<p>Examples: UC's, Ivies, top notch schools.</p>
<p>Just wondering.</p>
<p>Didn’t matter to me. In hindsight, I would actually have applied to less prestigious schools overall.</p>
<p><em>raises hand</em> Me. I’m not that interested in Yale Col-- <em>is shot</em></p>
<p>But in all seriousness, I am not applying to those schools for the prestige factor, but I am curious about my chances, so I’m going for broke.</p>
<p>Not really, I would go wherever I fit best and could get the best education.</p>
<p>Well, people who are less academically inclined would probably be afraid to go to a school full of braniacs where they’d feel stupid. I know average students who have rejected athletic sports scholarships to top top top top schools because they didn’t want the rigorous academic environment.</p>
<p>Yep, I believe so. I am at a large public school, and outside of the CC World and some standouts at our school, students are definitely not prestige-focused. Some kids just look for other things in colleges: a specific, hard-to-find major, a great women’s badminton team, a certain area, a state school where there friends are going, a more affordable school, or a school with better a better, more active social life/party scene than they believe prestigious schools have to offer. Especially if a student has average grades/scores, they definitely don’t want to put themselves in an environment in which they don’t have a chance of succeeding academically. Also, even if some students have the stats and ecs to attend a top school, they may prefer to attend a less prestigious school in which they can be at the top of the pack. I personally know some students who passed up highly ranked schools in order to be a “big fish in a small pond” at a different school where they can stand out more. </p>
<p>I’m not trying to say that a certain school and its students are better than another school and its students just because it’s ranked higher; just explaining how some people think, which is perfectly reasonable and understandable.</p>
<p>I think some people just view prestige on a different scale. Some students in my state, for example, would never venture out-of-state for financial reasons, so our flagship becomes the most prestigious option.</p>
<p>^ Your state flagship is pretty prestigious and so are some other private schools in NC (Duke, etc.)</p>
<p>I think Ivies are overrated. I can see the appeal, but for most of us (from middle-class families who don’t get much financial aid), it’s expensive, and the benefits don’t outweigh the burden. Schools of lower prestige can provide almost the same quality of education, and can be easier to finance.</p>
<p>i cant get into them, i dont really care
i can get a great education at a state school</p>
<p>Apparently, there are kids who say this “I get free admissions to Caltech because my parents work at JPL… But I don’t want to go there”. Sure sign of “I won’t even try because I will never get in”.</p>
<p>Yeah. I live in California so UC’s get a lot of hype. I only have one UC in mind, so when I apply, I’m going to apply for other UC’s just to shiitz n giggles.</p>
<p>Most of my Ds’ friends and acquaintances here in Minnesota don’t give a hoot about prestigious schools. And it’s not just those who wouldn’t get in anyway; lots of top students with great grades, test scores, and fabulous ECs are content to attend our local public flagship, or maybe the University of Wisconsin-Madison which they can attend for in-state rates under our reciprocity agreement, or a religiously affiliated school like St. Thomas (in St. Paul), or one of the good-but-not-knock-your-socks-off local LACs like St. Olaf (especially for the music program) or St. John’s/St. Ben’s (in Collegeville, MN). They’re a very pragmatic, level-headed bunch. Mainly they like it here and see no reason to leave, so why not stay local? The U and Wisconsin-Madison are cheap, pleasant enough, and have tons of of high-quality programs that lead to actual jobs, so who needs anything “better”? The handful who have more elite educational aspirations (my Ds included) are the outliers, not the norm, even among the smartest and best-credentialed kids in town. </p>
<p>I actually think that’s true of the vast majority of college-bound HS seniors. It’s a comparative handful who are chasing prestige. And even many of those who apply to elite schools are in it not so much for the prestige as for the quality education; those two things are different, and I’d place my Ds among those for whom educational quality and “fit” are far more important than prestige or rankings. My D1 is now attending an outstanding LAC, but she didn’t base her preferences on rankings or prestige. By the time she was applying she had credentials that could have made her a competitive candidate for the Ivies, for example but she didn’t apply to a single Ivy because she didn’t like any of them as well as she liked her first choice LAC (the one she’s now attending) or any of the 8 or so other LACs on her her list, not all of them top 10 by any means. </p>
<p>It’s only on CC that one gets the distorted sense that everyone’s a prestige whore.</p>
<p>I don’'t believe it when i hear someone claim he/she picked a nameless college over Ivies because of financial difficulties. Ironically (or not), ivies give more financial aid!</p>
<p>Not all of the ivies give more aid. Even those that do give what they consider to be big aid, may not give enough to make things possible for a given student, or to tempt a student away from a “nameless college” that is giving them big aid. This year several posters here at CC indicated that they were deciding between big aid at non-ivies, and less aid at ivies. Scroll down through the various forums and look for the titles of their threads.</p>
<p>Some students go to college, yes to earn a degree, but also to simply be young and dumb. Some students simply want to party and don’t necessarily care about the quality of the institution…</p>
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<p>The Ivies don’t always give more financial aid. Their FA is strictly need-based. There are lots of people who have high EFCs or are in the full-pay-but-just-barely category, but who just don’t have the $40K or $50K a year they’re expected to pay, or for whom that kind of cash outlay would be a real hardship. There could be many reasons for this, e.g., high EFC due to high current income but relatively small savings because income was lower until recently; or high EFC because of high asset values but those assets produce only modest income (many farm families fall into this category); or high income but lots of the income goes to care for a sick elderly family member who doesn’t figure into the FA calculation. For many people in these categories a fat merit award from a less prestigious school, or in-state tuition at the state flagship, can be an extremely attractive alternative, and sometimes those financial consideration outweigh any others. And for those planning to go to medical school or law school, for example, borrowing $10K or $20K a year to allow them to attend a more prestigious school as an undergrad is probably just foolish if they can attend a somewhat less prestigious school without loans. It’s the GPA and test scores, not the nameplate on the undergraduate institution, that will get them into med school or law school, and they’ll do plenty of borrowing then; so it just doesn’t make sense to start in the hole by doing extensive borrowing as an undergrad.</p>
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<p>Yes, and some go to college not for the education but for the prestige. And some foolishly think it’s not possible to get a quality education at a public university, while others know that if you’re motivated, enterprising, and work hard, you can get an outstanding education at just about any state flagship; and at some you can get an education that rivals any Ivy. It won’t be handed to you on a silver platter, but you can go out and find it and work for it, and make it happen.</p>
<p>For UC’s, I don’t really like UCB. It’s very old looking, and isn’t as laid back as UCD (my dream school).</p>
<p>My daughter is academically inclined, but not at all motivated by prestige. Wants to love the school, but also, wants to go to a school that “loves her back”. Trying to choose on the basis of: high levels of attention and support from professors; small class sizes; good merit-based financial aid; and a friendly culture amongst the students. She can compete academically, but being in classrooms full of cut-throat competitors for four years would be misery.</p>