^Just don’t play on the OWU baseball diamond. While the field is great, the school is apparently horrific.
@FCCDAD yes on the riffraff. Some of the kids are very disruptive and have no interest in learning, just being cool, pretty, rich, etc. My S couldn’t wait for Honors classes in Jr. Hi after a girl kept calling the match teacher an F ing B…
@MidwestDad3, I’m happy for you that you are so devoted to your alma mater (?) that you have convinced yourself that middle-class parents should jump for joy at the prospect that their son wants to go there to enjoy that baseball diamond and that they will have to pay at least twice as much for the privilege, instead of attending that bastion of mediocrity, the University of Michigan at half the cost.
To suggest otherwise would just be what? Prestige-seeking? Brand-name whoring? Snobbish?
Right.
I’d say research is a secondary goal of LACs. The primary goal there is to teach undergrads.
…and this elite team vs rec team thing…really? I accept the conventional wisdom that says you learn more when you play with/against better athletes, thus high level play is desired to improve. Are people really questioning this? Of course there can be benefits to playing rec. Leadership opportunities, fun with friends, etc. But Olympic athletes move away from that to get where they are. If the goal is to have the highest skills possible, surrounding yourself with the best players/coaches/opponents is how to do that.
Whether this applies to the notion that a college made up entirely of high achieving HS grads vs one with students with a greater variety of academic talent, I don’t know.
“As a parent, would you be “horrified” if your child didn’t want to play on the fancy traveling team? So the average ability on the park district team is less, across all players - so what? It doesn’t mean he won’t get to really enjoy playing some great soccer games.”
No, because I don’t value athletics as highly as I value academics. To expand on your example, I’m indifferent between my kids playing on the park district team or the fancy traveling team, and frankly don’t even care if they prefer to get their exercise by just riding a bike.
I’m not indifferent between different levels of colleges. I’m not one of those pretentious “HYPSM uber alles” types – I think the bands of quality are far wider than that and there are plenty of schools where I’d completely want my kids to pick on personal preference and fit and there are plenty of schools that offer a very fine education - but I’m not going to pretend all places are the same.
@PG So were you horrified to send your children to public high school? Why do these levels start at college?
I don’t think anyone is suggesting any two schools are the same. I think the question is whether there is such a huge difference in the education he would get - basically, an unacceptable drop off in the quality of the education. I agree with those who say no, engineering at MSU is not an unacceptable drop off in quality from engineering at NU. There’s simply no basis to be “horrified” at this choice.
To carry the soccer analogy (not mine) further, if the kid wants to be a pro athlete, he’ll need to get in the right pipelines for that - planning out where he will play in HS, in college, etc. But if he doesn’t want to go pro, then local rec league athletics should more than satisfy him.
If he wants to be an engineer, guess what - he’s already in the pipeline to succeed, studying engineering at a major university. There may have been plenty of perfectly good reasons to choose NU, but choosing MSU does NOT mean he’s giving up that career path. He’ll probably do fine and take mostly the same courses regardless of where he goes, and may do better wherever he’s happier. NU may have offered some choices MSU doesn’t, and vice versa. And he knew that and was fine with it when he chose.
I doubt there will be “riff raff” in his MSU engineering classes who have no interest in learning. You might be surprised to learn that after kids turn 18 and get out of mandatory K-12 education, those who stay in school for the most part DO want to learn and ARE willing to do the work. (Especially engineering majors.)
At either school, his courses will be full of kids who took the same prereqs as he did and who want to learn as much as he does. He won’t be slumming it with some intellectual Delta-minuses, he’ll be with his peers either way. The sorting all takes place before course registration.
There are differences between these schools, but they do not horrify me. They should not horrify anyone.
@MaterS Because this is COLLEGE Confidential. 
It’s a place to brag about, bemoan, and (sometimes even rationally) discuss colleges. %-(
I’m sure that if there was a High School Confidential, people would say similar things about high schools.
Oh, for chrissakes, no one, including me, the horrible perpetrator of the word “horrified” in reference to MY kid potentially making such a choice, has said that they would be horrified that THIS particular kid chose MSU for ENGINEERING over NU. Please note that the information that that he planned to major in engineering was not given until much later in the thread. No one would have figured that, based on an application to Amherst, a school that does not have an engineering major. It was the acceptance from Amherst that the OP was lamenting.
My point is that smart, motivated students do well regardless of the school.
@MaterS, some public high schools are terrific, while some public high schools are awful.
Likewise, some public colleges are terrifc while some public colleges are awful. Mind you, I don’t put MSU anywhere close to the “awful” category, but I don’t see anyone pretending that a giant public HS with a student body that ranges from Ivy-material to future dropouts is just the same as Harvard-Westlake or the Phillips academies.
And I think that your assertion that someone smart and motivated can succeed anywhere is too blithe. Certainly, someone like that can succeed at MSU, but there are colleges far worse than MSU (where students not only don’t pay attention to profs but regularly disrupt classes and the graduation rate is in the low double-figures).
