<p>It’s not as though one is required to actually like HYP better than other similar elite schools. (I mean, I happen to just adore Princeton, but that’s me and that’s also driven by where I grew up.) I don’t know what’s so odd about the idea that one might simply prefer Duke or Columbia or whatever over Harvard. It’s not to everyone’s taste. Nor need it be, nor does anyone need to explain that.</p>
<p>Re JHS post #236–another quite striking difference between the current time and the past, with regard to Ivy-admitted students choosing non-Ivy schools is the cost issue for families of moderate means: HYP and other schools have become much more generous to families with the median or slightly below median household income, than they were a generation ago.</p>
<p>I think Data10’s point in #239 is based at least in part on reliable data. If we know the number of admitted students at college X, and we know the yield at college X, then we know quite accurately the number of students who were admitted and chose to go elsewhere. I’m siding with PG on this one–there is no particular reason that all of those students would favor a different Ivy, S, M, or Caltech.</p>
<p>QM: My impressions were formed around the time my kids were applying, which is to say just before the change in financial aid policies that gave HYPS and a few others such a substantial advantage. If anything, I think that would strengthen the appeal of HYPS, although I recognize that there may be a cohort of kids wealthy enough to get little or no aid from HYPS but not so wealthy that paying an extra $20-30K/year for college is do-able, and that HYPS may be losing those kids in greater numbers. In the past decade, I have seen a fair number of kids in real life turn down Penn, Duke, Columbia, Cornell to save that kind of money, but I haven’t seen anyone make that choice with HYPS (other than a handful of legendary kids on CC, all of whom got bona fide full rides someplace awfully good).</p>
<p>I only knew one H/Y cross-admitted kid this year eligible for any need-based aid, and his best financial offer came from a hyper-selective LAC. It was almost, but not quite, enough to get him to enroll there.</p>
<p>As for Data10’s numbers: any calculation that doesn’t show Stanford as one of Harvard’s top two competitors is suspect in my eyes. Of the kids I have seen cross-admitted in the past decade, Stanford is the only school that split 50-50 with Harvard. I love Chicago to death, but if it is taking more cross-admits vs. Harvard than Stanford or Princeton then the next Stanley Cup game could be played in Hell.</p>
<p>I’m questioning how much we can learn from results threads or a source like Parchment. In a 2010 Yale News article about cross-admits, the school wouldn’t provide info but said a 2004 study was “fairly consistent.” In that, the estimated % of students who chose to attend other than Yale: 65% Harvard, 41% MIT, 40% Stanford, 38% Princeton, then a drop to 18/15 Brown/Columbia. 2004 is too long ago. </p>
<p>I also feel strongly you can’t look at admits and move backwards, make assumptions, and come up with something clear. You can massage numbers, run them through your unique filters, but there are so many variables.</p>
<p>If (or since) HYP financial aid policies are that much better than similar elite privates such that the tie goes to HYP over them because of money, then in a sense that doesn’t mean that HYP in and of themselves would have been preferred if money were equal – it’s just not that money’s not equal. In other words, you can buy yourself a whole lotta friends with generous financial aid. </p>
<p>I guess I’m resistant to the idea that all else being equal, everyone <em>always</em> prefers H,Y,or P over (insert your own favorite top universities or top LAC for that matter). They are just places. They aren’t shrines. They haven’t perfected perfect weather or no-bad-hair-days or chocolate-flowing-from-the-fountains or every-conversation-is-an-intellectual-goldmine. They’re just assemblages of bright 18 - 22 year olds with great professors like everyplace else. It’s very possible to actively dislike aspects of them or find other places more personally appealing. There’s this very odd assumption on CC that if one got into HYP “of course” you’d pick there over any place else. I don’t see that in real life. I see that in real life they are some of our country’s finest universities but at a certain level, it’s all good.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I agree with you completely, in theory. And in real life, I do see kids seriously consider other options all the time. I just don’t see them taking the other options. (I know two kids who turned down Harvard for someplace other than Yale or Stanford. Both of them wound up in your area. One went to the dance conservatory at IU, and left after a year to join the Joffrey, where he became a principal and danced for 12 years. The other chose a college you know pretty well, and two years later, she said it was the dumbest thing she had ever done.) </p>
<p>I think there are several reasons for that. Peer/family pressure to some extent, sure. But also, I don’t think it’s all that common for kids who feel ambivalent about them to apply. No one likes to be rejected, and if they don’t really want to go to a college that’s hard to get into, why expose yourself? Some ambivalent kids do apply, of course, but by the time you get down to the 5% of applicants who were accepted, there aren’t that many of them in the pool. And of course the main reason is that these colleges show really, really well. They are attractive. They are exciting. They are really easy to love. That’s a big part of why they are so popular.</p>
<p>So, sure, they put their (metaphorical) pants on one leg at a time, just like all the other colleges, but they are some really good-looking, wealthy, glamorous colleges with a reputation for delivering the steak as well as the sizzle.</p>
<p>JHS’s observations are consistent with mine. In my sample of 300+ graduates in DC’s school this year (and very similarly for the past two years), I don’t know any one who chose to attend a non-HYPMS school when they have at least one offer from the five. It’s a small sample but considering it holds true for 50+ seniors heading to HYPMS, it’s enough to convince me that cross-admits of these schools do have a tendecy to choose among them.</p>
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<p>Absolutely. I didn’t mean to imply that they were just sizzle without the steak or that their reputation / prestige wasn’t fully earned. I agree they are (collectively) pretty easy to love. What you love, however, can be pretty idiosyncratic - and the extent to which H,Y,P “loom larger” than other elite colleges in a given student’s mind is also dependent on a lot of factors, which may include geographic region and / or family perceptions and heritage.</p>
