<p>Very few is good. More than zero. Was your roommate one of the top 3 percenters?</p>
<p>NO! I think I've mentioned before, after freshman year, three of us lower middle-class folks "cocooned" together. (But I did live next door to the "military-industrial complex": LSD-dropping ice hockey players with one father heading a major airplane manufacturing company, one a major defense engine manufacturer, one ran the Army, and one high up in the CIA. My freshman roommate's father owned the largest steel manufacturing plant in North Carolina. I'm sure they all had high SAT scores, well, maybe not the last one.)</p>
<p>Why do you ask?</p>
<p>"small numbers of math whizzes." Precisely, and that's why S decided against some top LACs where classes he would want to take were offered only in alternate years, and some not at all.</p>
<p>So what is better, going to school with people who are predominately from the same class, or the opposite?</p>
<p>Do you think a rich person ever says, "I want to go to school with poor people so I can learn more about them?" </p>
<p>I have a friend, one of my best friends, and he sent his daughter to private schools for her education, schools with wealthy student bodies. I said to him, "Don't you want your daughter to be exposed to the real world?"</p>
<p>He said, "No. She will never live in the real world".</p>
<p>Yes. I understand. But I bet you'd find LOTS of math whizzes at University of Wisconsin, University of Washington (especially with its aerospace program - I know a student in it who turned down Ivies to be there), and any number of large universities with large graduate mathematic programs.</p>
<p>But again, the total number of "math whizzes" in the world is small, and the number who aren't top 3%ers (in income) even smaller.</p>
<p>"So what is better, going to school with people who are predominately from the same class, or the opposite?"</p>
<p>You pays your money, you takes your choice. As you noted, regardless of how much prestige there is to be found elsewhere, the largest number of folks choose Penn State. And if you don't pays your money, you takes your choice among what is available to you. With d #1, we just happened to hit the lottery, which is really why I can't answer the question posed by this forum with a meaningful answer.</p>
<p>Do you think a rich person ever says, "I want to go to school with poor people so I can learn more about them?""</p>
<p>Yes. Not often. But it happens. Hey, we are all products of our environment. To step beyond it, for folks from any social class, can be very difficult. And did I ever say to myself, "I want to go to college X because I want to be around rich kids?" Not on your life. I could never have been that socially aware. And, also quite frankly, I didn't even know what wealth was until I got there, it just wasn't part of my experience. (The richest person I knew was my uncle, a high school dropout who sold plastic paperweights with astronauts on top, commemorating the moon landing, through the New York Times.) But do rich families require that of their kids? Undoubtedly, and they know its value, because they have experienced it.</p>
<p>I have final interviews for a full ride for a small school in Texas from Colleges that Change Lives by Loren Pope. It has a credible premedical placement program, with 90% of applicants who remain premed for 3 years are accepted into medschool. </p>
<p>Honestly, with aspirations of medical school - undergrad won't matter much, if at all, after I move on to that second phase of my education. </p>
<p>I applied to Harvard, Columbia, NYU, and Cornell - all schools I'd love to go to, but can I justify paying 40k a year to go when I have a school who is willing to pay me 35k a year to go to their school? I don't think so - I just don't think the extra debt is worth it.</p>
<p>Mini:</p>
<p>UW-Madison is on S's radar screen for grad school. For undergrad, the size was daunting. Ditto UMich and Berkeley (whose costs for OOS applicants were not that great).<br>
I don't think it entered S's mind to consider the financial circumstances of the student bodies at variou schools (he had never considered it for his friends in k-12) but it mattered to him to be surrounded by people as passionate for math as he is.
I agree that he is part of a small minority. Which is why I said that the academic needs of the vast majority of students can be accommodated by the vast majority of insitutions of higher education. Still, not every student will thrive in the same colleges.</p>
<p>"but it mattered to him to be surrounded by people as passionate for math as he is".</p>
<p>Good decision. He likely would have found equal numbers of those passionate people at those other places, but sprinkled among a much larger student body, so it may have taken more time to develop, unless taken under the wing of a particular faculty member.</p>
<p>"Still, not every student will thrive in the same colleges."</p>
<p>Tis true, though I'm more concerned about folks being able to afford any college at all. (sorry, topic for another forum).</p>
<p>So...let's put the question to you, as, for better or worse (or irrelevant), your son is a full-freighter. How high would you go? (dollar range would be enough)</p>
<p>Mini, one of my observances is, for the top 3 percenters
that I know, whether they graduated from state schools or not, the vast majority want to send their kids to private colleges. If their kid gets into a Berkeley or a UCLA that is OK. Otherwise, in most cases, it is private schools.</p>
<p>The reasons are personal attention, connections, easier to develop leadership skills, and of course, ego, vanity and insecurity. ;)</p>
<p>Hey. It's hard to stay up in the top 3%. The top 1/2% is easy. The top 3% is hard.</p>
<p>(That was also part of Veblen's thesis. If the capitalism he knew worked effectively in its neo-Darwinism, keeping up with the Joneses would become more difficult, and there would might be fewer Joneses. So far, he is wrong - the middle class may be "vanishing", but 3%ers aren't, and class boundaries seem to have hardened in the past two decades rather than softened, at least at the upper levels of income. There's good data on that in Betsy Leondar Wright's book "Class Matters".)</p>
<p>I guess I better pick up that book. :)</p>
<p>
[quote]
He said, "No. She will never live in the real world".
