Academic fit vs. other factors

Parents Forum
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<p>Ha! Did you fail to read the very next thing you wrote?</p>

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<p>That analogy, my friend, is the essence of elitism. Because you are assuming that the fancier club has better players, and that the choice is between being challenged by better players on the fancier club or getting to star without too much effort on the plebeian one. And that’s putting the rabbit into the hat.</p>

<p>The way I thought about it – and remember, I come from the elitist side of this argument, too – the question was more “What is the risk if you don’t stand out?” At the most elitist schools, it barely matters. Just by having gotten in and gone through, people will acknowledge that you have a lot to offer, and you will have a fair array of opportunities available to you. At the larger publics, the top kids absolutely do play at the same level as their Elite U peers, but if someone doesn’t measure up to the top layer, it’s a much more crowded, competitive world. And you can’t be sure going in that you are going to measure up to the top layer.</p>

<p>In general, I think one of the differences between elite places and strong publics is that there is a lot more overt competition at the latter – many more people chasing somewhat fewer goodies. At Yale, everybody is pretty much guaranteed a cookie just by showing up and being toilet-trained; at Penn State, if you’re not standing out, there may not be enough cookies to go around. And, sure, at Yale the difference in ability between the 95th percentile of the class and the 50th is not huge, whereas at Penn State it is probably greater. In terms of numbers, however, the top 5% of the class at Penn State is the same number of students as the top 50% at Yale.</p>

<p>Now, it’s quite possible that the median student at Yale is more impressive than someone in the top 5% of students at Penn State. But a lot more impressive? Really? They have more resources lavished on them, and are cosseted and praised more, and spend their time in a more rarefied atmosphere, in which everyone agrees to support each other’s academic ambitions, and I guess I believe they achieve more as a result, on avearage. But I don’t think the difference is that significant, or that it’s life-long in effect. </p>

<p>And a kid at Penn State who wants to be challenged in the way kids at Yale are probably has as many peers as he can handle, just like the kids at Yale. No one is friends with 5,000 people. Most people’s capacity is pretty much filled with 30-40, if that many. At Penn State you may have to work harder to find the right 30-40 people, while at Yale you could almost pick them at random, but it’s silly to suggest that they don’t exist at Penn State.</p>

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<p>JHS: You must be dreaming,

Other than the group of students @ direct 6 years joint medicine program, I doubt it’ll be easy to find a comparable peer group @ Penn State.</p>

<p>Here are the Stats:

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<p>Even Stanford football and BasketBall team stats looks better and won’t need a course list @ Penn state.</p>

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<p>POIH, I don’t have a whole lot of respect for Penn State, but I know kids who actually go there. Remember, top quartile or the entering class at Penn State (by which I mean Penn State University Park) is almost twice the size of your kid’s entire class at MIT. To do a meaningful comparison, you would have to look at the numbers for the top 3% and 9% . . . which I bet would not be so distinguishable from the 75-25 numbers at MIT. In my daughter’s high school class, the #1 and #6 kids went to Harvard, and #5 went to Yale (and 27 went to Penn), but #2 went to Penn State. In my son’s class, #7 went to Harvard, #5 to Yale, #4 to MIT, and #3 to Penn State. And Penn State was pretty unpopular at this school. At good suburban schools, you would see a lot of top students going there. And a lot of not-quite top students, too, of course.</p>

<p>The problem at Penn State is that if a good student goes there and wants to coast or drift, there’s plenty of encouragement for that, and fairly serious consequences down the line. But a student who wants a constant challenge, and ultimately to take over the world, can find a lot to work with, too. At Yale you can coast or drift, too, but (a) there isn’t a lot of encouragement for that, everyone around you will be nudging you back on track, and (b) it’s likely that most of the outside world won’t notice you were ever drifting.</p>

<p>Also, remember that these numbers you are relying on are not so reliable as long-term indicators. A kid’s parents’ divorce when he was in 9th grade can do enough damage to his GPA to put him out of contention for the hyperselective privates, or he could just be a boy who didn’t start getting interested in school until 11th grade. By the time everyone is 20 or 21, one of those kids could easily be outperforming the 1600/4.0 Ivy marvel. Not all of them will be top performers, of course, but a bunch of the ones who are will be in someone’s lab at a state university.</p>

