<p>Padad, what do you mean by “in” topics? Could you speak a bit more on the topic of different labs being important and not so much the program. I have no knowledge here.</p>
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Always nice to hear that someone is still listening. ;)</p>
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SJCM, as do I. And I really miss him this last few pages. 
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<p>I watched the evilrobot story unfold, too. I was taking notes knowing (at least hoping) that D would be in a similar situation. If you’ll remember there was a fairly serious CC majority urging him to Yale. I have sensed a shift, or maybe it’s just that my underwear has bunched up. Either way, there is a different feel around here. More people are open-eyed (less people are blindered) about choices it seems (the fact that there IS a choice to be made) and some are even respectful of different opinions, not to mention families and individual students making different decisions after reviewing their own particular and sometimes peculiar circumstances . </p>
<p>It was great when he came back on to give us all the update that he wasn’t looking back and knew he had made the right decision because of the tremendous opps that Vandy had laid before him. It’s still too early but I believe my D will feel the same based on my quizzing of her this past week. </p>
<p>People need to remember when reading my posts that I am not here defending a position I took on the best school/best scholarship decision. I am here defending the position my D took (actually I’m not “defending” anything, but instead I’m trying to educate folks on the process we went through) , and she made it for the same reasons ER did, and over the same concerns and objections. Most of which were my objections and concerns. I have seen both sides.</p>
<p>“A better question would be: why would you want to go to grad school in econ if all you could manage was C+? And why would any graduate program worth its name be willing to admit a C+ student?”</p>
<p>I was going to write that, but it would have sounded harsh. Your words are better.</p>
<p>I think the “different feeling” you allude to curm is just the widening of the CC audience. More, ahem, normal/average folks on the scene.</p>
<p>But have you felt it too, weenie? I think some of it is due in large part to the great work done by carolyn, and several others, that have convinced lurkers to de-lurk and put in their 2 cents. Given voice to the folks that were skittish about getting fire-bombed for their non-elite opinions on non-elite school options for decidedly elite kids. Sure there are those that still attack anything suggesting that there is any path other than the one they are blindly following, but overall I think it’s changing where even those who lean toward the elite schools - like I do- see value in other choices given the right circumstances and opportunities.</p>
<p>And I am a proud member of this CC “Radical Middle”.</p>
<p>^ Definitely.</p>
<p>Sax, don’t have the time right now to do justice to your question. Will do so tonight.</p>
<p>I must say it’s hard for me not to feel defensive when some people think (and say) that my kid would be making a big and obvious mistake if he didn’t pick the “best known” of the schools where he’s accepted. In his case, it would be based on fit rather than financial aid concerns, but it feels just as uncomfortable.</p>
<p>padad, thanks. Many will be looking forward to it.</p>
<p>We found this site after my son applied to college. Sometimes I wish I had never found it because it makes me question our decision, over and over. I know my son would love it if I stopped asking him if school was “hard enough” etc.
Then posters like Curm speak out and I feel a bit more reassured.I guess I just stick around to let people know that although he didn’t choose the top school it is working out.</p>
<p>If my son read this site he would laugh, say “it’s all good” and move on. He is very, very happy.</p>
<p>Just a general thanks to everyone who posts because I have learned so much.</p>
<p>weenie,
From my “different feeling” perspective, it’s a refusal on DS’s part (and reluctance on ours) to get involved in all the hype and craziness of HYPSM admissions. One of DS’s criteria is a school’s willingness to look at flexible placement. For the most part, he is finding it in math departments who will let students test into higher levels. For his other intended major, it is proving far more challenging. </p>
<p>One of the other issues we’re looking at is whether schools that might look at DS favorably for merit $$ will have enough in his majors for four years, given advanced placement. Once he gets through the major courses, everyone offers independent study/research, etc. It’s hard to get a sense of what that would really mean without establishing relationships with professors beforehand. We’ve looked at schools websites to see which profs in a department are doing research in X or Y fields, and DS is sitting in on classes wherever he can to get some flavor for the profs.</p>
<p>How have other folks evaluated schools – on a personal level – for availability of seminar topics/research in specific areas?<br>
Is it even possible to get this level of info in the process of making a list of schools?
