Your kid takes the top scholarship instead of the top school. What's next?

Parents Forum
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<p>Cur, your example is not really that good. Cornell is an Ivy outlier. Part of it is a state land-grant college (the ag school). Secondly, i don’t mean to offend anyone but Cornell and Vandy are on par except a few programs. You could be at the hotel management program at Cornell. it is probably the best in the world but I wouldn’t think that it needs the kind of students that can excell at a top philosophy or sciene program. The med school at Vandy is by far, far a better one. Thus, undergraduates who are interested in medical science is much better off at Vandy than Cornell. The cornell mediacl school is in nyc etc etc. By all my criteria, I would not pick one over the other unless i know what programs i want. </p>

<p>BTW, I have stated elsewhere that I don’t advocate undergraduates research, especially in topics that they are interested in. If one is interested in cancer biology, for example, it is as useful to know a bit more organic chemistry research or other unrelated field as the actual working in a cancer biology lab.</p>

<p>A more valid comparison may be Vandy versus Yale.</p>

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<p>padad, I gave you Vandy vs. Penn, not Vandy/Cornell. The Vandy/Cornell thing was just funny to me since the stats are almost exactly the same and Cornell is so much more highly regarded by some. (Not me.) Is Penn an “outlier” , too? And how do you feel at Garland’s Michigan, or Berkeley, or UNC, or heck- any state school that others may have considered elite? Are they elite outliers , too?</p>

<p>And how far down do we go with the Vandy schools? Emory? Wake Forest? Colgate? Hamilton? Carleton? Smith? Where’s the line?</p>

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<p>padad, I understand your point for additional knowledge over research however I do believe an undergrad student needs to be involved in research in order to find out what that entails. Better finding out early what research actually is than going to the trouble of getting a fellowship or grant or into a Phd. program and finding out you hate it.</p>

<p>Blossum…thanks for sharing the MIT grad results and thoughts</p>

<p>Curm: I think its so cool your d has been in school for 7 months and has already got her name at the top of a research paper.</p>

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<p>blossom, you make a valid point.</p>

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<p>blossom: you make an excellent point (for those of us who are not diffentiating between a 1450 and a 1250 sat score - ) – since none of these kids know what life may bring or change, it makes spending 47,000/year a bit more heart-wrenching (okay, a lot more heart-wrenching); so the question is, since one doesn’t know if a kid will be at the top of a state u, are more doors typically open to the MIT grads who delay grad school as compared to the state u kids who also decide to delay grad school.</p>

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<p>I don’t recall what the 25-75% percentiles are for Yale, but the Vandy ones, as posted by Curmudgeon, are as follows:</p>

<p>Vandy
630/720 CR
650/760 Math</p>

<p>This, to me, suggests that someone who had the SAT scores to be admitted to Yale would fit comfortably among the upper 25% or 50% at Vandy. 25%-50% of a student body is enough to populate the classes you want to take and for you to find kindred spirits and intellects. And this seems to be exactly what Evil Robot found.</p>

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<p>I totally agree with Blossom’s point. Student’s are exposed to only a limited range of academic disciplines and career ideas while in high school, and part of college is learning about new academic subjects and career options. Some parents on CC report their kids to be very focused and certain of their ulitmate path while in high school, but it is very common for new paths to open up and for kids to change direction while in college.</p>

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<p>Related a bit to Garland and curm…points, maybe:
There was as argument on a thread NU versus Michigan,.where the NU posterr kept insisting NU was better because of the average and middle SAT stats. I pointed out that the top 25% stats for Mich were not far off NU and in absolute numbers represented about the same number of students tas the whole NU enrollment. My point was that there are a lot of smart kids there, enough to mix with if one needs to and to provide “stimulating” discussion. I also pointed out that having the diversity should not prevent these top kids from achieving and like calmom and others have pointed out might actually be a plus instad of a minus—in many aspects. I am not trying to detract from any top school here because I think ther are lot of good ones (I do think Princeton is a fantastic place). But I think that sometimes statistics can be taken too far when trying to compare a big school to a smaller private or an “elite”. Actually, trying to separate 1 from 10 onm some list too (with dstark- I think it is-on this point).
Bethievt: I always liked Carlton.</p>

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<p>Cur, Let me first say that my original input was between Shryer Penn State versus MIT. I know a bit about the two schools. Would I think there is a difference between Vandy and Penn? The answer is only in specific areas but no in general. I would, however, discourage my own kid to go to either one as an undergraduate only because I would rather have my kid at a LAC.</p>