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<p>Forgot to post Yale statistics:</p>

<p>50% of the class have SAT M:R:W in the following range</p>

<p>760-800 making it 2280 - 2400</p>

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<p>JHS:

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<p>It’s difficut to believe that you will be able to find a comparable peer group in the 2280 - 2400 range at Penn State if the 75th percentile is @1990.
Yes, you can dream on and you might be able to find among those odd 30/40 students in the 6 years direct medicine group.</p>

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<p>POIH: On what basis do you say that? Based on your numbers, Yale has about 1,000 students/class with SATs above 2090, and 600 above 2270. Penn State has about 2,100 students/class with SATs above 1990. How is it inconceivable that it might not have several hundred kids with SATs above 2270?</p>

<p>The big difference between Yale and Penn State isn’t that Yale has all the kids with high SATs, and Penn State has none. Yale probably has more than Penn State, in absolute numbers, but not that many more. The really big difference is that Yale is a very lonely place for someone who had good grades in high school but SATs under 2000 (unless he’s hanging out with the other wide receivers or forwards), whereas at Penn State there are lots of kids around like that, too.</p>

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<p>As a PA resident whose children attended public school, with a history of access to our school’s Naviance as well as personal acquaintance with students who have chosen to attend PSU rather than an elite school where they would still have placed well above the median, I would have to agree with JHS’s assessment of the top students at PSU. There is significant overlap in scores, GPA, and types of EC’s among students attending Schreyer and students attending elite schools, except that some types of hooks (most noticeably athletic performance) that get students into elite schools do not work at all with Schreyer.</p>

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<p>JHS:

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<p>There are 6700 students at Penn State UP so 25% comes to ~ 1695 having a SAT above 1990.
While in ~1374 Yale class ~672 has SAT > 2270.
Since there is limit to number of students scoring 2270 to begin with and if we assume that most of the top elite schools will get similar students. </p>

<p>What are the chance that 1695 students @ Penn State has a considerable chunk above 2270?</p>

<p>In my opinion other than the 6 years direct medicine group of 30/40 it will be hard to find students with SAT > 2270.</p>

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<p>Not really – my daughter’s SATs were well below 2000, but students at Columbia with higher scores were perfectly willing to hang out with her. I doubt that Yale students are any more likely to condition friendship on test scores than their brethren at Columbia. SAT scores don’t matter after the first set of college midterms. (I have a feeling that there are a lot of smug, high scoring students at elite private colleges who would have a tough time passing some of the weeder courses at public U’s). </p>

<p>However, high SAT scores spread over a student body ARE a good proxy for wealth. There is a linear correlation between family wealth and SAT scores, so the Penn State figures reflect economic diversity that Yale doesn’t have. Elite colleges can be a lonely place for students who have to work while attending school and don’t have the financial ability to keep up with the other students’ spending habits. Penn State’s test scores tell us that they are a far more diverse campus than Yale. But I don’t think that on an individual basis that there’s much of a connection between the scores and finances-- if anything, the less affluent students are going to be the ones who need the strongest academic profiles to get admitted in the first place.</p>

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<p>Best of luck, riku!!</p>

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<p>calmom–excellent points!</p>

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But I don’t have to assume that the more competitive soccer team has better players on average than the less elite team. That’s non-controversial (I hope). To me, it’s elitism if you want to be on the elite team because it makes you look better. But I don’t think it is if you want to be on that team because you think it will make you play better. After all, elitism is (according to my dictionary), pride in being part of a select group. That’s not the same as just being in the select group.</p>

<p>To put this another way, I think it’s wrong to ascribe “elitism” as the motive for everybody who wants to be in the select group. Surely nobody would say it is elitism to want to go to the college that has the best teachers?</p>

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<p>*And a kid at Penn State who wants to be challenged in the way kids at Yale are probably has as many peers as he can handle, just like the kids at Yale. No one is friends with 5,000 people. Most people’s capacity is pretty much filled with 30-40, if that many. At Penn State you may have to work harder to find the right 30-40 people, while at Yale you could almost pick them at random, but it’s silly to suggest that they don’t exist at Penn State. *</p>

