<p>I could probably have gone to an Ivy etc., but didn’t want to apply. Just didn’t I appeal to me. I ended up at an OOS state school (why doesn’t anyone put school names on here?), not the “flagship”, but a huge midwest land-grant school where i could comfortably change my major about 5 times. I got a biochemistry degree, with honors, and had a great time. I was actually very active in the coop where I lived, learned a lot negotiating a deal with the city (long story), wrote for the school paper, and volunteered in the local ER on the night shift. Went to Cornell Law at 27 and am still paying the loans >20 years later, but I’m very happy.</p>
<p>My niece couldn’t afford the school she wanted to attend, didn’t get into some other top choices - she’s very smart, NMF but didn’t keep her grades up. She’s at our state school and doing very well academically. Still having some social and lifestyle issues (she hates the big city), but I think she’ll end up finding her way. She’s coming back home for a year, to work and take some of her “general ed” classes at the CC, and other classes that are offered online. She will go back to Honolulu, she says, and get her degree in CS with no debt. I believe her, she’s always done things her way. I think she’ll have a fine life.</p>
<p>As my son struggles through the application and decision process, we’re trying to keep all the factors and options in mind. Some friends have pointed out that for some fields, a college degree is no longer the only way to succeed. He wants to go to college, but he will have a tough choice - which will be majorly affected by the $$ issues - between very different kinds of schools, that will prepare him for his chosen career and life in different ways. At this point, his first choice (still waiting for admission decision) is a very selective, private university with a stellar reputation; his second (admitted) is a for-profit career school that also has a great reputation in the field, but NO options to study in a different field; third (also admitted) is a second-tier private university with a decent, but not highly-recognized, program in the field. Talk about apples and oranges! More like apples and guitars…</p>
<p>Anyway, it’s his first big decision, and whichever way he goes, it’ll be an adventure. </p>
<p>However Gladwell’s idea is not supported by numbers - students who attend “better” universities tend to have better support services, so that students who need a certain amount of support are more likely to graduate from them. Attending a better-financed university, or with smaller classes, can help in being a “big fish” too.
There’s also the issue of peer effect - among less-motivated peers, some students strive and are noticed… others feel miserable and alone.
So, it really depends on the student’s personality and goals.</p>
<p>I really like sunnyflorida’s story because it reminds all CC readers that success comes in many forms and how important “fit” is.</p>
<p>Gladwell’s just trying to sell books and is an entirely different story. :)</p>
Regarding Gladwell, I’ve seen the Google lecture. I haven’t read the book. In the Google lecture, he shows what percentage of graduating STEM majors that have SAT percentiles in the top 3rd of their class, middle 3rd, and lower 3rd. I believe the displayed results are % graduating class rather than persistence rate for each group since the sum adds up to 100% (sum of persistence rates would not add up to 100%). He shows that at the schools he chose with different levels of selectivity, all have about 50% of the graduating STEM majors in the top 3rd of their class and only ~15% in the bottom 3rd. Students in the bottom 3rd of their class are less likely to be STEM majors, so he suggests students should choose colleges where they are in the top 3rd. There are several obvious flaws in that argument, such as not looking into why the students were not majoring in STEM. For example, perhaps the students who intend to major in STEM fields tend to have higher SAT scores than the students who do not intend to major in STEM at many colleges. That is, students accepted to a college’s engineering school tend to have higher SAT scores than the humanities school. If the entering STEM students have higher SAT scores, then it is not surprising that the graduating STEM students have higher scores. Similarly the lower scoring students might overreperesent hooks, such as athletes. And hooks may have a reduced chance of majoring in STEM.</p>
