<p>I think we are mincing words here. Your “agenda” is you are limiting your where kid could go to school by what you could afford. My “agenda” is I want my kid to go to the best (most rigorous) school she could get into. I have no issue with people limiting how much money they want to spend on their kid’s education, whether they could afford it or not. I have an issue when people want it make it look like it’s MY agenda when all I want is for my kid to get the best education possible. Why isn’t a parent’s “agenda” (bad connotation) when a parent tries to get a kid into the best secondary school system? How is college different than high school?</p>
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<p>What I have heard from some current NYU students is that the education and experience is quite good.</p>
<p>We can find negative opinions on ANY school. </p>
<p>That’s why I do not engage in putting down schools, especially ones which I have never attended.</p>
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That’s not an ‘agenda’ because it’s not an artificial limitation based on preferences, it’s a cold hard reality. Whether student and parents like it or not the kid can’t go to a place where there’s no ability to pay the price.</p>
<p>I don’t think choosing a college is really that important a decision.</p>
<p>As long as you help your child steer clear of major pitfalls – like choosing a college that doesn’t have a program in their intended major or making a choice that will involve taking on a huge amount of debt – I think this is a decision they can make on their own.</p>
<p>It’s not, after all, like they’re choosing to have a child or to volunteer for military service in the Middle East – two things, by the way, that they could do without our consent. This decision just isn’t in the same league.</p>
<p>A lot of kids tend to put similar colleges on their lists anyway. Would it have mattered if my son had gone to the University of Delaware instead of the University of Maryland? Or if my daughter had gone to Northwestern instead of Cornell? Not in any way that matters (although I really would not have enjoyed wearing the purple Northwestern sweatshirt).</p>
<p>By definition, most parents have an agenda for their kids, without one they would have no compass to guide them.</p>
<p>I wish the OP would come back to this thread just to clarify why they don’t think the student’s choice is a good one…and perhaps what the OP thinks might be a better choice. If this is about USC, I seriously doubt it’s about the quality of the school…or the experiences it has to offer. It’s a perception that is different from parent to child, me thinks.</p>
<p>Marian - What about Cornell vs U. Delaware? Assuming they cost the same to you?</p>
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<p>Good question. I think I would have advised against it (because I agree with you that a school’s reputation does matter, especially if you end up in an industry like management consulting or government contracting, where the company has to sell your credentials to clients over and over). I’m not sure whether I would have vetoed it. </p>
<p>And in reality, I probably couldn’t have vetoed it anyway. The Cornell-quality kid would probably have gotten enough merit money from Delaware so that she could have gone there without any financial help from me. (But I can’t even imagine her making such a choice, even if there had been a boyfriend involved.)</p>
<p>No, you’re trying to mince words to obfuscate the issue.</p>
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<p>Because I have no choice. We are willing to stretch our resources as far as they will stretch to educate our two children and at the same time keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. It’s hardly an agenda to take the only available course of action.</p>
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<p>Whether or not s/he wants to?</p>
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<p>You’ve just said that it is! (Leaving aside the bogus argument that prestige correlates to quality of education.)</p>
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<p>Because a secondary school student is a child and needs more parent direction than a college student does.</p>
<p>There’s nothing wrong with having an agenda, BTW; but to say you don’t have one when you clearly do, that’s the issue.</p>
<p>EDIT: thank you, GladGradDad.</p>
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<p>Don’t know if you’ve ever used a compass, but a compass provides information - which way north is. You can choose to use that information to go in any direction you choose.</p>
<p>I definitely have an agenda for my kids - to give them, for 18 years, the best upbringing my somewhat limited financial means will allow, give them the benefit of my admittedly fallible advice in how to go forward - and then support them to the best of my ability in whatever path they choose in life.</p>
<p>Our kids didn’t have a choice where they went to high school. Most of them went to a neighborhood high school, and somehow they all got used to the weather, and found friends and ECs they liked. Parents worried more about the quality of high school - how many APs were offered, what’s teacher/student ratio, funding for various ECs, number of GCs/students, percentage of graduates go to 4 year college, % of graduates go to schools. But when it comes to college selection, we seem to focus a lot more outside of academic and what kids would(could) do with their education after graduation.</p>
<p>And my agenda for kids is to give them the best upbringing possible AND give them sufficient financial resource, so they could have as many options as possible. </p>
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<p>Show me one parent who doesn’t want his kid to get the best education possible, especially on CC. Why would a school be viewed as prestigious if it doesn’t offer good education?</p>
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<p>I’m sure that most prestigious schools offer good education.</p>
<p>So do most less-prestigious schools.</p>
<p>There is no evidence that prestige and quality of education are correlated.</p>
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<p>Every parent wants his kid to get the best education. The question is, who gets to define what is the best education for a specific kid? The parent or the kid?</p>
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<p>Really? I think most employers and graduate schools qould have a view about that.</p>
<p>At the end of day, we all try to justify decisions we’ve made and how we have lived our lives, myself included.</p>
<p>I haven’t seen anything that indicates employers or grad schools use US News rankings of undergrad schools to determine acceptance/job offers.</p>
<p>I have. Compare number of 2011 graduates from Princeton got jobs vs Rutgers. Compare number of HY graduates got into Yale law school vs graduates from Cornell, Duke or NU. Those are 2 I have looked into. As mentioned by Marian, most financial and consulting firms recruit at higher ranking schools (not that they are the only career to go into, but that’s what I know).</p>
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<p>I may have not attended that school, but I grew up close to the NYU campus, toured the campus/sat in on classes, applied and was admitted there, attended a high school where dozens of classmates matriculated(Little more than 1/3 of my graduating HS class were admitted to NYU CAS/Stern), tutored some NYU undergrads, worked with dozens of NYU graduates…including some from the last few years, and where several college classmates and friends are either currently/recently taught/TAed undergrad courses there. </p>
<p>Moreover, among the NYU students from the above…most are laboring under gigantic debt loads that are staggering due to miserly levels of FA…especially those from the last 5 or so years. A major reason why I turned down admission there as I didn’t think the undergrad experience was good enough to warrant the exorbitant costs…especially when I had arguably better options on both the academic and financial fronts.</p>
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<p>This is a good point, but I also suspect that the successful law school or job applicants had excellent academic records from the schools they attended. </p>
<p>But some people cannot do quite that well. I’m not sure what would be the best choice for them.</p>
<p>Would it be better to go to Yale and be in the bottom half of the class or to go to Northwestern and be in the top half?</p>
<p>I am the OP. Thanks to all who replied. The school in question is indeed USC. My daughter is very excited about this school because she loves art, video games, fantasy, and manga and is thrilled that USC offers a minor in “2-D art for games.” She thinks she might like to work in the video game industry some day. My bias (an agenda, I confess) is that college is for intellectual exploration and growth, not for vocational training. This clearly has to do with my own experience (went to college, took four years off while I figured out what I wanted to do, then returned to professional school). So I worry that she is making a decision based on a very narrow criterion which could very well change. I would like her to think more broadly as she makes her decision.</p>
<p>^ Why don’t you think there is room for intellectual exploration at USC?</p>