<p>Exactly! This is even more the case at a BigStateU Honors College. So, there are only hundreds of kids with SATs above 1400 at the StateU Honors College, versus thousands at Yale or Harvard? Big whoop. Your Honors College kid is going to be hanging around with those hundreds of high-stats kids, attending classes with them, and even living with them. How many friends can one kid have? Surely hundreds of high achievers in close proximity is enough for anyone.</p>

<p>My husband graduated from Harvard (GSAS) with a PhD in Byzantine history. (I was attending Harvard Divinity School at the time. We met in a class we were both taking in “The Yard.”) We can both safely say, on the basis of lengthy experience, that Harvard is not all it’s cracked up to be. We can also say, based on personal experience, that it is perfectly possible to get an excellent education at a non-Ivy…forsooth, even at a state school. I can provide reams of examples to back up this statement. Here’s one:</p>

<p>A few years after my husband graduated from college, he was at loose ends…didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life. So, he moved back home with his parents and earned a Master’s degree (as a commuting student) at the University of Louisville. While he was at UofL, he took an introductory class in classical Greek. It was one of the hardest, most challenging classes he ever took. (It was also very small, and his classmates were very bright.)</p>

<p>Well, after UofL, my husband went on to his PhD program at Harvard. Here he took a class in medieval Greek. It was a joke. Now, granted medieval Greek by definition is not as hard as classical Greek. Even so, this class was a joke. DH had worked 100 times harder for his A at UofL than he worked for his A at Harvard. True story, I swear.</p>

<p>As I mentioned earlier, I can supply many similar anecdotes. I am not denigrating Harvard by any means; it has more than its share of brilliant professors and brilliant students (many of whom I met through my husband). But is it the be-all and end-all? No. Are all its students geniuses? Are you kidding? Can you find plenty of equally smart kids outside of the Ivy league? In the immortal words of Sarah Palin, “You betcher.” Are they more numerous at the Ivies than at BigStateU? Sure, but so what? As others have noted, you can hang around with only so many people. So, you attend the BigStateU Honors College, find your intellectual peers, and room / socialize with them. </p>

<p>Where’s the problem?</p>

<p>I for one am not seeing it. </p>

<p>If I had it to do all over again, I would not have attended private colleges and graduate schools. They are not worth the money. No, not even Harvard.</p>

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I consider myself fortunate that we qualified for enough need based aid to somewhat equalize the cost of the elite colleges with our in-state public. It still would have been cheaper for me to send my kid to a UC campus than her elite private… but practically speaking I was only paying a few thousand dollars over the cost of room & board. When my son was at a CSU paying his own way at about $3500/year, and my d’s sticker price tuition at her college was roughly $35,000 – I felt that my daughter was definitely getting a better quality of education, but I didn’t feel it was 10 times better, or 5 times better. – or to put it another way, I didn’t feel it was $30,000 better. Maybe $10,000 better, maybe even $12-$15,000 better if I kind of squinted and tried to count all the benefits… but not the current differential. </p>

<p>Now, since that time, the cost of a CSU has gone up and the quality of education has gone down due to fiscal issues (departments cut, profs laid off, etc.) – meanwhile the sticker price at d’s elite has also continued to go up, but no sign of any cutbacks impacting education at her college. (I’m sure they have to also adjust for the current economy, but whatever budgeting they are doing isn’t as obvious. )</p>

<p>Even so, the difference was not really in the quality of the “peer” environment.Quite the opposite – without a doubt my son had more friends and enjoyed the company of his fellow students far more a the CSU than he had at the elite college he attended, and that my daughter had at her college. It came down to other academic amenities such as class size, relationships with profs, availability of classes, campus facilities, etc. My d. was very unhappy with her social environment college her freshman year and seriously considered transferring, but decided to tough it out for the academics. But one of her main motivations for study abroad her junior year was just to get away. I think it was much, much harder for her to find that core group of friends during college than it would have been at a state public.</p>

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<p>"Can you find plenty of equally smart kids outside of the Ivy league? In the immortal words of Sarah Palin, “You betcher.” Are they more numerous at the Ivies than at BigStateU? Sure, but so what? "</p>

<p>Just wanted to add the following to LadyDianeski’s great post-
There are many equally smart kids outside the Ivy league. As the chart below shows, some of the Big U’s actually DO have more NMF’S than many of the tip top Ivy’s. The following data comes from the National Merit Foundation and lists the number of NMFinalists 8000 students out of 1,500,000 - and where they matriculated [ the number of NMF"s attending each college is the figure on the left, closest to the name of the college]</p>