<p>It would help to see the actual studies Gladwell is referring to instead of just listening to his biased summaries. I looked up the study he mentioned with the 10 point SAT rule of the thumb. It was a study looking at persistence for URMs in life and behavioral sciences majors (includes health science and psychology; does not include math, physics, or engineering), which Gladwell neglects to mention. Other studies have come to different conclusions. For example, the study at <a href=“http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/grades_4.0.pdf”>http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/grades_4.0.pdf</a> found that the most influential factor for persistence in natural sciences, engineering, and economics was being male. After adding controls for similar GPA, test scores, course rigor, and other factors; women still had a notably lower persistence rate than men; so choosing a less selective college is not expected to resolve this contribution. However, the difference in persistence for black and white students was nearly fully resolved by controls for the selectivity (and other) factors, which fits with the URM study Gladwell referenced with the 10 point rule of thumb. SAT scores were identified as the 2nd least contributing factor, after not having good personal qualities (good personal qualities had negligibly negative effect), although they did have notable correlation to other selectivity-based factors.</p>
<p>He also presents a 2nd argument looking at the publication rate of economics PhD students, showing a small portion of economics PhD students are doing the bulk of the publishing at both highly selective colleges and less selective colleges instead of all students at top colleges publishing large amounts of papers. It’s not clear why those few students are doing the bulk of the publishing. I don’t know much about how students/colleges decide who does PhD publications, but I certainly wouldn’t assume it primarily relates to the students having the best stats of the entering class. For example, it might relate to a limited number of faculty sponsorships, number of research dollars for the school, number research data and/or structures, number of PhD students who are focusing on publishing papers, etc. Maybe attending a less selective college helps improve the primary factors… maybe not.</p>
<p>I expect Gladwell’s general conclusion is correct, that a student is more likely to flourish in comparison to others if they choose a college where they have better stats than most. However, he presents the data in a misleading way, likely to increase book sales. There are also many exceptions to this generalization. For example, I was bored of my mind in high school, as well as in a good portion of the university classes I took at various colleges while in HS. It wasn’t until attending to Stanford that I was finally challenged. That challenge allowed me to push myself further and achieve closer to my potential. I graduated from Stanford with 3 STEM degrees, the first BS + MS in under 4 years, even though my HS GPA and combined SAT were near the bottom of my class. I’d expect that the bulk of excellent students are likely to be successful in college and beyond, regardless of whether they choose a more or less selective 4-year college.</p>
<p>I hate arguments based on statistics - at least arguments that try to apply statistical findings to individual cases… Statistics tell us about trends and averages, but are not predictive on an individual level. In fact, it would be quite difficult to construct a statistical model but for variance in the underlying model. (If the numbers came out the same for everyone in the sample, the statistician wouldn’t see the anticipated bell curve or trend lines, and they would take that as a sign that there might be some error with the underlying data.).</p>
<p>It is very useful to have the statistical information when making planning or policy decisions with impact on large groups of people. So data about how people function in general in a school environment might be valuable if were making a policy decision as to how to allot dollars among state universities – for example, should the money be concentrated at the strongest departments at the flagship state U – or would it be better to spread education dollars more widely to strengthen resources among the state’s network of less selective public colleges?</p>
<p>It is not particularly useful to rely on these sort of statistics for making decisions about individuals, because human beings have different personalities and learning styles. Some thrive on challenge and will tend to be more highly motivated when in a highly competitive academic environment; others might find that intimidating. On the other end, some might thrive on the big fish in a small pond scenario, getting a boost from the positive attention they receive – and others might find the environment discouraging and de-motivating. Plus there are all sorts variables that can’t be accounted for in the model – such as the living environment the student encounters, the actual people doing the teaching in the various departments, etc. </p>
