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

dstark · March 17, 2007, 11:17pm

Kirmum, I know you left for dinner, but I wanted to comment on something you said.

You said this, “What I learn from threads like this is that it’s just totally individual and we can post forever and not change any opinions. It’s about intrinsic values of the family.”

I think the word “values” is insulting , and one reason this thread hasn’t blown up is nobody has mentioned values.

Everybody who has participated or read this thread values education strongly.

To start implying that somebody values education more than others, which is what your statement does, is insulting.

Everybody here values education strongly, but may come to a different conclusion on how to get the best education for their kid.
Some people might be limited by the expense. At some point, almost everyone is.

For those that can afford the top private school education, they might not see enough of a distinction between those schools and others for their kid to pay the difference.

Some people might say I can pay $50,000 a year, and the education at a top school is what I see as the best choice, and choose that.

Others might say, I like the choice of the $50,000 school, but I like the choice of the $25,000 school and the use of an additional $25,000 for my kid to live in a different country or a different culture for a year. To maybe do some volunteer work after graduation. The latter person might think this is a better choice for a top educational experience.

Both the $50,000 payer and the $25,000 payer may value education the same, but come to different conclusions on how to get it.

If we keep values out of it and don’t say my family values education more than yours (because it is not true) and talk about our own opinions and experiences, we can learn quite a bit in this thread.

Otherwise, it is just throwing sand.

So Kirmum, when you come back, I hope you address the issue of how to teach in an average classroom environment and continue to express your opinions and experiences.

You have been a large part of this thread right from the beginning.

curmudgeon · March 17, 2007, 11:19pm

dstark -

public speaking : D has had in the last month an oral assignment in every class. Some group, some solo. I think last semester was the same. But D talks a lot in class anyway.

writing: Very big at Rhodes. Maybe not as many 20+ page papers but scads of smaller ones. Writing center and tutors that D takes advantage of every opp she has. Seminar taught freshman writing course of 15 . No A’s given. 1 A- , that’s all she knows of anyway. Tough grading. Helped D a lot in her “weakest” area. (She placed out “AP” but took it anyway.)

small classes: Bio and chem lectures are over 50. I think they may be the only classes at Rhodes that size. Labs and every other class 15 or below so far (I don’t know about Spanish.) So I’d say a resounding yes.

dstark · March 17, 2007, 11:28pm

Curmudgeon, one reason I keep asking you about the education at Rhodes is I have never heard of Rhodes until you mentioned it. I’m sure others haven’t either.

It’s nice to read about other people’s experiences with schools that are not as well known. (At least by me. :))

concerneddad · March 17, 2007, 11:29pm

Well, my son turned down Wesleyan U, Pomona C, and Wash U StL for full tuition at Tulane. At the time I thought I would kill him. Of course, as it turned it, it was a great decison for him Katrina brought a lot of disaster and hardship, but for an aspiring Dr., it brought an amazing opportunity to use his EMT skills in a very important manner.

My middle daughter (by one minute) only applied to one school, Whitman, where she is finishing her freshmen year.

My baby girl just got awarded a full tuition scholarship at Juniata, and withdrew her applications at several other schools that were higher ranked, including Hamilton.

So, in our family,the score is: three kids in private colleges, 1/2 of one tuition being paid: As Yackov Smirnoff would say, “what a country.!”

Northwestmom · March 17, 2007, 11:30pm

I think there may be more students turning down the Ivies than one might guess. There’s also many students who don’t even apply because they know their parents can’t or won’t pay that much money.

Last year our son chose the full-tuition merit scholarship over Harvard, Princeton, MIT and Stanford. We certainly aren’t poor, but we didn’t feel we could afford $36,000 - $48,000 (depending on school) per year, either. We have another child to put through college, have had 2 incomes for only the last couple years and are nearing retirement age. He was luckier than most, however, because he had a choice of a full-tuition merit scholarship at U of Chicago or at Duke (plus a summer at Oxford and research money). At this time last year we were sweating bullets, because our son had dreamed of going to Harvard or MIT. He decided that the Duke offer was too good to pass up, though, and he liked the idea of graduating debt free. He took a lot of good-natured razzing from friends at school, who couldn’t understand why he would chose Duke over Harvard or MIT. He’s having a great first year and is taking advantage of many opportunities (jazz band, debate, COMAP math modeling contest, research) that he might not have been able to manage as a first year Harvard or MIT student.

