<p>“Mini, your next kid applying to college is a junior.”</p>
<p>Yeah, but we already have a good safety we know we can pay for, and in either case, she is such a go-getter that she’d be able to work it out regardless. </p>
<p>And since there is barely a “prestige” college in the country that offers what she wants/needs, they are all third-tier.</p>
<p>
I don’t think that the specific merit schools my son considered would have challenged him as much as his current school. In his specific case, the idea holds.</p>
<p>I raised the issue of kids struggling for the general case. Obviously, it isn’t the case for everyone that they would find the lower tier school easier than the more elite school. At some point, and I think I’m there, the argument is just ridiculous. If my son had attended UMass (he didn’t apply) I honestly believe it would be easier for him than Dartmouth, especially in the general ed classes. Math and physics are challenging at any school. But he finds it hard to find any less demanding distributive classes to balance his heavy load of math/science classes. At a less demanding college, I think he’d be able to find classes to meet requirements that didn’t require tons of reading and lengthy research papers. If there are any “easy” classes at Dartmouth, he hasn’t found them.</p>
<p>The comment about Yale is a little silly, imho. There are differences in selectivity in college admissions, but I think they only matter at the grossest level of differentiation. If Yale has an average SAT (I know, let’s not open THAT can again!) of 1480 and Dartmouth’s is 1470, so what? That’s not a significant difference. (I’m guessing at these numbers) But if you compare a school several tiers lower, the differences are more noticeable.</p>
<p>Now, I’ve argued both sides on this thread. I’m a public U grad, and never thought we’d ante up for the full pay private school. We’ve made our choice, and it has it’s good points and bad. There are no perfect schools, or perfect kids or perfect answers to this kind of question.</p>
<p>
I can’t speak for others, but I know what I find irksome is those who post with the assumption that the level of challenge and standard of course work at an Ivy is significantly better than a school of the level of Rhodes or Vandy; those who assume that SAT scores equate with ability and talk about kid being on the top/bottom half of the class based on where they fit along the SAT midrange coming in; and those who assume that post-graduate lifetime opportunities will be radically better for those with the Ivy degree in hand vs. those with the degree from X State U. </p>
<p>None of those assumptions is valid, but it comes off as very “elitist” or judgmental when made by someone who has the elite school background, or whose kids are at the elite schools – because generally it comes down to how much smarter the kids are at Ivy U, how much better the classes are there, and how many more opportunities exist for the Ivy U. graduate … when the person has no clue as to what the classes are like at Rhodes/Vandy or at X State U – or what opportunities lie ahead for the graduates of the less prestigious schools. I mean, bottom line it is a “my school is better than yours” statement and that can’t help but be interpreted as offensive to families who have made other choices, especially when part of the reason for the choice is economic… because then it gets translated to: “not only do my kids go to a better school than yours, but I’m a better parent because I am richer and can afford to pay for the better school”. </p>
<p>I am NOT saying that any parent here intends to get that message across – I am just trying to explain what it is that pushes my buttons as a parent who tossed some big fat welcoming admission envelopes into the trash because of inadequate financial aid. If life has handed you the big prize, it make sense to show a little sensitivity to those with more limited options. I say that ALSO as a parent of one child at what I consider an elite college – I know that in the real world, when people ask me where my daughter goes to college, I always say “in New York” and try to size up the situation before volunteering more information. If it turns out that their own kid is attending the local community college, it probably is a good idea for me to shift the subject to my son at his CSU rather than wax poetic about my daughter’s elite experience.</p>
<p>cheers, for what it’s worth, I think the attitude at Stanford (not familiar with USC), is that California is pretty much the most diverse place on Earth, and that the 50% of undergraduates who come from California include about five dozen national origins and even more home languages. In-state = global outlook, and the in-state contingent is far more diverse than the largely privileged kids who come from the East Coast.</p>
<p>padad and JHS - IMO, I think you’re both blowing the whole honors college thing out of proportion here - and yes - insulting parents and students who made this choice to boot. Did you think we’d be happy to be called elitist? Come on now…
I’ll share some perspective…and I think it’s pretty balanced.<br>
IT DEPENDS ON YOUR KID.
Most of my son’s friends are outside the honors college. He does not feel better than they are and there’s no bad feelings about the extra perks the honors kids get. He applied to the honors school and got in. They did not. For those who applied and were rejected - there certainly may be some bad feelings. But that’s life, and my son is certainly no stranger to rejection.
