<ol>
<li><p>You go to college as an undergrad only once. It's one of the biggest decisions you'll ever make.</p></li>
<li><p>A good college education is valuable beyond words. In a perfect world, where a student goes should be predicated more on his/her desire to attend the school of her/his dreams, not whether the kid "hits the jackpot" by getting a free ride. I realize that, in many instances, there will be both exceptions, e.g., a family's budget cannot accommodate a school's expenses, and win-win situations, i.e., getting a free ride to the school of one's dreams.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Given these two statements, my H and I made the commitment to scrounge and save (and be major tightwads) from day one to do our best to ensure that our kids would be able to attend the school of their dreams. Will we succeed? We hope so, but as parents we felt we owed them that much.</p>
<p>NSMom - What exactly constitutes a URM? Do schools get mad when students ... stretch their ethnicity: I have a friend who put he was "hispanic" since his grandmother was from Spain (soley for the purpose of benefiting from this rather than truly considering himself a minority). He had solid rank and ECs (1430, 2nd in class, president of a club, state awards, volunteering), but he got deferred at Yale. So if that does indeed count, I don't see why he didn't get in.</p>
<p>Top school admissions are extremely hard for minorities as well. They don't pick the best students, because they're all amazing. To a certain extent it is quite random.</p>
<p>And did the race on his TRANSCRIPT and other school data match the race on his app? If not, he might have been scrapped at once for false info!</p>
<p>I chose a full-ride at U.Va. over Stanford, Dartmouth, Williams, Carleton, Pomona and Berkeley, and I believe it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. I wasn't so much constrained by money (my parents had saved enough to send me wherever I chose to go), but when I looked at the totality of the circumstances the scholarship and its perks were just too much to turn down.</p>
<p>After a year and a half of college, I think I've got enough under my belt to say that your undergraduate education is, to a great extent, what you make of it. If you go talk to that professor, or apply for that fellowship or honors program, you'll be very happy at just about any decent college.</p>
<p>These are the only schools worth paying for based on name recognition and prestige. Since you can get a great education at at lest 250 schools in the US, many of them free, I'd only pay full freight only for ones that provide real status and prestige. Schools like Wash U, Duke, Middlebury etc. are a waste of money. Save it for grad school.</p>
<p>1Harvard
2Yale
3Stanford
4Cal Tech
5MIT
6Princeton
7 Brown
8 Columbia
9 Amherst
10 Dartmouth
11 Wellesley
12 U Penn
14 Swarthmore
15 Cornell
16 Georgetown
17 Rice
18 Williams
27 U Chicago
Johns Hopkins
Barnard 2034
43 Vassar 1978
54 Smith 1921
56 Haverford 1910
57 Mt Holyoke
64 Bryn Mawr</p>
<p>Well, I can't say I'm not gratified that my D's school is on the list but I still disagree with the preceding sentiment re WUSTL, Duke, Middlebury, and others.</p>
<p>While I positively hate the notion of precise rankings and disagree with some of them even more broadly, I'd say that I'd give a pause before turning down most of the US News Top 30 or so Universties and Top 30 or so LAC's. Below that, I'd be a lot more willing to let financial considerations sway the decision.</p>
<p>I think some good advice I once heard was "Don't pay a lot of money for a mediocre private school education."</p>
<p>Thank you for your posts. Allow me to expand briefly on my comments regarding which schools I would be willing to pay for. </p>
<p>First, I realize that excluding the Duke University, Middlebury, and Washington University from being worth paying for may be viewed by some as a bit extreme. I don't think so. Duke is clearly over ranked by U.S. News and World Report due to the methodology used in the U.S. News and World Report college rankings, which places it at #6. The National Bureau of Economic Research, which did a rigorous study based on what economists call a "revealed preference rating," places it at #19. This is I believe far closer to its true standing in the academic community. While it is a good school, in a purely academic sense based on the quality of its teaching and of its students and the scholarly environment, it is not of the caliber of the Ivies, the little Ivies, nor most of the former Seven Sisters. Moreover, it tends to be a superficial pick among students who could and should attend more intellectually satisfying schools, but choose Duke because they think of it as well-balanced on the mistaken assumption that having a good basketball team and a lot of parties makes this school a good balance between academics and "fun." In short, it is an overrated school that attracts students who deserve better. </p>
<p>Washington University is the most seriously over ranked school in United States. As Atlantic magazine reported, it has a notorious reputation for gaming the U.S. News and World Report rankings. It encourages thousands of students to apply and then turns around and rejects them in order to improve its selectivity ranking in the U.S. News and World Report poll. OTTOMH, I believe it is ranked around eleventh in the U.S. News and World Report rankings. In the National Bureau of Economic Research ranking, it is #62. That's about where it belongs. </p>
<p>Middlebury fares rather well in both the U.S. News and World Report and National Bureau of Economic Research studies, placing around #25. My problem with Middlebury is that its average S.A.T. scores and not as good as they would like to present it. Almost unique among schools of its apparent status, Middlebury does not require the S.A.T. or the ACT as part of its admission process. Is is thereby "gamed" by students who did not do well on the test and don't want to submit standardized test scores. Since these low scores are not included in the average S.A.T., the result is an inflated impression. My impression of the students there is that they're not as bright as those of its competitors schools, such as Williams Amherst and Wesleyan.</p>
<p>Yalebound72, you realize that the revealed preference survey is flawed and should never have been piublished, don't you?
It looks at students that apply to multiple schools and rewards the schools the students pick. The problem with this is students don't usually apply to schools they don't want to go to in the first place.
