<p>I don’t see what’s so bad about the word “values” per se. We all value certain things more, certain things less. What we value probably rubs off on our kids. Rank/prestige are things some people value or even require. Other people value (and will pay for) other factors. There’s no right or wrong inherent in this. We’re all just different. In my time at CC, I’ve exchanged quite a few pm’s with parents of kids who share my son’s college list, or most of it. Those parents and I have in common a certain kind of kid and for our kids, what we value are colleges that fit our quirky, intellectual young people.</p>
<p>Wow, 12 hr long thread and it’s 10 pages deep. Way to go, curm. Obviously a question that gets the blood moving and fingers typing.</p>
<p>Well, my son chose his safety. In at Cornell, Duke, Swarthmore (the last two with 1/2 tuition merit scholarships) and a bunch of schools in between with increasing amounts of money. </p>
<p>He is at Penn State Schreyers Honors College. Full ride from the science department. He is there with many other students who also turned down top schools. The honors college has about 1800 students.</p>
<p>He simply decided he could get what he needed from this school. He decided $30,000 to $45,000 a year was too much money to spend on learning the basics. He believed that the top schools could not teach him an additional $35,000 worth of information during 30 weeks of school. He looked at what others have been able to accomplish at this school and knew with enough work he could accomplish this also. Grad school at ALL the top schools was within reach (Harvard med/law on down “the list”) as were awesome job opportunities. So he dug in and has begun to work. This summer he has been offered a very well paid internship working with grad, post grad students and prof. working on cutting edge research. He is a freshman. He has much to learn and eventually much to contribute.</p>
<p>He spent 6 weeks the summer of his 16th year at a top summer program surrounded by top students in his field of choice (incuding this years intel winner and many from the countries best prep schools now attending HYP/MIT). He knows what it is like to be with others on his level. With this background he still believes he has made the right choice and has never looked back. Prestige is not important to him…he will be guided by his research interests as he continues on.</p>
<p>There are many, many positives. We will never know what would have happened if he chose another school but we do know that he has embraced his school, they have embraced him and he is off and running.</p>
<p>$120,000+++ is a great deal of saved money for this family.</p>
<p>
To me, this is the essential point in discussions on this thread of whether one “gives up” anything by choosing the merit aid school over the HYPSM.</p>
<p>For the most part, we are discussing the elites vs. the others as if those other schools, where the kid chooses merit $$, are some sort of open admission any-warm-body welcome atmosphere. That’s just not the case for the situations we’re debating here.</p>
<p>It is why I asked kirmum to elaborate on her belief that there is a “vast difference” between teaching to the 1320 SAT vs. the 1480 SAT.</p>
<p>Even if you believe the SAT score is the arbiter of intelligence and intellectual curiosity (I don’t), at what level do you believe that you have suddenly left behind those smart and motivated kids? I don’t think it is at the 1249 SAT score. I’m firmly with calmom on that.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>calmom - I tend to agree with you and that would be a very interesting social science experiment. At the very tippit top, kids scoring over 1550 I suspect some teachers and profs could probably pick some of them out of the group but in that 1250-1450 range I suspect the chooser would come up with pretty random results.</p>
<p>
The problem is likely that the SAT math doesn’t test high enough, so not all 800’s are created equal. </p>
<p>I had a pretty good aptitude for math in high school, but the math required for organic chem required some conceptual leaps that I was not ready for – I muddled through the first quarter course with a B, but the experience left me disheartened and I shifted my major away from the sciences, dropping the chem after the first quarter.</p>
<p>We have had these conversations on this board before, about innate ability vs. studious overachieving. While there are kids who can “study” (with the assistance of $2000 of private tutoring) to an SAT score in the 6 or 700’s, perhaps, there are kids who can achieve an 800 without opening the book. </p>
<p>Perhaps some do not see the difference between these two types of students, but there really is such a thing as difference in ability. There really is a difference between the student who studies himself to the 1320, and the one who can achieve 1530 effortlessly. </p>
<p>Whether the 1320 kid does better than the 1530 kid in the long run isn’t really the point in this discussion. The fact is there is a difference between these two types of students, and all this equating of ability is always very curious to me.</p>
<p>My kids applied to schools that offered excellent merit scholarships as well as ones that did not. We had two rules:
- If you have to fly to the school, you’ll need merit money, as plane fare on top of tuition increases the burden too much.