Because it was our son’s decision, he’s not shown any regrets. He does happily remind us from time to time how much money he saved us!

Good luck to all of you who are having to make tough decisions. Hope your kids all end up at places where they will thrive!

dstark · March 17, 2007, 11:32pm

Concerneddad, I haven’t seen you post in awhile. I thought you were dead. :)

Glad to see things are working out.

jmmom · March 17, 2007, 11:36pm

Well, it’s late here on the Right Coast. I can tell, because SNL just came on. I hope someone will provide an Executive Summary in the morning.

Great thread. Meaty. Night all :).

curmudgeon · March 17, 2007, 11:51pm

O.K. dstark, I found it but it’s from 2005. That’s got to be good enough.

Undergraduate Class Size (provide numbers)
2-9 #132 
10-19 #213
20-29 #138
30-39 #17
40-49 #2
50-99 #3
100+ #0
Total # 505

Comcernedad, looking good. ;)

simba · March 18, 2007, 12:09am

“I hope someone will provide an Executive Summary in the morning.”

It will be like asking four blind men to describe an elephant.

Tarhunt · March 18, 2007, 12:09am

dstark:

I won’t speak for kirmum, but let me just speak a bit about “values.” I think that what some people mean when they say “values” and what other people mean can be very different things. I know that “values” is a word I use often in a very technical sense to help describe cognitive influences on mass behavior.

Some arguments are not subject to rational discourse beyond a certain point because, when you dig down far enough into those arguments, you discover varying values that aren’t subject to rational discovery. They simply are what they are.

I can definitely see, in the posts here, different underlying values at work. These values are not, in themselves, good or bad. They’re just different.

sly_vt · March 18, 2007, 12:14am

My head is spinning reading all this. Gee, we all do such exciting things on Saturday night!
My rambling thoughts:

I have experience at five colleges – 2 Ivies, a state university, a technical community college and at a small liberal arts colleges that is not highly ranked.

I definitely noticed the difference between the Ivies and the other schools. Here’s an example: I remember at one of my classes at the state university the professor apologizing to us for the “heavy reading load” – 3-4 chapters a week (75-100 pages). At Brown, a heavy reading load was more than 500 pages a week. I really feel I didn’t walk into the other colleges with a bias; it was more that I wasn’t feeling challenged academically and then realized that there is a difference between the schools.

That said, I think a motivated student can get an excellent education almost anywhere. And many of the so-called lower ranked schools are getting more selective, enrolling more engaged and smart kids, so the caliber of the education can be excellent.

Up here in the boonies, most kids don’t discuss colleges until late junior year, and most kids couldn’t list more than five top-ranked schools before junior year. My daughter knew she wanted to go to a “good” college; she knew Brown was a good school because I went there but other than that didn’t know the difference between Wesleyan and Quinnipiac or Tufts and Castleton. She read the guidebooks, we visited lots of places and my husband and I tried hard not to discourage her liking any school – all we did if asked was say whether a particular school was a reach, match or safety. If she had fallen in love with a place where she could have gotten merit money that would have been fine with me. But she didn’t. Maybe she has champagne tastes, but she fell in love with the more selective, higher ranked schools. She sensed something different at them – and it wasn’t the prestige or name, I promise you that. If asked, I think she would say the type of kids she saw. Lucky for her, we can swing college costs without merit money.

simba · March 18, 2007, 12:16am

My son says," You go on CC and get these crazy ideas. Relax, in the end it everything will turn out good in life".

dstark · March 18, 2007, 12:43am

“I can definitely see, in the posts here, different underlying values at work. These values are not, in themselves, good or bad. They’re just different.”

It’s a slippery slope. It starts out neither good or bad. It ends up good or bad. My values better. Your values worse. (We rank almost everything, values included. )

I’m probably not helping. And Kirmum, I mean no disrespect.

My main point is two people can value education strongly and equally and come up with two very different choices on how to educate a child. A person may disagree with another person’s choice, but I hope that person can see that the other person does value education strongly and equally.

I’m using this post to clarify post #121, a post I’d like deleted. :)

Tarhunt · March 18, 2007, 12:53am

Yes, d, as you point out, we all rank everything every time we make a decision with more than one choice. And values are like that, too. And I agree that human certainty that “my values are better than yours” have been the source of much evil.

dstark · March 18, 2007, 12:59am

“And I agree that human certainty that “my values are better than yours” have been the source of much evil.”