<p>Colleges With the Most Freshman Merit Scholars, 2008
Harvard College 285 0
University of Texas at Austin 281 213
University of Southern California 254 216
Northwestern University 239 191
Washington University in St. Louis 228 161
University of Chicago 222 148
Yale University 213 0
University of Oklahoma 178 147
Princeton University 175 0
Arizona State University 169 143
Rice University 169 104
University of Florida 166 134
Texas A&M University at College Station 161 119
Vanderbilt University 147 107
Stanford University 147 0
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 142 106
New York University 127 100
Ohio State University 120 98
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 114 0
Georgia Institute of Technology 105 70
Duke University 99 0
University of Pennsylvania 98 0
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 91 58
Brigham Young University 90 66
Carleton College 88 66
Brown University 88 0
University of California at Berkeley 85 0
University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa 83 72
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities 79 65
Dartmouth College 78 0
University of Tulsa 77 59
Columbia University 74 0
Baylor University 70 56
Emory University 68 51
Tufts University 68 56
Purdue University 67 55
Cornell University 66 0
Harvey Mudd College 62 42
Tulane University 62 50
University of Central Florida 62 48
University of Arizona 61 43
Indiana University at Bloomington 60 44
University of Nebraska at Lincoln 60 49
Michigan State University 58 47
University of Michigan 57 0
University of Georgia 54 41
St. Olaf College 53 45
Iowa State University 52 42
University of Notre Dame 50 0
Oberlin College 47 34
University of Arkansas at Fayetteville 46 39
California Institute of Technology 46 0
Georgetown University 46 0
University of Kansas 45 36
University of Washington 43 27
University of Texas at Dallas 42 33
University of South Carolina at Columbia 40 25
Grinnell College 39 30
University of Maryland at College Park 39 31
University of Cincinnati 37 28
University of California at Los Angeles 37 0
Macalester College 36 32
Case Western Reserve University 35 24
Clemson University 35 25
Denison University 34 28
University of Kentucky 34 29
Bowdoin College 33 29
University of Missouri at Columbia 33 29
Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge 32 25
Johns Hopkins University 32 0
Auburn University 31 21
Boston University 30 21
Fordham University 30 19
Miami University (Ohio) 28 20
Pomona College 28 6
University of Virginia 28 0
Claremont McKenna College 27 23
University of Miami 27 19
University of Rochester 27 21
Carnegie Mellon University 27 0
Kenyon College 26 21
University of Idaho 26 17
University of Iowa 26 22
Wheaton College (Ill.) 26 17
Furman University 25 15
University of Wisconsin at Madison 25 5
Colorado College 24 20
Scripps College 24 14
University of Mississippi 23 19
Mississippi State University 22 17
University of South Florida 22 19
Washington and Lee University 22 13
University of Tennessee at Knoxville 21 17
West Virginia University 21 20
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 20 16
Virginia Tech 20 15
Swarthmore College 20 0</p>

<p>and I think Palin actually said “you betcha”[ not betcher]
but that’s nit picking…</p>

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<p>I would do it again i.e. send my child to a private prep HS and an elite college (if one gets in). I think it’s worth all the money. In my opinion it’s the greatest gift one can provide to their children. The experience, and the journey is irreplaceable even if the end result is same.</p>

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<p>I think list doesn’t take into account the different cut off for different states. The big universities matching elite in the list are in the state with much lower cut off. Otherwise I think everyone at least will agree that UCB is far better than all the big state university at the top of the list.</p>

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<p>But it is elitism if, once you are on that top team, you assume that merely being on the team makes you a better player than the members of the less competitive team. That’s pretty much the same as the “makes you look better” position, and that is the “elitism” that I was referring to when I posted the link about the easy course list at Stanford. </p>

<p>When people start talking about the average SAT score students at their school, or dissing other schools on dubious grounds such as the idea of an “intellectual peer group” – that’s elitism. They aren’t talking about what their school offers (such as advising, quality of instruction) – or what they have accomplished at their school – but they are falling back on the rationale that, statistically speaking, everyone at their school is better and smarter, so therefore their own education will be enhanced merely by being in the place where the better & smarter people are. </p>