:LOL my son actually found my alma mater EMORY boring and chose UC berkeley a choice i am still concerned about as he might not be able to get into his major-as only 50 percent of students applying to business school at end of sophomore year get in where he would have definitely been able to have his choice of any major at Emory. He loves it and feels like a year later he made the right deicision.
To clarify the original post that started the thread: I specifically mentioned Amherst because they sent an email to my address. I am aware that less than 10 Amherst students typically pursue Engineering through Dartmouth. Amherst was the first acceptance from an elite college after the disappointment of being wait listed at Chicago and Notre Dame and the Financial Award made Amherst about half the price of Michigan State at the time. The MSU recruiter for Ohio hosted a luncheon for admitted students in our area. Her husband, who specializes in cancer research at the Karmanos Institute in Detroit and is absolutely brilliant (and has two degrees from MSU), nearly fell over when I told him how much Amherst would cost. He more or less implied that my son should go to Amherst and figure the rest out later. Since then, MSU has come up with $7,000/yr in additional scholarship money and he also got into Northwestern.
Two days before the luncheon my son was set to attend Kentucky.
@momof2eagles, you probably should know that not all Emory applicants get in to Goizueta.
However, Haas is tough to get in to. If I was him (and definitely want to go to undergrad b-school), I’d apply to comparable undergrad b-schools as a transfer app (Haas, McIntire, and yes, Goizueta) as well as Haas.
@momof2eagles, you probably should know that not all Emory applicants get in to Goizueta.
However, Haas is tough to get in to. If I was him (and definitely want to go to undergrad b-school), I’d apply to comparable undergrad b-schools as a transfer app (Haas, McIntire, and yes, Goizueta) as well as Haas.
We have a family friend who was a biochem major at MSU, MS in genetics and MA in music at UMich and JD from Yale. Is now a professor. He is one of the brilliant people I’ve ever met and is a true Renaissance man.
Another classmate of DH’s became a carpenter after HS. Worked for several years, then went to an Ivy for UG and law school. Ultimately left the law to become a law librarian so he’d have time for his family and woodworking.
Many, many paths to success, folks, in whatever way you define it.
Quick question for OP: were you disappointed about your S not attending a more elite school or just disappointed that he had to turn someone down?
I just recently accepted an admission offer at a great school after getting into six. Each time I hit the Send button on my note that basically said, “Sorry, I’m going somewhere else”, I had a little pang of disappointment that, “aw, I won’t get to go there now. That looked like an awesome school.”
I think it’s natural to be a little disappointed that your S can’t go to ALL the schools he got into. Just remember that even if you think the school he chose isn’t as good, a good student can thrive anywhere. State schools aren’t a death knell, especially if he plans on Grad school.
“Many, many paths to success, folks, in whatever way you define it.”
No one has said or implied otherwise. Suggesting that, in general, certain schools may have stronger student bodies than others is not saying “and therefore anyone who goes to the latter will be flipping burgers for eternity.”
Really tired of the straw man.
PurpleTitan,Northwestern may have programs within their engineering school that MSU doesn’t have and vice versa. Any school will have areas of interest and research that they are particularly involved in. Northwestern is ranked number 21 in US News for graduate engineering-tied with Virginia Tech. Virginia Tech is number 15th for undergrad (found that on VT’s website). I can’t see Northwestern’s undergraduate ranking (can only see top 11 on the US News site and it is not in the top 11)) but it is probably ranked fairly close to VT for undergrad as well. Somehow, though, I think there would still be some people who would say that they want their kid to automatically go to Northwestern for engineering, possibility ranging from reasons like it being private , having an overall higher SAT average and they want their kids to associate with high stats kids, thinking it has better networking , higher average SES even and SOME may like who their kids may be hobnobbing with . At least Pizzagirl admits she prefers her kids to be surrounded by kids that are of a certain caliber and there is nothing wrong with that if that is what you prefer for your own family . In terms of “bands of quality.” a case could be made by some people that even Northwestern isn’t in the same “band of quality” as a place like MIT for engineering. Would anybody think it was terrible that the kid wanted to go to Northwestern instead of MIT just because the kid liked it better and it was “good enough.” ?
I think it’s cool your son wants to go to your alma mater. He will be just fine at MSU. It’s no MIT but neither is Northwestern. 
One of my sons works closely with a guy who has a PhD in Computer Science from MSU. He’s an expert in his field and very accomplished- and also is a nice guy according to my son. Hope your son enjoys MSU !
Dang, you people are worse than piranha. Does it matter a flying fart what anyone else thinks of where your kid goes or doesn’t go to school? Are the opinion-holders paying for it? If your kid is happy there and nobody will be selling heroin to pay the bursar, then it’s settled.
The Ivy/non-Ivy/Flagship argument on this site is pointless, as there is no “right” answer. Mother of pearl.