And I agree with human certainty that “my values are better than yours” has been the source of much contention on this board.

keepmesane · March 18, 2007, 1:40am

I agree to a great extent with higherlead’s post #67 and 109 and others that have echoed these thoughts regarding middle class who were very competitive for HYPSM who didn’t even apply there and instead went for somewhat lower ranked merit aid schools.

Here is an example from friends we know. Two daughters, both very bright, both very talented, highly ranked, both high test scorers (over 1500 on old SAT), both very active in all sorts of ECs and achieving at state recognition levels and URM HOOK. Both heavily and personally recruited by HYPS schools (unsolicited phone calls from admissions counselors and alumni) as well as next tier. I’m sure there would have been very favorable, preferntial packaging of need at these schools but EFC would still have been 20,000-25,000.

Mother is a teacher, values education, encouraged both daughters to high achievement levels, knew the college game well and enjoys having bragging rights.

Still, neither dtr was encouraged to apply to 100% need based schools because Medical and Law school loomed ahead. Both dtrs got into every school they applied to with merit aid at most. Those schools that offered no merit aid were taken off the table. After that, it was daughters’ choice. Both ended up at schools ranked in the 10-25 level with large scholarships. Oldest did a year study overseas, started an arts oriented learning project at an inner city elementary that is continued even after graduation, did a semester internship at prestigious Washington DC law firm, and is currently attending Ivy Law School with substantial scholarship. A job awaits her at DC firm when she graduates. Is holding her own at Law School, not top in her class but in top 25% there. Had acceptances from at least two other Ivys and a couple more schools.

Younger dtr is in pre-med. Has had summer internship/research oppts, close interaction with professors and is on full tuition scholarship. I don’t doubt she will have the same kind of med school opportunities as her sister, not because she is URM but because she deserves them.

I spoke with Mom at Christmas and neither dtr nor parents feel they gave up anything in peer interaction or opportunities to attend lower ranked schools and both will ultimately end up with same Grad degrees they would have had they gone to HYPS. Both girls found the work at their respective universities extremely challenging, the professors engaging, the opportunities amazing and have made extremely good friends, and found their “niche”. Parents have been able to handle all the costs of undergrad and now Law School costs not covered by scholarship. Had they applied and been accepted to HYPSM, I don’t think Mom or dtrs would have been lured by the prestige as they were more than willing to take high ranked schools that did not offer merit aid off the table.

For this middle class family, it has been a win all the way around as kids graduate debt free with what they consider a great undergraduate education, parents didn’t have to jeapordize their retirement, and future job oppts look very promising.

calmom · March 18, 2007, 4:53am

You would have heard of Rhodes if you had started your college search (as I did with my son) with one of the best starting point books around: Colleges that Change Lives by Loren Pope – as Rhodes is one of the 40 CTCL colleges. One advantage of starting a college search that way is that it gets the student thinking about the qualities of the school as opposed to ranking.

You’d probably also have heard of Rhodes if you hailed from Tennessee or a neighboring state. Actually, I heard of Rhodes before I heard of Williams or Haverford… but as noted, that has a lot to do with the book I started with. The point I am trying to make is simply that name recognition really isn’t of much value in assessing the academic merits of a college. There are excellent small colleges many people have never heard of in just about every state, some of which are extremely well respected in the right circles.

FWIW, according to the CTCL web site - <a href=“http://www.ctcl.com%5B/url%5D”>http://www.ctcl.com</a> - , the profile of entering students at Rhodes is: Middle 50% SAT composite scores: 1200-1350; Median ACT score: 28; Average GPA: 3.85. In other words, the typical Rhodes student has pretty much the same “stats” as my daughter, who on any day of the week can be found sitting in a classroom in Hamilton Hall at Columbia, probably breathing the same air as kids with SAT scores a couple of hundred points higher (and earning an A with relative ease in that particular class). Other than on paper, I don’t think that there’s any way to tell the difference between a 1250 and 1450 SAT scorer, in any case.

I have no doubt that Rhodes offers the level of education and challenge that Mudgette wants. It probably offers a lot more in the way of personal attention than Yale would have, especially given the “you are really special” scholarship Rhodes conferred on her.