<p>It is true that the better athletic team may also have more resources and be regularly playing against other, better teams - therefore giving a strong player more opportunity to develop his skills. But it is also possible that the player who opts for the elite team may end up spending more time on the bench, overshadowed by other stronger players – whereas the player on the lesser team may get a lot more time in play and many more opportunities to improve skills, precisely because he has to carry his team. And the quality of the coaching is more a matter of happenstance than the team reputation. </p>

<p>I think that at least at the collegiate level, many athletes realize that. The high school athlete weighing offers from different school may be asking himself what his position will be on the team, whether he will actually have a meaningful opportunity to play. (In pro sports, money may become more important – an athlete might be perfectly willing to be paid big bucks to keep the bench warm). There’s a balance of factors, and in some ways it’s better to be a strong player on a weaker team, than a middling player on a top team. </p>

<p>The same is true of colleges – there are pros and cons, different factors that need to be considered. </p>

<p>To me, one of the down sides of the elite college is that student can develop a limited and often inaccurate world view, because of the group think inherent in a small homogeneous environment. I think that becomes particularly apparent when a comparison is made between a small LAC and large research university, given the greater resources of the university. Part of the LAC student’s world view is of “peers” consisting of fellow, same-age students – whereas the student at the research university’s “peer” group is likely wider, counting a combination of same-age students, older, non-traditional students, and graduate students among their friends, and often taking advantage of graduate level course offerings at their colleges. For example, the average age of an undergraduate student at the CSU my son attended was 26 - and you are going to get a different dynamic with more mature students.</p>

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<p>"The big universities matching elite in the list are in the state with much lower cut off. "
what??? USC is in a state [Calif] with a much lower cut off??? I don’t think so…Again, you are making an correlation based on your assumptions. The cut off level for the states where NMF’s came from are irrelevent to where students eventually decide to go to college. This list does not show where students went to HS, or how many came from which state, but where they end up going to college. Many BIG U’s, both public and private, attract NMF’s from ALL over the country with large merit scholarships, small Honors programs, rigorous honors classes, unique programs, special access to top professors, etc, etc. The list is not a ranking a la USNWR of which are the “best” colleges . …</p>

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<p>LOL, some people on this forum really do hold a grudge against those attending “elite colleges” :). And this whole argument about which type of school is best is rather silly for multiple reasons.</p>

<p>LadyDianeski, I have a freshman friend who is taking a upper level course with a grad student in his class, and I’m also taking a class that has grad students in it, and really, sometimes we have a lot to say about these supposedly older and wiser grad students too in return ;-). (Such as, I’m genuinely curious why they’re there in the first place instead of going for more challenging options more appropriate for their level of expertise.) If your husband were taking a course “in the Yard” with us inapt undergrads and not finding it easy, then I seriously would’ve been a little disturbed and worried.</p>

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<p>But what is it when people start talking about top colleges as being full of “elitism”, or dissing them for being over-priced institutions for the rich? Lack of understanding or assumptions based on lack of familiarity? “Being in the place where the better and smarter people are” can certainly be an asset, but it’s a small part of a larger picture. If POIH cannot tell you about what he/she has accomplished because he’s not a student, I certainly can, about the quality of education or advising, or provide you with examples of what students have accomplished. Please feel free to PM.</p>

<p>There are pros and cons to choosing any sort of learning environment, and a lot of what you say I absolutely agree with, as I have frequently stated in various ways elsewhere. However, some people on this board have had and still have this unfair bias towards students and families choosing to attend elite colleges. If there is some way for me to dispel that notion, I certainly will.</p>

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<p>I found another stats on NMF. I am not sure which stats is more meaningful.</p>

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<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/454412-national-merit-scholars-2007-schools-have-most.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/454412-national-merit-scholars-2007-schools-have-most.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>The high school classmates I mentioned previously who transferred out of our state/city universities…including the honors programs would strongly disagree with you based on their experience. Most of them felt the classes were taught at such a low level that they felt they were completely wasting their time…and with the school bureaucracy refusing to allow them to immediately skip to more advanced courses…they were stuck. They knew something was off when they could easily can pull off As without having put in any effort…and were concerned they were not being challenged to their full capabilities. </p>

<p>Once they transferred up to more rigorous schools like Reed, Columbia, CMU, etc…they finally felt they were learning something and being challenged at their level…and were much happier for it.</p>