[/quote]
</p>
<p>A breathtaking quote, and all too credible. I've spent so much time in places like East Hampton and Palm Beach, and as nice as they were, they also felt really fake to me. Not so the most prestigious universities. They always felt wonderful. </p>
<p>That said, there were times at college that I looked around me at the wondrous sorts there and said to myself, these people haven't had to face too much adversity in their lives. But perhaps I was extrapolating too much.</p>
<p>It's hard to answer. My S is more mature and self-reliant than he was a couple of years ago when he began the college application process. So if, two years ago, the COA had been higher, I might have decided to just accept it. There are only some schools that have the combination of program and size and a few other characteristics, and they all seem to be in the same ballpark financially. I did meet a dad whose S had been accepted in the Honors College at UMich with a full ride. But the S chose MIT. He is there without any funding as the family does not qualify for need-based aid.</p>
<p>Marsden, I hesitated to tell that story because my friend has not had an easy life in many ways and that has also colored his thoughts.</p>
<p>I realize that I have another friend, who is also one of my closest friends, who has said, "I hope my son 'doesn't' end up living in the real world". (A slight paraphrase).</p>
<p>Maybe, I need to get different best friends. :)</p>
<p>Money is awfully seductive.</p>
<p>Money is better than the lack of money.</p>
<p>Working your *** off to get more money instead of doing other things....</p>
<p>Which do I dislike more--a lack of money, or the things I see people do to get more money? </p>
<p>Oh sorry, that's another thread. The one called "How low would you go?" ;)</p>
<p>In my earlier posts about not caring if my kids rubbed elbows with top 3 percenters, I was referring to $$$, not smarts. I do want them to find academic peers, so that's a big part of fit. I'm really not losing sleep over how much wealth their roommates will have. D goes to a h.s. with plenty of top 3 percenters. Many of those girls are also in the academic 3 percenter category, as is D, and that's what I was looking for.</p>
<p>Mini says that his exposure to the top 3 percenters "radically expanded my sense of the possible, of potentialities which went far beyond my lower middle class existence, and gave me models that propelled me forward in new ways." I can appreciate this. I like your phrase, "sense of the possible." I believe because today's kids are more exposed to the big world, much more so than we were, that this is already a part of their psyche.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Which do I dislike more--a lack of money, or the things I see people do to get more money? </p>
<p>Oh sorry, that's another thread. The one called "How low would you go?"
[/quote]
LOL! Go ahead...start that thread, Marsden.</p>
<p>Regarding how high I'd go for college cost: It depends. How's that for decisivness?</p>
<p>Like most of you, no doubt, I've been sending D e-mails of upcomming deadlines for all those fastweb scholarships. She's 15 & I really think she's not understanding how soon the college tuition bills will be arriving. Some of these essay contests are a bit of a stretch. And her workload with school and all the other "stuff" is pretty heavy. So I haven't exactly been cracking the whip. Until yesterday.....when she called me all excited because she had won an electric Fender guitar & ipod speakers. "How did you win, hon? Was it a sweepstakes?" "No, mom. I had to write an essay....." She had time to find THIS essay contest? Complete the essay? Submit the essay? And not the college scholarship essays?????!!!!!!!!!!</p>
<p>I should add that D does not play the guitar.</p>
<p>We had a little talk. Told her that the 529 will cover full cost at the local community college. Or I can shift the funds to her brother's account if we want. Or she can play her Fender guitar on street corners for tips. (After she learns to play it, presumably.) I hope she gets the message.</p>
<p>TheDad mentioned the worth/cost/value of lower tier private schools.
Considering the thread is "how high would you go?" , the Lauren Pope thread this a.m. and looking at DD's schools I am now even more confused.
We had DD apply to a range of schools, including a few from the Pope book that were lower tier. Is the general feeling that the cost is not worth it? Right now only one sent FA and while it included merit and need, it would be more than BigStateU's full price.
Is it better to go to Rutgers, with it's giant classes than a third tier "life changing" lac?<br>
do I need to start a thread...was your child life REALLY changed?</p>