Kirmum is probably right that at some level, the academics of less-selective colleges may make for a dumbed down classroom, but the demarcation line is probably much, much lower down the selectivity scales than the top 50 or even the top 100 LACs ranked by US News. Rhodes is ranked by US News at around 45 (tied with Sarah Lawrence and Gettysburg); Princeton review gives it a score 94 for academics (which is the same rating given to Smith). So I think it’s fair to say Rhodes is an excellent college with very strong academics, even though it doesn’t have the cachet of an Ivy league.

curmudgeon · March 18, 2007, 6:05am

Excellent job calmom. If anybody is interested , thiis is from 2006 entering class, enrollees, CDS at Rhodes:

25th-75th
SAT Critical Reading 590 690 
SAT Math 590 680 
ACT Composite 26 30 
ACT Math 24 28 
ACT English 27 33

Percent of first-time, first-year (freshman) students with scores in each range: 
SAT Critical Reading SAT Math 
700-800 19.76% 16.81% 
600-699 50.15% 49.26% 
500-599 28.32% 30.38% 
400-499 01.77% 03.54% 
300-399 0.00% 0.00% 
200-299 0.00% 0.00%

ACT Composite ACT English ACT Math 
30-36 26.45% 44.19% 18.60% 
24-29 62.79% 43.60% 60.76% 
18-23 10.76% 11.92% 18.31% 
12-17 0.00% 0.00% 02.03% 
6-11 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 
0.00% 0.00% 0.00%

75% of Rhodes students submit ACT, and 75% submit SAT.

The only variance from the CTCL site I can see is that 75th %tile SAT is reported on the CDS as 1370 for enrollees and 1350 on CTCL.

A couple of things. One, D’s statements that the bottom 1/3 of the Rhodes class is not as strong as her top schools, and her assessment that the top 20% of Rhodes kids are as strong as the strong kids anywhere seems to a be a very accurate guess. Surprisingly accurate , to tell the truth. Secondly, it even surprises me that Rhodes has a 75th %tile of 33 on ACT English. That is stratospheric. Many top schools aren’t doing that. Oh, and looking at those math scores I can see why D got the cash. LOL. Finally, reported elsewhere Rhodes has 9% of its ACT composite scores in this class of enrollees at 33 or over. That’s top 1% of all ACT scorers. If you believe standardized testing shows anything, one would think that these numbers show there are some kids there that can light it up.

What does all this mean? Not a whole helluva lot. Not as much as going for a visit. Some of y’all will like it. Some won’t. But it’s a pretty good school.

AACKK. I’m late!!!

calmom · March 18, 2007, 7:12am

LOL, Cur – my daughter had a 33 ACT English, 23 ACT math – (730 SAT writing, 580 SAT math)… so if my daughter were at Rhodes she would simultaneously be in the bottom 25% & top 25% depending on which subscores you looked at. I’d guess that this is probably true at Barnard as well, but Barnard doesn’t break out the ACT scores in enough detail on their CDS for me to check.

I do think this is one reason that my daughter feels she is on the upper end of the spectrum at her school – for a social sciences/humanities major, the English & writing score may very well be the most significant at the college level. My d’s test scores suggest that she writes better than the typical student at her college, even if the other students test better in just about everything else – and the writing ability probably is the single most important skill a college student can have. I’m sure the ad com was well aware of that when they accepted her – and I’ll bet it often is the case that the students who are low end scorers in some areas have counterbalancing scores in others.

On the math/science end of things, of course, superior math ability would be a definite plus.

Which leads to the point that those score ranges don’t mean a thing, because you don’t know how they break down. That bottom third, whoever they might be, may not be the drag you might expect, simply because there is not much overlap in the long run in courses they take. The truth is that they are all getting very different, individualized educations.

edad · March 18, 2007, 7:38am

Like Calmom, my D was accepted at an elite school with SATs in the bottom 25%. My D’s SATs were weighted towards math and lower for the verbal. A year and a half later my D is still very happy and confident. Her confidence has been tempered with reality. She has seen a few bright and capable students flounder and make poor lifestyle choices. These students are very much in the minority. Most continue to work hard and excel. She has also seen a big difference between humanities/liberal arts and the sciences. In the humanities/liberal arts courses she can compete with the best. That is not true for math/sciences/engineering. No amount of interest, dedication and hard work will bring her to the level of the brightest students. The A’s are already spoken for. My D has to work hard for her B’s and C’s. Perhaps there is a difference in the ability of the SATs to measure between math and verbal ability.

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

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