- There is no school in this country big enough for the two of you. Find different places to go. (They agreed.)</p>
<p>Being a NMF, my daughter received the usual letters from ASU, etc. but did not apply.</p>
<p>As an Emory Scholar Finalist, she attended the scholarship weekend there. She instantly connected with the incredible group of people that she met. Many had an abundance of offers in hand. She was awarded a full tuition scholarship.</p>
<p>At Harvard, she periodically bumps into five other Emory Scholars that she met at Emory. She has never looked back.</p>
<p>My son was awarded several excellent merit aid packages. He currently attends Vassar, the fifth most expensive school in the nation. There’s no doubt that Vassar was the right fit for him. </p>
<p>Having two in school at the same time, we do qualify for a small amount of financial aid, and both Harvard and Vassar are known for being generous in that department. If we could not have managed schools that do not give merit aid, we would not have let them apply. We wouldn’t have wanted to dangle something that they could hold but not keep. In that case, they would not have applied to Harvard and Vassar and wherever else at all.</p>
<p>We drive old cars and don’t go on vacation. We didn’t steal from our retirement funds, and wouldn’t have. Our kids make the most out of every opportunity at their schools. They know we are stretched and are truly appreciative. They also know that based upon their decisions, they’ll be paying for grad school. We won’t.</p>
<p>I hope they are able to give their kids the same opportunities.</p>
<p>I’m thinking of the kids in my son’s high school that “effortlessly” scored nearly perfect scores on the SAT. (I can think of 2 I know fairly well.) Neither is a student that seems to add much to the intellectual curiosity of the classroom or the extra-curricular activities of the school. Smart? Oh yes. (One has genius parents, the other I don’t know about.) But participatory? No and no. (One of them I’ve literally NEVER seen without his iPod plugged in.)</p>
<p>Then I know some kids (one in particular) who scored very well on the SATs with no effort. GPAs are ho-hum. But they do everything at school. Theater, sports, music, newspaper. You name it. Also opinionated debaters in class. (Encouraged at this HS.)</p>
<p>I also am thinking of Ivy kids from the class before his. One is just an all-around fabulously amazing kid. (And how his parents, who both work for not-for-profits are paying that tuition I have no idea.) One is a genius. And one is a good student (not great) who has a mom in a VERY high position of a very big company, and he’s a URM. </p>
<p>So it goes.</p>
<p>sax - Not to derail the thread, but my son was also offered the full scholarship from Penn State Schreyer Honors college for students majoring in science in 2002. I think it is called the Eberly scholarship. If I remember correctly, this scholarship does not continue if the student switches his/her major from science (Astronomy and Astrophysics,Biochemistry and Molecular Biology,Biology,Chemistry,Mathematics,Physics,Statistics) to another major. Many students switch their majors during college. Did you consider this when your son accepted the scholarship, or was he very certain that he would graduate with a science major?</p>
<p>
Well, I’m not sure anyone is saying there is no difference between these two types of students. I know I’m not.</p>
<p>What I question is whether a preponderance of the second type makes for a better educational environment than a preponderance of the first. </p>
<p>It’s a bit of an odd dichotomy you describe - what if we compare the kid who gets the 1320 effortlessly (and just doesn’t care to go any further with devoting time and attention to “achievement” on a multiple-choice standardized test) with the kid who takes and re-takes, preps and re-preps (with or without an expenditure of prep $) to get the 1520?</p>
<p>The question at hand is whether you sacrifice something in attending a top-50 school with merit $$ versus attending an elite school without? In the quality of your education. Not in the average SAT-score you are surrounded by.</p>
<p>And for those who believe the average SAT-score you are surrounded by, when we are talking about a 1300 vs. a 1450 , dictates the quality of your educational experience: How so?</p>
<p>Just finished reading every post. Lot?s of interesting views by interesting posters. Just a coupe of thoughts:
- I think once acceptances are in and cost clear, the issue of fit is most important. Department strength, and other factors should come in to play. Take writing. Going to U of Iowa may seem odd to people who look at school rank but their writers workshop is tops. Geophysics at Col. Sch.of Mines for example.
