The “slacker” majors do vary from one college to another. What is a “slacker” major at one college may be a hard major at another.
For example, economics at some colleges can be majored in without calculus. At some other colleges, multivariable calculus and/or linear algebra is required. Note that this is not always correlated to prestige or selectivity.
@writermom2018…wow, did you just say that psychology is a haven for “slackers”? Thus insinuate that those students who choose Psychology as a major are slackers. My slacker DD2018 will be so pleased to know that she has selected an appropriate major, BS Psychology, and will be surrounded by other slacker students and that those 21 credits of science and 4 units of math plus all the core subjects and psychology classes, particularly the required directed research, will be a cakewalk. Good thing she is going to study at one of those slacker public school and not a more prestigious “real” school too! Wow, wow, wowzers.
http://catalog.tamu.edu/undergraduate/liberal-arts/psychology/bs/#text
And marketing has become completely analytics driven. Writing scrips, analyzing unbelievable amounts of data, understanding how the market stack integrates…this is marketing today.
“wow, did you just say that psychology is a haven for “slackers”? Thus insinuate that those students who choose Psychology as a major are slackers”
That’s not any different than the multiple threads where people state that a college that admits students via ED by definition doesn’t get the best students because the very best students would have applied to HYPSM (and one is generous enough to add Cal Tech). Insinuates students admitted ED anywhere else and any students who haven’t applied to HYPSM SCEA/EA are not the best students… So if your daughter is not just a psychology major but also didn’t apply HYPSM SCEA/EA, then yes, she is definitely a slacker. Inform her forthwith so she is clear about the depth of her inferiority and can be properly ashamed.
Its often fun to “make fun” of the other schools/majors. For example:
Limit for engineering as GPA → 0 = Business
Limit for Business as GPA → 0 = Art and Sciences (otherwise know as Arts and Parties) <:-P
As a parent of a son who applied and was accepted ED to UChicago (which I would include in the HYPSM category), i can tell you the decision was not directly a prestige thing, but a fit thing. He wants to run track in college, he wants to go to a T14 law school after graduation and UChicago offered him the best chance to do those things. Could he have ran track at other DIII schools absolutely, but the 84% of law school admits to T14 law schools wasn’t matched by any other DIII school(at least most DIII schools didn’t publicize that number to compare, so we assumed it wasn’t that high). One could argue that the 84% may be related to prestige, others will tell you it relates to the fact that those students would have been accepted regardless of where they went to undergrad. We thought that the academic rigor of UChicago most likely helped those students prepare better for law school. So you can decide if prestige was a driving factor. I feel like it wasn’t directly, but maybe it was indirectly.
I would have been perfectly happy with his other choices if he wasn’t accepted at UChicago, and none of them were in the HYPSM(Cal Tech) group.
BTW, we need a psychology major (preferably a HYPSM one) to weigh in on the following question. “Would a parent be more likely to answer this thread if they were or were not hung up on prestige?”
I propose that no parent is going to say “H*%$ yeah, that’s all we cared about!”
Well, try not to be too ashamed of your slacker son, @BrianBoiler. Even the losers need to be loved. 
Be careful of that UChicago GPA. Its known to kill med and law school dreams. That should have been a factor. All the UChicago grads I know at top law schools were top of their class, which is very hard to achieve there.
@milee30 ???
Still with an 84% placement at T14 law schools I think most that go onto law school are having success in getting into good ones.
@BrianBoiler You know I’m being sarcastic, right? My son is joining yours at UChicago next year. Also as an ED admit. While I don’t think he’s planning on studying Psychology, I wouldn’t be ashamed if he were. Nor was I ashamed that UChicago was his absolute top choice - didn’t even consider HYPSM.
One can be as prestige driven as they’d like, but if the kid doesn’t have the profile for admission, and the family doesn’t have the money to build the U a new football stadium (which would make them a development admit), then the kid is not going to end up at that “prestigious” place.
If one has very well connected or rich parents, prestige is unimportant. When Obama’s kid send an email for internship, everyone will be eager for both girls to work for them.
However if one comes from a household where student is attending school on full need based scholarship, college (prep school) name opens door. Student has been already vetted by the prestigious institutions, and now your achievements carry you to open the gate. This is the case for our family, when daughter’s send an email to introduce themselves they received response back always. I do not think it was possible for a poor Asian kid to get response had they not been alumni or student of those prestigious institutions. But opening the door mean nothing, one has to perform once internship or job is given. And once this person perform, he pays ways for next kid. Yay prestigious colleges, you at least provide a less rougher path to success.
I was in a position to give them a choice: honors program at state flagship and assistance with grad school or top choice with no grad school assistance. Both chose top SLACs with an unparalleled education.
Interesting thread. S applied to about ten schools ranging from a top five school (depending on which ranking) to about 100 (although higher ranked for specific major). Most were clustered in the top 40, but were choices driven by S, not pushed in any way by the parents. As we go through the process, some schools which I initially thought were a good balance of being strong contenders, great reputation, and affordability, have moved around in my own mental “ranking” of what I think might be the best overall fit. S has also shifted some of his priorities and moved some up or down.
Prestige may have played a larger role in the early going of visiting colleges, but never to the extent of being obsessed with Ivies. Schools that were roughly in the top 40 with strong programs in the areas of interest were more of a factor. In terms of rigor, I am now leaning towards options that will be challenging but maybe not the kind of reputation for rigor and demands that a U Chicago or Columbia might ask of students. I would like S to have some fun in college and not be in the library 10 hours a day. I suppose that comes down to values, the student, and how one views the purpose of college and an education. Ultimately, it is not my decision, as long as affordability is reasonable.
Only on college confidential can this post be made.
^^^ We can see prestige is relative.
I answered “(p)restige wasn’t important to us in our college application process” to the original question.
To this question I would respond that it would be very important that my child attend a college that is recognized as giving a high quality education to its students.
We judged a school’s ‘recognition for a quality education’ by the companies that recruited on campus, job placement of its graduates and anecdotal stories from trusted friends and family. We viewed published rankings with skepticism - not necessarily because we questioned the methodology, but they didn’t necessarily reflect our priorities.
The university we chose had to offer opportunities and reasonable access to those opportunities for my child. Learning and skill building was our child’s responsibility.
Now I’ll address the word I changed from CU123’s question. I used high versus top. To me ‘top’ suggests prestige. The example I’ll use may connect with my fellow Chicago-area people. In our area the University of Chicago and Northwestern are recognizable names that carry a certain amount of prestige. Our flagship, UIUC doesn’t have the same prestige factor…sorry, Illini and for the record, I am one. Yes, there are majors on campus that are nationally recognized for their excellence. But I don’t think there are a lot of Illinois high school students who would label the school as prestigious (though it seems CS is getting more love nationally every year)…and that’s fine by us. :). In my opinion, prestige is over used like iconic
I cared about it some, so did my D. It’s nice to have people make a positive assumption about your intellect when they hear where you go (went) to school. It can open doors sometimes, as in a job applicant situation.
D chose a school that a CC person and many in the NE think is prestigious but which elicits a blank stare from most people in our area. Best of both worlds, sort of.
I’ve never envied an acquaintance whose kids go to Harvard…I’ve seen her answer the “so where is Johnny at school” question and people just go through this look of shock and say things like “Wow he must be so smart!!” and such that would be difficult for me to deal with on a regular basis.
UIUC is one of those schools with unbalanced prestige – very high in CS and engineering, but less so in other subjects.
However, could the phenomenon with the IL high school students be similar to that of NJ high school students wanting to go anywhere but Rutgers?