Did this happen before your S/D applied to schools, or after acceptance?
Cur, when did your D find out about the folks she’d be working with?</p>
<p>Re: grad programs – If you are talking about PhD programs in social sciences and humanities, it’s a must to have a very strong gpa in the field or related fields. In addition, while a few below par grades would be ok, the overall gpa is also important. Since grad programs require the GRE, the student should be able to do fairly well in math, more in social sciences than humanities.</p>
<p>But in addition to the grades, letters of recommendation are very important for entry into PhD programs, as is evidence that the student has strong analytical and writing skills. Admissions is done by groups of faculty (with possibly a graduate student on the committee), not by admissions staff. Faculty have an eye for substantive achievement such as honors theses and the admissions process may include submission of a piece of writing. Finally, the student’s statement should focus on academic interest. Having professors who can support and guide the student – and who have some national reputation that is recognized by the admissions committee – is very helpful. By the way, a scholar need not be at a major research institution to have a national reputation, but she or he must be actively engaged via professional conferences, scholarly publications, etc.</p>
<p>Yes, I agree bethie. That’s a rational response as far as I’m concerned. It’s also understanadable for proponents of elite schools for their elite kid to feel just as “uncomfortable” when people post (as someone did ) “You’d be an idiot to turn down a full-ride to go to HYP” (paraphrased, but dang close). </p>
<p>My problem is when either side just makes assinine insupportable assertions that their way is the best way, even the only proper way, for these smart kids to go. That’s usually when I jump in and take the other side. ;)</p>
<p>edit: THe RaDicAl MiDdlE.( I may use this as my tagline. ;))</p>
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For the record, this was not my experience last year – ten of the seventy first-years in my PhD program are from MIT (and several more got in but chose to go to other programs). The programs will take as many kids from top schools as they can.</p>
<p>On the widening of the CC pool - I can believe it’s broadened, but also think that those of us who have been here over two years have cramped check writing hands, and our opinions on colleges, like everything else, have matured. There’s no teacher like experience.</p>
<p>And that leads me to my next comment, on the ‘jaded’ or ‘bored’ student coming from an elite high school. Kids coming from a boarding environment may well wonder what all the fuss is about when they see their classmates marveling over the joys of being away from home for the first time. I’m sure it’s largely an academic jadedness that people are referring to, but I think the social aspects are part of it. Kids from public high school haven’t been buying their own books, haven’t had the luxury of being able to underline or write notes in the margin - they’ve been lugging home large, worn textbooks with a list of 5 or 6 previous owners in the front that they were required to cover with a paper bag and then return at the end of the year. That’s just one small example of the difference in experiences. The total experience has fewer fresh parts to it for a b.s. student. Their public school counterparts are running around giddy and wide-eyed and for some of them, it might be a let down that it’s not all that different from b.s. </p>
<p>Colleges recognize freshmen come with different preparation or they would not have writing and math centers on campus. It is possible to get a high score on the SAT verbal and writing and not know how to write a research paper because one was never assigned. </p>
<p>To momcubed: h. attended a state university (last century) and went on to PhD at an ivy in the sciences. What he found was that his classmates (all from ivy or highly regarded tech schools) had more lab experience and that he had to learn it on the fly. He was also the only one who’d taken extensive humanities courses, so he had a more well rounded undergrad experience. </p>
<p>I have to say I don’t believe that grad schools look for geographical diversity. I do believe they encourage women in the sciences, but do not accept students who can’t cut it. Grad schools don’t ‘brag’ about the backgrounds of their students, but will brag about fellowships won, job placement, research published, etc. </p>
<p>I think your s. will do well at whatever school he ends up at. There are always tradeoffs.</p>
<p>countingdown: Many of the things you are looking at were factors for S. He looked at them during the whole process (and as early as 10th grade) but it has picked up even more once acceptances started to arrive. Some have specifically included research etc as part of acceptance/scholarships. He is now visiting, talking, emailing to nail down constraints, specifics etc. One school actually said they would create a double major for him that was not generally available. Another said with his background he could begin research usually only done by juniors and he could choose any area he wanted. Some are extremely accommodating on AP/college credit, others not so because of their particular course sequence. In retrospect I think the more investigating you can do earlier to help understand each place and to narrow choices the better.</p>