- I chose a small OOS State School due to a particular technical degree and opportunity to do research (30 + years ago). Money was also a factor. Because it was a state school it admitted a broad cross section of students. However, the top kids were really good and I hung around with a small group of pretty amazing students. Most of the kids were not rich but for me a kid from the Midwest burbs, educated at a private high school the diversity was good.(I realized what a bubble I had been raised in) Also, friends and I re accepted into elite grad schools. Those who did not go to grad school landed great jobs. I think the critical mass of intellectually stimulating students needed is smaller than many think. By the way my best friend who always let me know he was at an elite would got upset when everhe found out we were learning same things at Podunk U from top profs as he was.
3.The peer pressure from other kids to attend elite schools is great and of course depends on where they attend high school and circle of friends. - S may be one of the kids (I think there are more than a few) who turn down the elites. Actually, I think he is starting to get turned off by the hype and the motivation of kids he talks with to just want to go to a top rated school no matter what the cost or the fit. More importantly he is looking closer at who he is and what he needs. The final schools on his list will provide the best opportunities to follow his dreams. Oddly enough most of the schools that really do fit will be free or close to it so the issue of money may be off the table for the final choice.
- My personal feeling is that there are probably 50 or more good fit schools for any kid.
- As I posted on another thread, he/we asked a fair number of folks from industry/academia, many who attended HYPSMC and some who even teach at those schools this question: If you had to pay full price to go to MIT/Stanford for engineering versus going free to UT/UW/UCB/UIUC/UM, RICE etc. would you? To a person they said that down the road they could not see how it would aver make any difference and basically got a few ?what have you been smoking responses? thinking we were nuts to even consider paying the money. I thought about sending an email saying ? but there is this site called CC???.but I figured they were too busy being productive citizens to read it.(HA!)</p>
<p>Oldolddad, let’s see which school your kid chooses. You may have to write a different kind of post in 6 weeks. :)</p>
<p>Those engineering schools you listed…they are ranked pretty high. ;)</p>
<p>Motheroftwo…he knew at a young age where he was headed:)
In addition because of the great # of AP credits he amassed he is able to add a second major outside of his college and still finish both in 4 years.</p>
<p>His advisor is head of the dept. and is top notch. Whenever my son has a question or need it is answered within the hour. He has gotten my son everything he has asked for and things he never thought of asking for. My son admires this man so much. He is a great mentor and example of a true professional. My son once emailed the president of the entire science college with a question…the president answered within twenty minutes. This continues to be his experience. Small classes, individual attention, brilliant students all working towards a common goal. He counts himself lucky to be in such an awesome program. He will be a very happy and very giving alumni.</p>
<p>Lots of very selective, non-merit schools have student bodies who are compressed into a very narrow SAT band. I think any prof would tell you that there is an enormous range of intellectual ability sitting in their classrooms, even before you begin to factor in motivation, intellectual curiosity and other factors.</p>
<p>Similarly, you can find two schools whose breakdown of SAT scores is nearly identical, but where the intellectual vibes on the campus are quite different because of differing academic cultures and the self-selection to which that leads. </p>
<p>Bottom line: the peer experience is worth considering in college selection, but SAT ranges may not give you anything but the crudest indication of this peer factor.</p>
<p>Allmusic,
I am the parent of an effortless, no prep, 1450 kid & NM Finalist, and also the parent of a can’t manage better than 1200 kid. I know them both very well. You’ll never convince me that the 1450 kid is smarter than the 1200 kid. The same, maybe (but very different in overall style) – but that 1200 kid of mine is smart as a whip and everyone who has ever met her thinks so. </p>