<p>Finally: it’s not always that easy to know where a person will stand in a college environment. I’ve also got two kids with different personalities who took different educational paths. My very competitive and ambitious daughter ended up at a college where her test scores probably put her very near the bottom of the pack – at least that was her impression when talking with others about their test scores – but within a few weeks she had the sense that she clearly was among that top third that Gladwell apparently references. At least that was her subjective impression based on observations of other students in her classes, and it would seem to be borne out by college GPA and class standing – but perhaps a subjective impression is in itself something of a self-fulfilling prophesy. That is, perhaps some individuals have a tendency to see themselves as smarter or more capable than others around them, no matter how smart and capable everyone else is – and that confidence feeds on itself and enables them to succeed – and perhaps others have a tendency to see others as more capable, and their more humble self-definition might also lead them to set their personal targets lower. </p>
<p>I don’t know. But I think that parents would be do better overall to stop worrying about what others think of their kid’s choices, and simply recognize that life is not always predictable and there are many possible roads to success. I think the worst thing to do is to engage in some sort of magical thinking that a particular college environment will somehow changed the student’s personality or aspirations. Young people do change and mature over time – but it’s a lot easier to rationalize a result in hindsight than to make a prediction for the future. </p>
<p>Really enjoyed reading this! I have a D debating these issues. She has a broad range of choices and may well choose the regional college over the flagship. There is a LAC in the mix too. I hope we can be as supportive as you have been with yours.</p>
<p>Congratulations on a great experience for your child. Really both of them. When it works, out it’s marvelous, and, yes, it can work out in many scenarios. I’ve posted often about friends of ours, whose daughter went to a small college hardly mentioned here and became their first Rhodes scholar. She has absolutely no doubt that it would NOT have happened at the competitive Ivy from which she transferred. It made a big impact in her life to be a big fish in a little pond. </p>
<p>However, looking at the stats of that college vs that of the Ivy, it’s pretty clear that, though yes, students can do well there, the completion rates and others outcomes just do not happen at the school without those heavy duty R’s (ranking, reputation, recognition). It’s right there to see. How those stats and outcomes apply to the individual, however, is a whole other story, and it all comes down to how well YOURS does in any given situation.</p>
<p>Of course, in any discussion about “STEM majors” (e.g. Gladwell’s claims), one has to remember that the characteristics of different “STEM majors” vary considerably in many ways.</p>
<p>This seems to be a common argument on these forums about why a student cannot be happy and successful at a safety school. But then would that argument mean that the student should not go to college at all if s/he gets shut out of reach and match schools?</p>
<p>However, some safety schools are likely better academic environments than others for outlier students at the top end of the scale. Large schools with “wide” student bodies are likely better than small schools with “narrow” student bodies, because the large schools with “wide” student bodies tend to have enough top students that the faculty are more likely to pay attention to them (e.g. by offering honors courses or other rigorous courses that there may not otherwise by enough demand for, recruiting them to research projects, etc.).</p>
<p>^Yes, the non-flagship that S1 attended is actually larger than the state flagship. As a land grant university, his school had a “wide” student body with majors from Agriculture and Architecture to Engineering and Education. The course offerings were so wide and students so varied that there was literally something for everyone</p>
<p>My S is headed to a non-flagship. He could have gotten in to our flagship but it is local to us and he wasn’t interested in being that close to home. He is another kid whose test scores are higher than his grades. His HS is a competitive magnet and in middle school he was in a gifted program. So he has been in a “big pond” for most of his schooling. </p>
<p>There will certainly be other bright students at his college. But I think he will be in a smaller pond than at some other colleges he could have chosen. And that may turn out to be a good thing for him. OP’s story is encouraging in that regard. Thanks. </p>
<p>This is exactly the reassurance I was looking for! My daughter just turned down an Ivy and other top schools to accept a scholarship offer by the Honors program at our state university. With no financial aid, the $250K price tag was just not possible and we didn’t want our daughter taking out loans for undergrad. There were some tears, but I hope her experience will be as good as your childrens’.Glad to hear that there are grad school scholarships out there also! Thank you for posting!!</p>
