I don’t live my life worrying about “prestige” or whether people are impressed with brand names.
I get the highest quality I can for the price I can afford.
It’s one of the great things about being an adult-- the opinions of others simply don’t determine how I live my life.
One of my kids attended a small instate SUNY… my guess is that most on CC have never heard of it. At orientation I found myself talking to parents from several different states… some were far away. I finally asked… what brings you here? I was told that for their particular major, this school had an excellent reputation ( strong internships etc) and was highly recommended by guidance… from states that were a 10+ hour car ride. Who knew?
It’s important to look at the program/major within a school… and not just the " prestige" of the school.
OK… I’m curious. Which SUNY? Because we were VERY impressed wtih the hospitality program at Delhi.
@psycholing I am very interested in what you said:
“So, if the ambition is grad school, students may want to consider the prestige/fame of their potential research mentors, over and above the prestige of the university as a whole.”
How does one go about finding info on the prestige/fame of their potential research mentors? Especially at LAC’s that don’t have as much high level research going on, but may (or may not) have a significant number of students going on to grad school? Or at universities that may be mainly known for humanities, but the potential student is interested in the hard sciences?
I’m sincerely interested in any tips you can give. This is our first time in this process and I’m really not sure how to get this information.
My kid’s chosen major is one in which where you studied matters… and yet, we wanted to make sure that she chose a university recognized for quality in all majors. So we worked to find a balance between those ideas
I have one kid who wasn’t necessarily obsessed with prestige, but his attitude was “I worked very very hard in high school, & took the hardest classes available. What was the point of that if I end up at the same college I could have gotten into if I had slacked off in high school?”
Nope. I didn’t care at all. MIT wanted me and I wouldn’t even talk to them (they stopped by my house back in the day). I wanted far away from my parents and something they could afford. For my son, well he started with saying he wanted to go to a land-grant university with a vet school (he is pre-vet) and we went from there. I believe a student should go where there is the best mix of fit and affordability.
It is easy to get sucked into the chasing of prestige. It is okay to dream big and explore all your available options. The key is to dream and then truly evaluate all of the factors that matter to the student and parents — fit, COA, location, strength of major, career placement, prestige, etc. I did not dream of prestige for myself. Just getting to go to college at all was dream enough. For my DS and DD I did/will encourage dreaming big but the balance of all of those factors in the final choice will be mostly up to them.
He will do better in college than the slacker will.
If prestige didn’t matter, why are students encouraged to create a list of schools that includes “reaches?”
There may be other benefits to taking a challenging course load in HS and doing well such as merit scholarships, honors type programs, transferable AP/DE credits, etc. However, beyond that there should be value to actually learning and understanding the material well, including an increased chance of success in college. There is more to academics than just admission to the next level.
@appalachymom You are correct that it is very difficult to investigate the prestige of the individual professors prior to being embedded in the field. First off, it would be absolutely necessary for the student to know what subject matter he or she wishes to study. Next, I’d suggest reading some contemporary popular science books in the subject areas in question. For example, as a high school student I was interested in cognitive science, so I started buying and reading books on cognitive science, artificial intelligence, consciousness, etc. Once I was in the field, I got to meet many of the people I had read about – very gratifying. In these types of books, the authors write for the intelligent lay person, and one needn’t have a lot of technical knowledge to access the content. Even so, the better books will talk about theories and experiments, and will mention the researchers involved. If someone is featured as a motivating force (a field changer) in popular science books, that person is probably well known in their field, and a LoR from that person will carry weight. To be clear, it is often not the author of the popular book who is the strong researcher, but rather the individuals who are frequently cited as doing field changing research.
If more ambitious, one can actually obtain the researchers journal articles, and look at number of citations and/or prestige of the publishing journal. Generally, the more citations the better. However, you don’t want to look at prestige – you must make sure the student is interested in the type of research that person does. As a researcher you are married to your research subfield (often an excruciatingly narrow topic) for a very long time – it is not possible to maintain that marriage if you are not in love with the topic. So, a smart high-schooler can read the journal articles and ask himself/herself – do I enjoy reading this? Can I imagine spending my life reading articles on this topic?
Another option to get to know someone who is in the field of interest. Let’s say it is cognitive psychology. Find a local cognitive psychologist and ask him/her to review the department of interest and give an impression of the various faculty member’s research prowess. Keep in mind certain departments are highly incestuous with each other. So Penn might send most of their doctoral students to Harvard to postdoc, and Harvard might send their people to Penn. When that sort of relationship exists, it is quite easy for an undergrad to move laterally from one to the other, following the reciprocity that exists with the departments. When I was at my grad program, we probably had 4 or 5 top departments where we freely exchanged people. I could have chosen any of them to postdoc and would have been accepted. Alas, I had to choose based on proximity so perhaps my best career options were precluded.