<p>The SAT tests measures the skill of taking tests in the subjects covered. My son happens to be really good with that sort of tests; so am I. It’s a highly artificial setting. It really didn’t translate into better school performance for either my son or me – I stayed on track better than my son, but neither of us were top performers at our schools, despite having high-end test scores. </p>
<p>My 1200 kid generally scored better than my 1450 kid on APs. She did not really study for the APs aside from taking the course (except for a couple of APs she took without having taken the underlying course, and in those cases it was only a few hours of study) – but she could integrate and understand the information learned in her classes, and apply that knowledge when given a subject specific test. Which happens to be the very skill needed to succeed in college. </p>
<p>My 1450 kid was very smart about one thing, however. He observed in high school that although he had the highest test score of all his friends, he was not the smartest or most interesting kids. He decided that he did not want to attend any college that selected its students primarily by SAT scores, because he did not want to go to a school with a selection process that excluded so many smart kids. In other words, though he could have parlayed his scores into acceptance at more prestigious schools, he focused mostly on small LACs with more holistic admission practices. </p>
<p>I think that colleges with uniformly high scoring students are made up of mostly very smart students, but I also think that over-reliance on the test leads to a narrowing of the range of types of minds. You get the kids with thinking patterns like my son, but none of the kids with thought processes like my daughter. You give standardized tests, you get standardized minds … and you lose a lot in terms of the discourse that can come from the combination of divergent thinkers.</p>
<p>It sounds like it worked out great for your son. My son was actually more interested in CS when in h.s. and ended up with an Econ major and CS minor, so in his case, it was good he did not accept the scholarship just for the sake for the free ride, when he was not actually most interested in science. (Obviously ! It sounds kind of dumb now that I have written it. But at the time, his thought process was that if he did end up going to Schreyer, because it was the school he chose anyway, he could always start out in science and then give it up later. It did not work out that way for him, anyway. He attended another school.)</p>
<p>curmudgeon,
Our situation is a little diff. in that my D2 will not tolerate less than a very large University setting. (Not “prestigious.” Large) So there will be no sweet little LAC’s with sweet little (big) scholarships, nor will she have the stats that your D must have had (to have been admitted to Amherst & Y).</p>
<p>But the counterpart for my current Jr. will be large public U with full need aid vs. glam large private with much less aid. Would I be happy with large public U with costs covered, if she gets accepted to both? You betcha. I’d be at all the main events & in the cheering section if she were to make such a mature decision. If she chooses the private, I hope it will be because she honestly feels that it will provide much more opportunity in a wide variety of ways than the public would, both short term & long term, & that she can articulate that to self & others.</p>
<p>
Agreed.</p>
<p>I do think that your specific list of Engineering schools for free vs. full pay at MIT/Stanford are so highly ranked that it doesn’t really touch the issue of whether one is losing anything by choosing them.</p>
<p>Any recommendations as to choosing between U. of Rochester and U Maryland University Honors program?
Many thanks.</p>
<p>
We are doing almost exactly that for our S1. He’s at MIT, when he could have gone to Olin for next to nothing. (Which I note is among the choices your son is going to have to make in a few weeks.) Except in my S’s case, he morphed away from his original engineering focus to a math focus, so for him it was a good thing he chose MIT and not Olin, where he would not have had a large enough range of options to choose from. And yes, even knowing how great some of the other schools on your list are, I still would have paid full-freight for him to go to MIT if he wanted that experience.</p>
<p>S2 is a different type of person entirely, and it is his choice between “more top school” and “top scholarship at less top school” that vexes me at the moment. (I write it that way since I’m one of the few here who are still talking about schools outside of that top tier, or maybe even the top two or three tiers, but the indecisions and comparisons are still valid and are still giving me indigestion.)</p>