Here is an example. The revealed preference survey rates UVA highly compared to UC schools. It states that people that apply to both UVA and UV Berkeley for example will choose UVA. This is ridiculous and false.
In Cal, most people would choose Berkeley and wouldn't even apply to UVA. At my kids school, 60 people a year apply to Berkeley, 1 to 3 apply to UVA. If those three get into both Berkeley and UVA and choose UVA, then UVA does well in the revealed preference survey, even though 57 more people applied to Berkeley and have no interest in UVA.
Be careful what you read.</p>
<p>dstark, sorry, but you are incorrect. By your logic, the students who apply to Podunk U and not to Harvard (because they have no chance of getting in) prefer Podunk over Harvard. And the people who visit Hyundai dealers and not Mercedes dealers "prefer" to buy Hyundais.</p>
<p>I'd "prefer" that you would think this over before posting again.</p>
<p>I prefer to look at it like this. You go to the ice cream store and 57 people choose vanilla, and 3 choose bubble gum. If those 57 people would never choose bubble gum, they wouldn't be included in the revealed preference survey. If the three bubble gum lovers might choose vanilla, but don't, bubble gum is the preferred ice cream over vanilla in the revealed preference survey.
Your analogy would hold better if you were choosing between similar products like BMWs and Mercedes.
I really don't care what you prefer.
The revealed preference survey is flawed.</p>
<p>I think with the amount of need based aid that school particulary the Ivies offer that for many if they were interested in Harvard, why wouldn't they apply?I think many kids apply to the schools they are interested in. LACs for many academically inclined students are the schools of choice and while the Ivy leaque schools certainly have brand familarity, they aren't the only game in town.
We buy "american" cars so we wouldn't shop Mercedes even if they gave us a great deal on a loan or even a "grant" to purchase it. ( So that also means that no, I wouldnt' shop Korean either)</p>
<p>The fact that (a) concerning Duke -- some students pick colleges superficially, or (b) concerning Wash-U -- that they take a beating for a controversial strategy (clearly, a successful strategy by the way) of "gaming" the USNWR rankings (a ranking system which many educators abhor and think of as nothing other than a bogus number machine designed to fulfill preexisting beliefs) -- keep in mind too that Washington University probably developed this system after generations of virtual anonymity and being considered one of the unknown gems in higher education, or (c) concerning Middlebury -- that, like Bowdoin and some others, they've opted not to buy into the hype of the all-important standardized test ...</p>
<p>all of that says not a single thing about the quality of those institutions or that they're not worth paying for. Nothing whatsoever. Great, YOU don't find them worth paying for. I'm happy for you. Clearly, plenty of paying customers disagree. They might be uninformed, misguided sheep ... waiting to be fleeced ... or they may have a different opinion about the merits of those schools and the fit they might provide (as well as the merits and limitations of these august rankings).</p>
<p>I won't even start again with the supposedly all-knowing "Revealed Preference Rating." It's been discussed at length on many threads already. Suffice it to say that many believe it's completely flawed as it reveals popularity based on teenagers making choices armed with questionable or "gamed" USNWR rankings and discounting all sorts of other variables like geographic biases, who applies and who doesn't apply, etc. I think TheDad said it most succinctly: "It's the same old baloney, re-sliced."</p>
<p>You're entitled to your opinion -- about schools and this new ranking. But, I'd urge new readers to this topic to seek out the more comprehensive threads on this Revealed Preferences Rankings and to not blindly accept a study's findings about an obviously subjective matter as some kind of determinative fact.</p>
<p>Need-based 100% aid is a lie. Or the stretched truth. Many people get a shock to find they're getting thousands less than they thought they would. Sure, if you make a lot, you don't know the truth of the system, but most families fall into the middle-poor income range. Most people can't spend 40k on a college a year. Loans are part of need-based, the part people do not discuss like they should.</p>
<p>Carolinequips,
Despite rumors to the contrary, colleges are not so desperate to admit underrepresented minorities that they accept all URM applicants. As is the case with white and Asian applicants, there are many well qualified URM applicants who are deferred or rejected by top colleges.</p>
<p>Because of their scarcity, a well qualified URM has a higher chance of being accepted than does a white or Asian applicant with a similar background. Still, the URM is not 100% guaranteed of admission.</p>
<p>If you check the archives of College Confidential, you will see many posts by URMs with great stats who were rejected or deferred by places like Ivies.</p>
<p>As for being "Hispanic," colleges are particularly interested in Hispanics who come from underrepresented Hispanic populations. This tends to be Puerto Ricans and Mexicans because a relatively small proportion of such people go to college. From what I can figure out, people whose Hispanic ancestry is directly related to a Spanish relative are not considered in the URM category.</p>
<p>From my experience on minority scholarship committees, I would imagine that colleges also would look for an indication that the student really identifies with a Hispanic culture from Latin America, the Caribbean or Central America. This could be apparent through a student's ECs or through their recommendations or essays.</p>
<p>I doubt that colleges would be giving Hispanic tip factors to students who appeared self identify as Hispanic only when checking a box on their applications.</p>
<p>Thank you NSmom, that dispels a lot of rumors. Many students think that merely calling themselves a certain race gives an advantage. However one of my best friends is an Hispanic girl whose mother came from Central America; she's ranked in the top 1% of her class, and she produced a documentary about her family's experiences in the civil war in El Salvador; however, my other friend in no way identifies with Hispanic culture. But it's interesting to hear from someone so involved in the process!</p>