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<p>And, of course, there are some parents who support and perpetuate that view because they believe that a college really is a place to get your ticket punched.</p>
<p>Which says to me a great deal about the college experience those parents must have had.</p>
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<p>No, but what they do need is the USNWR ranking to convince people who know no better that thereâs something special about them.</p>
<p>Nova: "Iâve always thought that CTCL was nothing but a clever marketing gimmick primarily aimed at well-to-do families with excessively coddled children "</p>
<p>And just how are these kids any more coddled than any other college-bound kids? Hmm. Maybe you were just trying to be insulting? Nah, couldnât be?</p>
<p>Youâre shooting the messenger. Iâm not insulting anyoneâs kids by calling out the book as a pandering marketing gimmick.</p>
<p>I also think that taking shots at kids who view going to college (and whose parents may view their going to college) as âgetting their ticket punchedâ is classist. To kids from less advantaged backgrounds, getting this ticket punched is a huge deal.</p>
<p>âbut thereâs nothing unique or âspecialâ about any of them.â</p>
<p>Iâve only been to one, New College of Florida. I can say with assurance that my experience there was much different than it would have been in most schools in the US. We had no grades, so that meant if we wrote a paper that wasnât quite up to par we had to redo it until it was, or not pass the class. Thus, classes were true learning processes, not just working for a grade. We had much more written work than at my friends schools. We had tiny classes. I often had classes of 2-8 students. We could and frequently did set up one to one tutorial classes with professors. We were required to do 3 independent research projects, write a senior thesis, and make an oral defense in front of three professors. Sorry, but this was not our average school. Maybe there are a few schools like it, maybe Reed, Evergreen, Hampshire, but those are the schools also on the list.</p>
<p>I donât think that was a classist remark. It can apply to families from every income.</p>
<p>So nova, if itâs not an attempt at an insult why did you add in âexcessively coddledâ? How is it pandering to those with excessively coddled children?</p>
<p>Look, thereâs no need to fight. This was an interesting thread. Canât we stick to the topic?</p>
<p>Iâm not fighting. I merely expressed an opinion that others donât like. I didnât know that the only appropriate comments for this thread would be those that heap praise on CTCL. But, again, just so we are clear, I have no problem with the colleges themselves. I think theyâre all fine. Maybe not âspecial,â but fine. My problem is with the book. I feel that itâs a marketing gimmick designed to make money by making parents feel better about paying a lot of money to send their kids to LACs beyond the top 20. And, yes, I know, I know â there are kids in these schools who could have gone to the top 20 but didnât. But we all know theyâre in the minority.</p>
<p>Nobody needs to justify their kidsâ college choice by reference to some book.</p>
<p>I donât think itâs a marketing book designed to make parents feel better about sending their kid to a school beyond the top 20. Itâs a book showing parents and students that they have more options that they might not have known about. Itâs educational, itâs getting people out of their little closed boxes. And thatâs a good thing. Now colleges can use their inclusion in the book to market themselves, but so what. It has nothing to do with over-coddled children, unless you think all the kids are over coddled.</p>
<p>I would venture to guess that the children of nearly every parent poster on CC could be considered âexcessively coddled.â Especially compared to most children in America, who have little chance to attend a CTCL or any other school. So I agree with you redpoint, 100%. By the way, in the early 70âs, UC Santa Cruz was very much like you described New College of Florida, no grades, very individualized. In those days, it was much more selective than Berkeley or UCLA, I had friends who went to UCLA as their second choice! Times sure have changed.</p>
<p>Surprise, surprise.</p>
<p>So the Colleges That Change Lives book and website are gimmicks. All I can say is, itâs a good thing we have the U.S.News & World Report best college rankings to tell us what the best schools really are! And thank heaven we have CCâs college search forum to educate us about which of the U.S. News top schools are overrated and to let us know which schools our kids MUST get into lest they be consigned to a life of abject mediocrity. Viva le unbiased viewpoints!</p>
<p>nova, Your âsurmiseâ regarding cost and poorly-endowed LACs omits out the fact that most public schools are suffering from severe budget cuts, which are resulting in double-digit tuition hikes and slashes to aid. Public schools are not such a bargain anymore. One data point: My D applied to a number of LACs and one UC. The UC had the lowest Cost of Attendance of any of them, but it also had the least generous non-loan aid. Net result: The UC would have cost us FAR more money than the LAC she attends. </p>
<p>Graduate schools disagree with your opinion that LACs are ânothing special.â They dominate the PhD production lists. </p>
<p>As for marketing gimmicks: The USNWR annual ranking is the biggest marketing gimmick there is. (x-posted with absweetmarie)</p>
<p>@novaparent,</p>
<p>You continue to make the same blanket statements even though I, and other people, told you they contradict reality.</p>
<p>If people donât need a book to justify their college choice, why are you so intent on putting their college choices down using an arbitrary college ranking?</p>
<p>Wow, novaparent, you are missing the whole point. Others have correctly pointed out the flaws in your arguments. (You seem a little obsessed with rankings, and I see from other posts that you are a big UVA fan yet a huge critic of UW-Madison. Whatever.)</p>
