarships from places like Duke and Emory to attend places like Dartmouth and Brown. And merit aid gives the opportunity for many middle-class students to attend great universities that they would be struggling to afford.</p>
<p>Truly elite colleges are accepting PEOPLE not numbers</p>
<p>They are used essentially to steal top students from more desirable colleges for top applicants.</p>
<p>Since when have students become “items” that are “stolen” by universities? THAT istreating students as a number and not as a person. </p>
<p>There is more that goes into a college decision than just numbers and an average SAT range. Just because you have a 36 ACT doesn’t mean you should automatically go to an Ivy. Location, fit, and money are more determining factors. For example, where I live a degree from UW-Madison would be looked upon with as much reverence as a degree from an Ivy. In terms of fit, some brilliant kids just don’t feel right at certain universities and choose lower “tier” universities where they are more comfortable. As for money, what’s wrong with rewarding students for academic achievement? Isn’t it a university’s goal to lure what it thinks are the most brilliant kids to its school? Why should schools cower from a student just because it has the Ivy “brand”.</p>
<p>in this day and age, non-HYP Ivies are simply looked at on the same levels as schools like: Duke, UChicago, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, WUSTL, Rice, and Georgetown, etc. A lot of it also has to do with what you are studying.</p>
<p>So WHAT if you went to Dartmouth? You are not naturally going to be better than a Johns Hopkins or Rice students, and just about all graduate schools and employers KNOW this. There is nothing academically unique or prestigious about institutions like Cornell or Brown that you couldn’t find in equal or great quantity at schools like UChicago, Duke, etc.</p>
<p>In the end, picking between these non HYPSM elites is ALL about FIT. Where you feel MOST comfortable and ready to call home. And what Hawkette said was spot-on. For a LOT of the people admitted into COrnell, BRown, etc, FIT means being close to HOME, as in, the northeast.</p>
<p>UVA’s absolute financial aid ranking is so low only because its tuition is so low in the first place.</p>
<p>As far as economics is concerned, especially if the employer follows the Mellonist or the Austrian School of Economics, UChicago outranks every other school in the United States.</p>
<p>I don’t think Duke & Northwestern use merit aid, both have need-based aid… If they do, it is very rare. I know NU uses their financial aid to try and attract people, but not merit aid.</p>
<p>Look, prestige matters to people, either for its own sake or because they think it stands for quality. And prestige is a matter of perception, primarily. The Ivies and a few others have enough prestige based on historic perception that they are able to perpetuate their position at the top of the prestige pile. In part, this is because prestige also helps you to maintain quality. Those schools don’t give merit aid because they don’t have to do so to attract top students.</p>
<p>Uh, no. It’s financial aid ranking is low bcos UVa can’t find and/or attract any poor people in the state. Compare UVa’s Pell Grant numbers with the UCs or Michigan or neighboring Carolina…</p>