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<p>Wow, go away from the computer for a couple of hours and this thread piles on new pages!</p>

<p>Cur,
DS has been reading articles by the two profs with whom he’s interviewed for mentorships (those articles are SO much more interesting than homework! :slight_smile: ), but it’s good to know that doing this is indeed a useful exercise. He also has a couple of textbooks by the gurus in his favorite topics, which he has found useful in conversations.</p>

<p>We have been flailing about trying to come up with a Spring Break travel itinerary and seeing what kind of reconnaissance DS can muster out of that week. </p>

<p>But it sounds like no promises – just look for the money and cool people to corroborate with.</p>

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<p>Yale
SAT Critical Reading: 700 - 790
SAT Math: 690 - 790 </p>

<p>Vandy
630/720 CR
650/760 Math
padad, I was hoping you’d ask. If we are still using our SAT = smart yardstick , and if I’m still getting away with my lazy 50th percentile midpoint, then ---- </p>

<p>If you take the top quartile from Yale away, and the bottom quartile away from Vandy (in the estimation of some the scholarship helmet sports and …oh, yeah Republicans :wink: JK) you have a student body just as smart at each school, wouldn’t you say? (CR a little down, Math a little up) Said another way , the top 3/4 of Vandy fits in the bottom 3/4 of Yale. So what does that leave? </p>

<p>Now even given what we have all said about different programs and different strengths of students within each program I’d still say there was a difference bewteen Yale and Vandy. The question I have for you is - is that difference enough to outweigh most/all other reasons for attending a particular college? Research opps, like the kids better, comfort zone, money, close to home, travel abroad, other fit categories, a prof you like ?</p>

<p>And if you’re having trouble with that missing quartile at the top of Yale are all of y’all so sure your kid would be in that top 1/4 ? LOL.</p>

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<p>How does the equation change if Vandy or Rhodes is the full-pay option, competing against a full ride at a fourth-tier public university?</p>

<p>I buy the argument that Rhodes, Yale, Vandy, Cornell, etc., each has a critical mass of intelligent, academically engaged students, and that each can offer a stimulating education. Is this equally true at Vandy or Rhodes vs. the fourth-tier public?</p>

<p>Would you pay the difference to attend Vandy or Rhodes if HYPS were off the table, and the merit offers were coming from the fourth-tier public, the regional master’s university, the LAC that doesn’t make the top 100?</p>

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<p>Here’s my non-numerical take on elite vs. non-. To some extent, it has to do with the students who make those choices. My daughter is far from a star at the University of Chicago. She struggled to pass her core math and science classes. But she feels a tremendous sense of community with the math/science kids around her; she knows what they’re researching, what they’re doing their BA theses on. Her close friends there are mainly theater and drama types, like her, but they are all completely engaged in the Life of the Mind. That’s why they’re there.</p>

<p>A lot of her high school friends – mostly at LACs, but some at public universities, and some at private research universities – are not having the same experience. They report social pressure to dumb down their vocabulary outside of class, and not to talk about their school work. When she visited her best friend from high school, who is in an Honors program at a public university, she was shocked that the kids seemed to talk about nothing but TV shows. (Believe me, she is NOT averse to talking about TV, either, but she expects to talk about other things, too.) </p>

<p>I had a similar experience at my college. I remember going to a wild party my junior year, one with half the football team in attendance. When you walked in the door, it probably looked like any football team party anywhere – beer and illicit substances everywhere, large, bleary-eyed boys and dolled-up, bleary-eyed girls. The outgoing captain of the team was ensconced on a couch, and he was earnestly explaining the thesis in his work-in-progress senior essay on pre-Socratic philosophers. Other people were responding, commenting. It was not the most coherent discussion ever of the pre-Socratics, but it was a pretty typical experience there. Everyone was engaged in their studies, and engaged because they were interested, not because it was taking them somewhere in terms of their careers. My wife – Puritanical inveterate feminist activist that she was/is – would not have set foot in a party like that, but she has huge areas of common ground in talking about our college experiences with me and my more fun-loving friends, because for all of us it was first and foremost about intellectual excitement. Whatever SAT differences there were didn’t even register, because everyone assumed everyone else was smart, everyone acted smart, the whole culture had intelligence and intellectual inquiry at its core. It was wonderful.</p>