<p>dstark:</p>
<p>Yes, my bad. A 2.75 is a B-. I think it’s okay for freshman year. But I thought you were talking about graduating GPA. How would time and maturity factor into it, unless in a negative way? E.g., in four years of college, applicant has not managed to rise above a B-?</p>
<p>I think these discussions are, to be frank, dreadful when people take them to the extreme. To say either that it’s HYPSM or die, or that you’d be a fool to turn down a full ride for HYPSM, is just plain dumb at best and destructive at worst.</p>
<p>And so many ad absurdem arguments are made on the way to these overarching statements. That HYPSM will absolutely give you a better chance of making $$$. That there is no difference ON AVERAGE between students at a third-tier U and students at HYPSM — this is the statement where I find myself scratching my head and muttering “1984, 1984, war is peace, war is peace” under my breath.</p>
<p>I think these threads are extremely useful when people start to break the problem into component parts. Cur and sax’s kids are both focused on research. Both have found schools, enormous or on the small side, that have those opportunities. For those kids, the grad school piece is critical AND they could identify the type of research they wanted to be involved in early on.</p>
<p>It’s much more useful if those of us who have been through this do not use this forum as a way to assuage our own pangs of doubt but rather as a way to show honestly the rightness and wrongness of our own decision-making, and the strengths and weakness of our kids’s choices, and why. Above all why. Princeton isn’t great for my D because of its prestige or its ties to Wall Street. It’s great for her because she doesn’t know what she wants to do, because my dad is funding her education, because she loves the social structure of the eating clubs, and because she doesn’t have to wear sunscreen every day:). So I can highly recommend it to anyone else in our situation. BTW, she does comment on the large number of red-heads in Tigertown…</p>
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<p>Graduate programs are not like colleges. They don’t care about geographical diversity, they don’t care about ECs. They care about excellence and fit with the program. In other words, it would be silly for a student to apply to study South Asian history at a university that has no faculty in that area; not only would the program not be a good fit, but the applicant would have shown a lack of research into the department which s/he was hoping to join.
Admissions committeestake into account the wishes of profs to have graduate students working with them, so there’s some horse-trading; but there’s absolutely no qualms about admitting applicants from a handful of colleges rather than a broader spectrum. It’s not like college admissions. Graduate programs are not seeking to build " a class."</p>
<p>CountingDown- as you might guess, we were very …uhhh… “complete” in our searching. D reviewed every ongoing lab and research project posted on the websites at her LAC’s and a great many at the larger research schools. She researched where her major prof’s did their schooling. She read some papers or excerpts from papers written by the profs. We downloaded and printed maybe 100 sheets of paper per school specifically on the UG research. She took that to her interviews. She studied it the night before she met with the professors (or even admissions and most certainly scholarship folks) at the schools we visited.</p>
<p>At Rhodes there were 4 bio labs that greatly interested her on campus and about the same number of chem labs. She met with the professor who had recently been given an NSF grant of several hundred thousand for her cancer research as we felt that guaranteed viability of the project to say the least. LOL. This was well before admission. </p>
<p>Rhodes also has a continuing relationship with medical research labs at The U OF Tenn Medical School down the road (where D volunteers) and a specific St. Jude’s Summer Program (which is really 2 school years and at least one summer) and also a continuing relationship with St. Jude’s labs that is not part of the Summer Program. D di not commit to any prior to going to school, nor did the school commit to her that she would have her pick. </p>
<p>Her plan is , as of right now, to join the St. Jude’s Program next year and to spend two summers in the Program. But, she may very well be tempted to stay in the lab she’s in now where she has been offered a paid research position for this summer. We’ll see. </p>
<p>What she was told when she questioned whether she would be able to do research at Rhodes was that she would have more than one choice. Gee, that was an understatement. D will be attending a research conference carrying the bags during the actual presentation for her junior mentor but getting her name on the project as a freshman. She was asked to be a presenter but felt more comfortable, not knowing her schedule, with the lesser commitment. Still, pretty heady stuff for a first-year.</p>