<p>I love reading stories like this. OP, thanks so much for posting your Ds’ experiences. My S1 was very much like your D1. He chose a small college about an hour from home, a school his grandparents disdained because they had “never even heard of it.” S1 did very well there, was able to play his sport on a Div. 2 NCAA team, intern at a great company AND had a good job offer upon graduation last May, with excellent benefits. He’s thriving, he’s not deep in debt, and he lives an hour away so we get to see him! What’s not to like?</p>
<p>Thank you for your story. Our story is different, in that my son won’t have many options as his SAT’s are very low and he only has a 3.1 GPA, unlike your daughter. But, my pride has been getting in the way. I loved how you said you just stated with pride (for your daughter’s sake) where she was going. Our midwest flagship state school is very popular among the east coasters. Many of our state students don’t have seats there, so have to go to the second level state school. But that 2nd level is now his “reach”. His stats more closely follow those of the 3rd level. One that says “I’m just not as smart”. I’m embarrassed for him and us, and I shouldn’t be. That would probably be the best fit and I need to start pumping him up. Thank you. We will be touring it next fall and I will look at it as if it were the best of schools and make sure he understands that we think it’s great (and we will!) if it seems that is where he will go. To hell with other’s whose comments will be “oh” if we were to say he was going there. It’s not easy being that student or that parent. But it’s nice to hear such success stories.</p>
<p>My DS has great ACT scores, a terrible GPA, decent musical talent and a very specific area of interest. He will be attending a regional public U with a great program for his interests. He also received a music scholarship although he is not majoring in music (under-represented instrument LOL!). Financially, it is a much better deal than the state flagship or local public U. Most people wonder why on earth he is going there, but he is super excited and so are we.</p>
<p>My S2 had a very low SAT score and maybe a 3.1 weighted. He was never a serious scholar. Just did what he had to to get by. We really wondered if he would make it at a university.</p>
<p>For that reason, when application time came around, we limited him to applying to schools in our state’s big public system. There were really only three that he had a shot at and one of those he was def. not interested in. </p>
<p>So he applied to the two he thought would admit him. He was accepted to both (directional state u’s). He was happy to get accepted but didn’t make a big deal about it because he had the “anybody can get in that school” mindset.<br>
Time for a tour. </p>
<p>We went to tour his first choice of the two. Had a great tour guide. The campus looked great. All the students walking back and forth to class looked like" his kind of people". Then S2 spotted a guy there that had been on his h.s. football team and went over to talk to him. So unexpected on a campus of 25,000. Gave him the feeling that it might be a good place for him after all. I could tell that suddenly, he could see himself there.</p>
<p>When we were driving home," S2 said Directional State U. Is AWESOME. I don’t know why more kids from my sch. don’t apply". He enrolled and loved it. He would not have taken a free ride to Flagship U over his Directional State U. He liked it THAT much. He graduated in four years and is a proud supporter of his university. </p>
<p>That’s great your daughter has been successful at her school by I want to point out that I and many of my friends have done graduate level research at an Ivy League school so it is incorrect to say that one cannot do that if they are not a big fish in a small pond.</p>
<p>SUNNY FL-
Same here!
S1- Valedictorian. Top scores. Leadership. 14 AP classes. blah blah blah. He’s the one that the reallysmart kids always called “brillilant”. Took a full ride to one of your “sunny FL” schools. Excelled. Will graduate law school in 3 weeks (horray) employed.</p>
<p>S2 is similar to your D2. He was accepted to 15 of 15 schools and decided to attend one of our State U’s noted for great STEM and Health sciences. Scholarship on top too, though we planned to pay full freight for both boys. Fast forward… Paid research with grad students as undergrad, great clubs, 2 summer paid internships and numerous job offers upon graduation. Also graduated with 2 bachelors in Engineering in 4 years and in the top 3% of engineering graduating class. Out one year and working full time, applied to 3 top ten engineering MS programs and will start in the Fall at one (accepted to all three). </p>
<p>I always told me kids they could go anywhere and be anything. (Of course an IVY degree helps, but it doesn’t mean you won’t achieve your goals. </p>