Just keep in mind – these narrow subfields where the bread and butter of research occur are tiny. Everyone knows everyone. When the professor writing the LoR knows (or even collaborates with) the person the letter is going to – that letter carries significant weight. For the highest prestige faculty members – they have written with/collaborated with/chatted with many (perhaps most) of their colleagues, and every letter they write within the subfield will be a personal letter.
@Data10 For me personally I would consider GT more prestigious in engineering, but then my degree is in EE …
but I would consider both MIT and CT more prestigious the GT (only a couple of the Ivies are top tier engineering schools)
@psycholing Thank you so much for your response. I can see that there are many things to research if one has the specific interest identified, ambition, and significant time available before decisions must be made. I hope that future readers of this thread will make good use of the direction you have provided.
As for us, S has until May 1 to make a decision with several acceptances/denials/scholarships not yet in hand. He has a general idea of areas of interest, but no more than that. For him, it seems like he will just have to make a decision based on limited information (and $) and make the most of the opportunities available at his choice. Pretty much what every college student has to do. Also, like many college students, son may change his mind once in college anyway.
So I guess for those in our situation (no narrow field of interest yet and no time for in depth research), general prestige may be the only thing we have to go on?
Is there any reason to think that any top 50 (or top 100) university or LAC will not have a decent basic science major that could prepare a student for a prestigious grad school? Assuming, of course, that the student excels in the undergraduate program.
And thank you again @psycholing. I asked you for specifics and you gave them. I realize that we don’t have the time (or possibly the ambition, on my son’s part) to make full use of what you said but I do hope that others will.
The schools that were real financial and academic fits for my kid were all "prestigious. "
Financially, we needed a school with deep pockets that met full need with nothing beyond the minimal Federally-subsidized loans. We were not looking for mere merit money, not even generous merit money. He needed a full ride with minimum debt… That pretty much limited us to Ivies and similar schools, including some elite LACs, such as Pomona, Williams, et al. The least prestigious school he applied to (nevertheless a fine school), his safety, came through with an inferior FA offer.
S was most likely headed in the direction of the humanities, so tech schools were out. Schools with general excellence in the humanities tend to track closely to the deep pockets schools above.
Our state does not have a flagship on the order of U Va or U Mich or U Md; moreover, it would likely cost us more than an Ivy.
Did we care about prestige? Frankly, yes. I was raised in an environment where family and peers went to Ivies and equivalents (Duke, U of C, etc) or elite LACs. That was our expectation, given our S’s talents and stats. And those schools were the fits for him. If they were not, it would have been a different matter.
My daughter has the stats to apply to Ivies, but she didn’t because she knows we couldn’t afford them. We are full pay, so she will be going most likely to whoever offers her the most merit money. I’m not willing to let her go into debt, and I’m not willing to be tuition poor just to send her to a college with a little more prestige. That said, if I could afford to I would absolutely love to send her to a prestigious school.
For our son, I think it was all about tanks. Which school has the best tanks? He was accepted to two of the top five service academies. 
Oldest daughter did a summer intetnship in a very top wall street firm. They made an exception for her as she was only a kid on scholarship. In her summer intetship, she saw former presidents from both parties, many many former presidents, former prime ministers of other countries visiting company. There she saw first hand an important lesson that $$$$$$ drives the world. When job offer came she moved away from pursuing poosible Phd route to making money.
In her case prestige was very important as parents could not provide connections. Prestige came from prep school as well as College. But she worked very hard. She still does.
To be honest all students who were on need based aid experienced similar thing irrespective of color of their skin. They all worked hard. For them prestige was entry into something they could not have without prestige of these schools or colleges.
@moooop I agree with your child, it’s not fun working you tail off to end up at the same college all the mere above average slackers glide into. THAT SAID, at the same huge college, slackers can’t keep up in econ, stats, engineering or pre-med tracks. Slackers funnel to marketing, sociology, psych and communications.
Psych is a very rigorous majors at many colleges-- it’s called Cognitive Science in some universities, and it has a tough track in math, bio, and chemistry. Behavioral economics is a rapidly growing field which combines psych with econ- again, very quantitative and analytical.
Don’t be so quick to dismiss psychology as a slacker major- my kid knew PLENTY of psych majors at MIT and it was a tough slog with some demanding professors across a wide range of disciplines- all of whom shared a passion for the study of the brain (not a slacker subject) which required top notch skills in life sciences and applied math.