Hey, if you don’t like the system, go ahead and reject it. Don’t even apply for that matter. For us, it works. It saved $, and gives him access to small classes and better advising. IMO, going to a particular school does NOT mean you’re elitist. I know plenty of down-to-earth Ivy grads. And some arrogant state school grads. It’s the attitude of the student (and parents) that counts.</p>
<p>“I would not say I’m better than you because I’m not. I would say we live in different planets”</p>
<p>Cheers, I don’t think I’m morally superior to you. Have you killed anybody lately? :)</p>
<p>Cheers, our motivations are different. The way we see the world is different.</p>
<p>That’s what I get from your posts. Not better or worse, just different.</p>
<p>I see Michael Jordan as a great baskeball player. That’s it. He’s not a better person than any neighbor down the block.</p>
<p>Calmom: since you live in California, you probably needn’t worry about saying the name of your daughter’s school – most won’t have heard of it, or if they have, won’t have much of a sense of it. Because of the UC options and relative lack of legacy ties and “feeder” schools, Californians are fairly insular about the Ivy League schools (most could not tell you the names of all of them or why they are so named, though they’ve heard of Harvard, of course). As a Californian, one thing that I have found almost ludicrous (and off-putting) is the “H-Bomb” stuff – people saying their kid “goes to school in Boston.”</p>
<p>Marite and Mother of Two - In regards to your comments about the difficulty of science classes at the different schools, this has been what I have found. Premed classes at large public universities (at least the one in my town) are much easier than at more competitive schools. Kids who are premed take the hard premed classes during the summer at our public university, and find them easier than the classes they took at our public highschool. Of course, I know kids flunk out at public universities, too. Organic chem is the “flunk out class” for premed students. And, there are much better and harder public universities than the one in my town.</p>
<p>Calmom writes really well. I think this even when I disagree with her. I like post #1223. </p>
<p>Don’t most people agree that Calmom writes well? (Sorry Calmom).</p>
<p>She went to which private college? ;)</p>
<p>
But if you are looking at Yale vs. Rhodes or Vandy, you aren’t looking at “several tiers lower” – you are looking at an elite college vs. a very well-regarded private college. </p>
<p>And I’m not sure that the level of challenge is all that different. My daughter ran into a problem with her first midterm at college – she had studied and knew what the material well, but she didn’t understand what was required on a college essay, so she gave a short, direct answer rather than a detailed analysis – she got a “C” because the prof expected more depth. OK - no problem – she figured out what she needed to do. But about the time she ran into that problem, I was talking to the parent of a high school classmate who was at UC Santa Cruz… who described the exact same problem arising for her daughter. Now UCSC was clear “safety” territory for both my kids - so as a parent I might have assumed that everyone there simply smokes weed all day and anything goes in the classroom… but obviously there was some level of challenge. And as it happened, my daughter’s first year writing prof at Barnard was a graduate of UCSC (which I found rather ironic at the time) – and I definitely saw my d’s writing improve immensely with that course, so somehow my Barnard daughter was able to learn a lot from a woman educated at the safety school my d. turned down. (Obviously the prof had gone on to earn a Ph.D. at another college, but her Ph.D. college wasn’t a prestige school either – sometimes it’s just about money).</p>
<p>
You would be surprised. I found that many parents of kids at my daughter’s high school did not know what “Barnard” was or confused it with “Bard” – and some assumed that “Columbia” is in South Carolina or Missouri — and it is with other parents that I tread carefully.</p>
<p>But beyond that, with new adults I meet (and I have met a lot in the past several months as I follow through with my empty-nester resolution to “get out more”) – there is immediate recognition, sometimes of the oh, wow sort, often of the “my sister went there” sort.</p>
<p>Here is a true conversation I had last week:</p>
<p>“So, how does your daughter like Barnard?”
“She’s doing all right”
“I went to Barnard for a year, but I hated it there and transferred to U of (midwestern state) where I was much happier”
“Oh… why didn’t you like Barnard?”…</p>
<p>leading into a very interesting conversation, definitely NOT of the elitist sort. More of the honest sort, because that opened the door for me to discuss the pros & cons of Barnard in a more forthright manner. </p>
<p>One thing that really irks me – as well - is those who portray their kid’s college experience at elite colleges in uniformly glowing terms: everything is absolutely perfect and wonderful. I know that the real world isn’t like that, the kid at the Ivy League college has not been transported to Paradise, and a real kid at a real college will have plenty to complain about as well as things to appreciate. </p>
<p>
Boston has a lot of schools, and Harvard is in Cambridge. My d. applied to Boston U and Northeastern, which are in Boston; and to Brandeis, which is in Waltham. My d. is in Boston regularly to visit her boyfriend, and when anyone asks me where the bf goes to school, I always say, “he goes to school in Boston”, because if I say “Berklee” they think I mean “Berkeley”, which is near Oakland. </p>
<p>Before you decide people are being “ludicrous” you might consider the reasons they have for answering questions in a certain way. The ones with the kids in Harvard may simply want to avoid the conversation that typically ensues.</p>
<p>dstark: Yes, I agree. I think calmom writes really well, too.</p>
<p>sjmom: Obviously, there are schools, majors, courses (and professors) that are far more difficult than others out there. And I actually have no problem with the “full pay option,” nor do I have a problem with private schools. </p>
<p>My issue (and perhaps this isn’t necessarily your viewpoint) is a running undercurrent here that seems to suggest that <em>any</em> private school, where the parent is paying full freight @ $40,000+ a year, will be filled with brilliant students and will be academically challenging with lots of dedicated and brilliant faculty who really care about their students. </p>