<p>It may that most people who aren’t that interested in these schools don’t apply to them in the first place.</p>
<p>Or, they aren’t necessarily any more interested in them than they are in their other top school choices. That they see HYP (or whatever subset they are interested in) as some of many top schools that catch their eye for whatever reason, not the pinnacle-that-must-always-be-chosen-above-those-others.</p>
<p>I often think they’re looking for the validation of an admit, same as they have to get an A/A+ or study hours/day, for months, to get a best SAT score. Kids who measure their standing in those ways, externals. Such limited thinking.</p>
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Stanford was a close #3 in the suggested number of cross admits who did not choose Harvard. I think the key point you are missing about University of Chicago is it gives out merit scholarships (not just need based) while Harvard does not. If you had the choice of $200k for 4-years at Harvard vs a free ride at University of Chicago, which would you choose?</p>
<p>Regarding the need based aid, yes HYPSM do give excellent need based aid. However, it doesn’t cover everyone. Just last week on the parents forum, a parent mentioned her son chose University of Alabama over MIT due to cost. She implied that she could not support MIT with financial aid, but Alabama was a free ride. I expect the fact that her son’s girlfriend was going to Alabama also had an impact on his decision. I’m not saying that Alabama is a big competitor for MIT cross admits, but it’s also not the only public school that some choose over HYPSM to reduce costs.</p>
<p>Data10, I am completely aware of the University of Chicago’s merit scholarships, and I know</p>
<p>(a) There are no full rides; there are a very few full tuition merit scholarships, and I think some $25,000 scholarships. That’s a nice amount, and I do know someone who chose Chicago over Stanford in part because of that (and in part because of not wanting to go as far away from home as California). But all of the people who get those big merit scholarships put together don’t come close to the number of people who pick Stanford over Harvard (and not all of them, or even most of them, were accepted at Harvard). Most of the merit scholarships are in the $3-5,000/year range, some at $10,000.</p>
<p>(b) In general, Chicago has a lot of trouble coming close to Harvard’s or Yale’s need-based financial aid, other than for students who fit within its Odyssey Scholarship program. Chicago’s treatment of things like retirement savings, home equity, and closely held business value are much, much less favorable to students than Harvard’s. For many people, the merit scholarships don’t quite make up the differences in need-based aid. Maybe this is changing, but it hasn’t changed for long enough to develop the kind of data you would need to decide that Chicago was really taking students from Harvard.</p>
<p>I was basing the full ride on a forum post that mentioned them. Let’s assume it’s a $25,000 scholarship instead. I think a large portion of students who would choose U Chicago over paying an extra $100,000 for Harvard. Many would do so with quite a bit smaller scholarships as well. And I’d expect the merit scholarships are going to highly desirable students who are most likely to be admitted at other highly selective schools and most likely to be in cross admit groups among selective schools. I realize that Harvard has excellent need based aid, but many of the merit scholarship winners don’t qualify for much need based aid. As I mentioned earlier, there are only ~300 people in the current class who were accepted to Harvard and went elsewhere. There are not going to be hundred of persons who chose Chicago over Harvard. Instead the number will be measured in dozens. When dealing with this small a group with dozens of students, the small number of UC merit scholarships can have a significant effect.</p>
<p>There are many reasons that a person might choose a significantly lower-ranked college over Harvard, but it doesn’t appear to me that many people do so. Especially since I don’t consider Chicago to be significantly lower-ranked. The cases of somebody going to Alabama or somewhere like that are rare enough that there’s often an article in the local newspaper about it, or a press release from the college.</p>
<p>There’s a saying, which is “It’s very hard to turn down Harvard”. (Not a great saying I know. :)) As Hunt pointed out, it’s fair to say choosing Alabama over Harvard happens very rarely. If you consider H’s overall yield rate of 82%, it’s not that common to find H admits who chose other schools anyway. Speadking of rare cases, there’s one I know of that’s related to Chicago and Harvard. This student was admitted to Chicago with an excellent FA/merit based scholarships package, but she chose an Ivy League school that’s willing to negotiate and eventually match what she was getting from Chicago. But that was not the end of the story. In mid-May, when a Harvard z-list spot came by, she took it right on the spot even before ironing out the details about the FA offer. I believe incidents like this and the ‘Alabama case’ are both rare outliers.</p>
<p>Just catching up on the thread. Re post #243 by JHS, yes, I was making the point that the change in financial aid policies at HYP + other generous places means that students are more likely to choose them if admitted than they were before the financial aid policies shifted. It’s not purely an urban legend that people admitted to HYPMS institutions chose to go elsewhere for financial reasons–at least, I know of multiple people in my generation who made such a choice. Generally, I find it hard to believe that I know all of the outliers in the U.S.</p>
<p>I think that information on the expected financial aid packaging became more readily available, perhaps even before the shift. That too, would make it more likely that people who are admitted to HYP go to one of those schools–since they would know the costs up front.</p>
<p>Is anyone willing to go out on a limb and post comments about what makes for a good fit with the students at H vs. Y vs. P vs. any other college(s) of your choice?</p>
<p>My boys picked P because they wanted to be closer to family (& friends)</p>
<p>Re Benley #256: Aren’t z-lists for the children of major donors?</p>
<p>I know a guy who graduated from college in the 1930’s and went on to become a prominent scientist. Even at the age of 70, his CV said:</p>
<p>BS (Montana State) (turned down admission to Harvard to accept football scholarship)</p>