<p>Anyway, the benefit of the CTCL bookâat least for me and a lot of people I knowâis that it got us to think beyond the âbrand-nameâ schools we were familiar with before we started this whole process. A lot of us have next to no knowledge of the smaller schools unless they are near where we live or someone we know has attended them. So people tend to gravitate toward the larger schools with a recognized name, even if it isnât any better than others that are less well-known.</p>
<p>Hereâs a personal example that exemplifies my experience with a CTCL school vs. a âtop 20â LAC. Last fall my son and I visited Knox and then Grinnell (they are only a few hoursâ drive apart). At Knox we were impressed with every student we met, who talked enthusiastically about their studies, their professors, their research, their plans for grad school. All the buildings were unlocked and welcomingâmy son sat in a chair Abraham Lincoln had sat in, and we walked right into the rare books/maps room, which has several notable collections. The sense we got was that everything was made completely available to the students to help them learn and grow. The âlife of the mindâ really came through there in a way that it only had at one other school we had visited earlier, University of Chicago. </p>
<p>The next day we went to Grinnell, where we had the worst tour guide I have encountered at any of the colleges we visited. He did not ONCE talk about academics, but instead went on and on about the party scene, sports, and the rivalries between the dorms on different sides of the campus. Meanwhile one of the âcoddledâ kids you talk about rode by his bike with a package his parents had just delivered, a large box shipped directly from Dean & Deluca. We didnât get to see a dorm, and the theater (which the tour guide described as âamazingâ) was locked. We werenât shown any classrooms or labs. After that we had a meeting with the admissions counselor, who was nice but told us that, essentially, âliberal arts colleges are all the sameââand then went on to try to differentiate Grinnell on the basis of the same things these schools all share, such as small class sizes. I think Grinnell is a fine school, but I would argue that perhaps its ranking and well-known endowment are doing the heavy lifting on marketing it.</p>
<p>It seems like some folks are completely missing the point of the CTCL book and Popeâs work: he wasnât trying to make Reed, Wooster, Evergreen, and friends gain prestige, nor was he trying to market them to appear better than WASP (Williams, Amherst, Swat, Pomona, etcâŠ). Instead, he was trying to help those students for whom WASP is not attainable find places that could provide them with the compelling, life-changing 4 years of college they are hoping for at the end of the day. WASP and their peers arenât interested in admitting B- or C-students and transforming them into lifelong learners who go on to get PhDs; Eckerd, Goucher, OWU, and Evergreen, like their CTCL peers, are and do. And this is exactly why they ARE special. </p>
<p>NOVAâs point about Grinnell being dropped points to this precisely: Grinnell is a fantastic place, but it is so selective now that the majority of kids who apply are denied. Clearly, Grinnell (or Bowdoin or Vassar or Carleton, etcâŠ,) is special and outstanding in its own ways. However, its mission is a bit different than those of Hendrix, Austin, New College, etcâŠ,. </p>
<p>Surely, the CTCLs arenât right for everyone, but for many students, including those who may not have achieved their fullest academic potential in high school, theyâre amazing places that provide opportunities for growth that many places simply do not (for whatever reasons). Itâs this âBs to PhDs philosophyâ that attracts a broad range of students to CTCLs, and one of the main reasons folks like Pope have âadvertisedâ them. High selectivity doesnât necessarily equate to a quality experience and opportunities for everyone.</p>
<p>But, AdOfficer, would it be okay if we didnât perpetuate the notion that these schools are only attractive to B- and C- students? My D is an A- student with test scores that put a great many schools in her match range (if not the schools you so cleverly refer to with the WASP acronym). She CHOSE Kalamazoo College after a rather thorough search, and many other students who are not B- or C- students choose the CTCL schools (or any number of other small schools that arenât household names) after the same kind of search.</p>
<p>The C students from my Dâs hyper-selective high school who applied to Beloit this year were rejected (at least those whose parents I know were). Thatâs the first time thatâs happened.</p>
<p>absweetmarie, agreedâmy son was an A- student at a super-competitive high school and had very high test scores (plus great essays and recs). He got into several higher-ranked schools and was awarded significant merit aid by all of them. He chose Hendrix because of how he felt when he visited and what he thinks he can accomplish there, not because he didnât get in somewhere âbetter.â And AdOfficer, just BTWâthe ACT range at Hendrix is comparable to Grinnell, Macalester, and so on. Doesnât sound like âC-â students to me. :)</p>
<p>Also, AdOfficer, I do appreciate the points you are trying to make but they come across as damning with faint praise, unfortunately. I would love to hear you elaborate on how the mission of higher-ranked schools is âdifferent.â I would be very interested in knowing what is special about the âWASPâ schools from your vantage point.</p>
<p>Also, last I checked, a C- student has a sub 2.0 GPA ⊠This is not the domain of the CTCL school, letâs be real. And the core of the student body at most of these places are not B- students either. So, yeah. Thatâs not to say the CTCL schools are not more forgiving than some more selective schools when it comes to kids whose GPAs or test scores are not stratospheric. You can look all this stuff up, btw.</p>