<p>Well, I know this isn’t the case, and frankly, there are plenty of private universities (and public) that I wouldn’t even allow my dog to attend, because–you know–she’s part golden retriever and part Australian shepherd, and, well–she’s smarter and more selective than that. (You know how those golden retrievers are.) That said, I also believe that so much depends on the student-- no matter where he or she chooses to attend school.</p>
<p>“I’m not sure that the level of challenge is all that different.”</p>
<p>I’m sure you’d get a lot of different answers if you asked transfer students who attended different pairs of schools and majored in different fields. Psychology at Bryn Mawr paled in comparison to my courses at Harvard. The standard Japanese curriculum at Harvard was exactly twice as challenging (same book, double speed). In English, I found that the coursework was equally rigorous at both, but the quality of writing necessary to get an A was higher at Harvard. All that being said, if I’d been taking archaeology, ancient Greek, and earth science at Bryn Mawr, I think I would have perceived a much smaller academic difference between the schools, because those departments are terrific at BMC and they attract the most devoted students. My best friend who transferred to Penn thought her psychology courses there weren’t much of a step up from BMC; she found it mainly a social and extracurricular improvement. So there’s no one answer, but it can be very different.</p>
<p>I also have to back up what others have said earlier in the thread – law school is a totally different ball game than undergrad when it comes to the importance of prestige. The name of your law school does follow you around forever, and it can play a role in the opportunities you get even decades after graduation. Employers notice, and I’m not just talking about big-name firms. Some non-corporate career tracks, like sought-after federal agencies, academia, and nationally prominent not-for-profits care even more about your law school than big firms do. (This is an extreme example, but when Harriet Miers was nominated to the Supreme Court, part of the reason that the legal profession went berserk was because she went to SMU.) It’s not fair, it’s elitist, but that’s how it is.</p>
<p>This doesn’t mean it’s foolish to take a big scholarship at Columbia Law instead of choosing Harvard or Yale, but it does mean that it can be rational to borrow $150k to buy the big name.</p>
<p>I agree with JHS about diversity at Stanford, based on my son’s experience. Ethnically, it is more diverse than almost any other school I can think of. Also, you need to remember that the state of California itself is the size of a whole region of East Coast states.</p>
<p>juliet53 - My son told me that many pre-meds at Stanford took organic chemistry at other colleges during the summer, to avoid facing the difficulty or the grading curve of the Stanford class. (He was not pre-med and did not take chemistry courses himself.)</p>
<p>To DStark: I may write well, but I don’t type so good. It drives me nuts when I read some of my posts and it is too late to edit, and I see all the mistakes I’ve made, usually omitting whole words or phrases. (The spelling is ok these days because the new Firefox has a spell check – before then, not so great).</p>
<p>toneranger, my apology to you that i used Echols and Shreyer as specific examples. Those are the two programs that I have a good working knowledge. BTW, I hope I have never indicated that Shreyer is not a good place. It is a highly selective and an excellent program, and people who runs the program work extremely hard to make it so. Both are crown jewels of their respective schools. It just happens that I disagree in principle on setting up such programs within state universities. As a matter of fact, I have indicated in other threads that state u’s have no business giving out merit-based scholarships at all, except those that are sponsored by outside sources such as the Jefferson at Virginia. the perks at shryer, as you well know, include a stipend as well as competitive merit scholarships. While I am sympathetic to the need of using such scholarships to attract highly talented students, I believe strongly that it is a misplaced priority and goes against the basic mission of state u’s. This is especially true for state u’s that do not distinguish between in and out-of-state students.</p>
<p>For the record, the last thing I possibly meant was that I was a better parent for having money to spend on my kids’ education.</p>
<p>I’m a good parent for not throwing my strong-willed daughter out the window when she was 4.
I’m a bad parent for leaving my shy son sobbing in his crib at 11 months to train him to sleep.
I’m not any kind of parent or other for having come from a family with $$$. And if I don’t believe that strongly enough I need to go beat my inner elitist into submission.</p>
<p>However, if it’s insensitive of me to mention my financial circumstances, how do I put my choice in context for people who are choosing now? No win circumstances I guess, or I just have to figure out how to phrase this information so that doesn’t offend anyone.</p>
<p>I’m going to chalk this all up to a) me needing to think a little more and parse my writing more carefully b) sensitive topics and blurring of nuance over the Internet.</p>
<p>Sjmom,
You see the entire debate through the eyes of your son’s experience, then make generalized statements about the question at hand. Your son got into an elite school and you were lucky to be able to afford it. Good for you. However, the elite vs. merit choice is a real issue for many people – best example is the OP himself, curm, whose daughter turned down Yale and Amherst for a full ride & fabulous opportunities at a much lesser-known school. Or the boy who turned down Yale for Vandy. And from what I hear – both of these kids are being PLENTY challenged.</p>
<p>“It drives me nuts when I read some of my posts and it is too late to edit, and I see all the mistakes I’ve made, usually omitting whole words or phrases.”</p>
<p>Calmom, I think almost every single poster feels the same way about his/her posts. </p>
<p>There aren’t going to be any heated battles over your statement. :)</p>