<p>*“I can’t believe how arrogant the college elitism in my environment had made me. After all the fuss, Fordham was really the perfect match for me.” *</p>
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<p>Well, maybe. But maybe not.</p>
<p>I think the article has some value but also smacks of a severe case of sour grapes.
Anytime I hear “I’m much happier with ‘x’ than I would have been with ‘y,’” my bs antenna tends to go up.</p>
<p>The girl admits that her first choice was Vassar. It wasn’t an epiphany about “college elitism” that made her choose elsewhere. It was the fact that her family couldn’t afford Vassar.</p>
<p>I have no doubts that the author is happy at Fordham. But we have no idea whether she would have been even happier at Vassar. We’ll never know.</p>
<p>And isn’t that what many of us preach here? That there is no one “perfect / dream” school? </p>
<p>I think that is the lesson here. Not whether Fordham is actually just a good a school as Vassar but we’re all just too snobby to realize it.</p>
<p>The fact that her family COULDN’T afford it is precisely why it WASN’T the “perfect match” for her. </p>
<p>I detect no sour grapes whatsoever, which is really refreshing, given some of the belly-aching posts I’ve seen on this website by kids raging at their parents and/or the private college of their dreams because the money wasn’t be offered to make the dream a reality.</p>
<p>Not really, no. I think the point being made here is that limiting your options to a small handful of elite schools (when there are hundreds of great schools out there to choose from) is likely not the best way of finding a best fit school. Afterall, there’s much more to college than just getting in.</p>
<p>The girl also made it clear in the blog that her motives behind wanting to go the Ivies and Vassar were unclear. She said she felt pressured from family members, including her sister (who went to Yale) to go to the elite schools since they would give her all sorts of opportunties. She didn’t know why she wanted to go… she just knew she should because her sister did so and her parents likely raised her on the “elite or bust” mindset.</p>
<p>Right. Just as we’ll never know if we would have been happier if in college we had dated the roommate instead of the person who became our spouse, or bought that other house, or if the filet was better than the salmon at the restaurant we ate at last night. The author never speculated that she was “happier” than she would have been at Vassar, but even if she had, so what? She makes a compelling case for the opportunities and experiences at Fordham being exactly what she was looking for once she got over the prestige obsession that had dominated her adolescent years.</p>
<p>Maybe she likes it, but I ended up at my safety school (only college I applied to) last year–the University of Alberta–and I was in the small honors college like her with 30 students per class. I felt like sticking pins in my eyes every day I was there. Transferred and escaped</p>
<p>Great and thanks for the post! It really motivated me to avoid her situation, I don’t want to be like her and get rejected to the higher tier schools so I just have to try harder in school. My god, if I don’t into the top schools I’m applying for, I’m going to go nuts, imagine paying money for a safety school! Might as well go to community than go to a low ranked state university. Lesson is, work hard in school and you won’t end up like this poor girl.</p>
<p>wow, great article! Good read for parents too. although we have missed on some of the opportunities that come from living in a more competitive environment academically, she showed some of the minuses too. We are very lucky in that my kid’s safety school as far as admissions and merit aid go is a wonderful match for them in terms of liking the campus and their course options. That has taken a lot of the pressure off the kid although since we are not in an elite area, the pressure is far less of an issue here anyway.</p>
<p>This is what happened to me! At some point during my time at community college I started thinking that my chances to get into my dream school was going to be a reach and was just trying to be realistic. I did a lot of research on my safety school and got so hyped up to go there. Than I found out that I got accepted to my dream school and was in a dilemma. Go to the safety that I fell in love with or go to my dream school which I had downplayed(to make it okay if I didn’t get in) and hadn’t thought about in a while?</p>
<p>This is all very nice. But what seems to have escaped a lot of posters here is that for most students, Fordham is a reach! And a lot more “elite” than the schools most kids attends. I’d be a lot more interested if she had ended up at a SUNY or an inexpensive OOS flagship like WVU.</p>
<p>It seems like this article should be more like “Falling In Love With My Fallback School”. Fordham has a 42% acceptance rate making it a school that might be a match for her but not a safety. I mean, what are the three rules of safeties? You’re guaranteed acceptance, you’re guaranteed to be able to pay for it, and you wouldn’t rather die than go there. To kill the second one: Fordham is private meaning unless they have guaranteed merit scholarships, she couldn’t have known she’d be able to pay until after applying. I like the concept of this article but it needs to be with a different student who went to an actual safety.</p>
<p>Fordham offers full tuition NMSF scholarships and send letters to NMSFs telling them about the scholarships and inviting them to apply. While it is not a guaranteed scholarship, if the author was a NMSF and had grades high enough for admission to Vassar, she might have made a reasonable assumption that she was likely to be offered the scholarship.</p>
<p>Super bright kids do go to their safeties. I think in my daughter’s case, she has a little bit of what if going on; however, I am hoping that once she lands a job that will stop.</p>
<p>Very thought provoking. Yes she “gets it” now, but only because she was forced too. As someone said, she didn’t have an epiphany, she was rejected by the Ivy’s and her parents refused to pay for her 1st choice school. Fortunately for her, Fordham turned out to be a great match. Does that mean that every story will have a happily ever after ending? If I refuse to pay for a college that my child has his heart set on, regardless of whether I think it is practical or rational, will he “fall in love” or end up resenting the decision he was forced into? As a parent, I am not sure I am willing to take that risk. Most of us are guilty of succumbing to the pressure of consumerism when it comes to our children…designer clothes, sunglasses, phones, electronics, even cars but when it comes to a name brand education suddenly some parents draw the line?</p>
<p>^A lot of us have kids who are grateful for whatever support we can give them. They know that money doesn’t grow on trees and that their parents are making sacrifices even to send them to “lesser,” more affordable schools. I know very few people who have succumbed to the consumerism you describe. I cannot imagine teenagers holding their parents hostage to $250K in expense just by threatening to be “resentful.” </p>
<p>The lesson here is to have the discussion BEFORE your kids start applying to college so they know what their options are. They shouldn’t feel “forced” into anything if they are allowed and encouraged to have a range of choices within set parameters. They should also know the truth about undergraduate ROI, as much as it can be measured. For the overwhelming majority of students, the name on the diploma means very little once they enter the real world.</p>