<p>I don’t doubt at all that there are plenty of kids like that in public university honors programs, or at schools like Vanderbilt (or whatever). A student can get a great education at dozens of schools, maybe hundreds, and an intellectually-oriented student can find a decent group of like-minded peers at dozens of schools. But there is only a handful of schools where essentially everyone is like that, no matter what else they do, where no one has to check out anyone else’s bona fides before talking about something that interests them, and where mutual respect is a top-to-bottom thing.</p>

<p>Of course, that’s a tremendous luxury. It’s completely a fair question to ask how much it’s worth to pay for that, if you can get equivalent faculty, research opportunities, facilities, and close friends elsewhere for a lot less. And it’s also fair to ask whether that kind of atmosphere isn’t in part a function of the near-monolithic affluence of the student body. (It’s not that simple, but it’s not that wrong, either.)</p>

<p>But I don’t believe that’s a universal college experience, or that colleges are fungible in that regard. It’s not even necessarily true of all “elite” schools – Stanford wasn’t like that for undergraduates in the late 70s, that’s for sure, although it offered near-limitless opportunities for kids who wanted them.</p>

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<p>

:eek: I misspoke. DID I say that? Can I still edit? I don’t remember saying THAT. Jeez. She’ll kill me. What I tried to say was she was carrying water for her lab mentor , a junior who won a Goldwater last year, at a conference where a presentation of something (their lab work) was being done by the junior with D’s help. Whatever docs (papers posters whatever) that go with that presentation will have my D’s name on them somewhere but not “on the top”. I’m sure it will be below the fold. In small print. Maybe with her Sharpie. :wink: And I don’t think we are talking about a research paper but a presentation type thing of some sort. I’m not fully in the loop.</p>

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<p>JHS^Ya know, this happens every time I make the mistake of writing on one of these threads–I think I’m describing my joy at finding a great intellectual experience to show I know it doesn’t exist everywhere, and some HYP grad comes along to point out that i’m arguing for the wrong side.</p>

<p>Yer right, JHS, the football captain of Michigan probably woudln’t be having that discussion. I’ll slink back to the other side of the discussion where I belong.</p>

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<p>Cur, Who said I use SAT as a yardstick? </p>

<p>Alu said it quite well earlier on the usefullness of “average” and outliers as parameters in informed decisions. So would all the parameters you included places your hypothetical student as an outlier?</p>

<p>I can’t speak for others, but for my kid, who is not an outlier, I would be happier if she is at Yale rather than Vandy (only because I dislike country music and Yale’s got a tremendous classical music program).</p>

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<p>garland:</p>

<p>On the other hand, I think it’s a safe bet that the football captain at Michigan does better economically, especially in the years right after college, than the football captains at Harvard and Yale. (The football captain in MY year went on to be Editor-in-Chief of the University of Virginia Law Review, to clerk for Justice Powell, and ultimately to become a political mover and shaker in his home state. But Tom Brady makes a lot more than he does, and he’s younger and cuter, too.)</p>

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<p>lgree, it’s not amatter of choice for us. We can’t pay full fare . As such, and maybe this will help, below D’s LACs like Rhodes and Centre where a slew of schools she applied to with USNWR rankings below 80. She applied to several as without merit aid , and except for the chance that a generous need only would give her enough to attend (which we knew was possible but unlikely), my D would have been at Texas Tech , a third tier public, or Ole Miss Honors (Barksdale). She visted several schools not ranked in top 100 USNWR in LACs. Cornell College, Westminster Mo, Lake Forest (in and out) and considred many more. Once she found a guaranteed scholarship at Hanover Colleg, ranked 88 I think at the time, she stopped looking as she had her safety LAC.</p>

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<p>curm…sorry. you said she got her name on a project that they presented at a research conference. I just figured the names go at the top under the heading :slight_smile: Cool anyway. Do not want to strat rumors…sorry</p>

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<p>“But there is only a handful of schools where essentially everyone is like that, no matter what else they do, where no one has to check out anyone else’s bona fides before talking about something that interests them”
So what schools are you talking about here? Ivies? I have friends at Penn who report a largely pre-professional atmosphere. And are you saying that ALL students who get into HYP are intellectually curious? Like GW Bush? Come on. Yes, all HYP kids are smart, but some are grade grubbers and some are lazy kids who like to talk about tv (instead of Socrates).
Are you more likely to find kids who will engage in intellectual discourse at HYP? Yes - of course - but let’s not go overboard and say EVERYONE fits that profile. Admission counselors are not that good and smart doesn’t always equal intellectually curious.</p>