<p>I really dislike the idea that you try to “force” him to do what (you think) is best for him. Just because he is 17 doesn’t mean he doesn’t know about himself or what he wants- doesn’t mean his decision would be by a good one either. Seems like you try to keep him in your track. It’s you who want to be in Harvard not your son. So you should not use him to achieve your dream. Because he is young so he should not make his own decision? If you keep thinking like this, when will your son be able to make his own decision? In the future, you are not going to help/guide him making decisions all the time. Why don’t just let this be a first time that he should decide by himself? He must be responsible of his own life-let him decide.</p>
<p>No one in his right mind would turn down Harvard for Dartmouth, regardless of Dartmouth’s merits.</p>
<p>This thread is flamebait.</p>
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<p>Uhh, don’t pay the app fee?</p>
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<p>Are those ED applicants to Dartmouth “crazy”? Should they be committed?</p>
<p>You may not get the bragging rights you want, but Dartmouth has amazing placement in high paying finance jobs and he’ll have a lot more fun.</p>
<p>This surely is a ■■■■■ post, or the phrase “generally good student” has morphed in meaning.</p>
<p>There are about 3,200,000 high school juniors this year, and as I recall, about 24,000 high schools in the U.S. plus probably another 1,000 from outside the US that regularly feed graduates into US colleges.</p>
<p>So let’s say there are 24,000 high school un-shared Valedictorians. A similar number of Student Council/Body Presidents, and three times that many D-I recruitable athletes per school. So that gives us an enormous pool of Harvard/Dartmouth quality applicants.</p>
<p>Let’s consider the USNWR top 10 ranked Universities. Their aggregated freshman class slots for next year are about 20,000. THERE IS NOT ROOM FOR EVERY VALEDICTORIAN to attend these top 10.</p>
<p>Lots of Valedictorians, School Presidents and other academic top 1% students will fail to gain admission to even one of these schools…</p>
<p>so why OP thinks a “generally good student” who gain admission anyway is perplexing to me.</p>
<p>Must therefore be a ■■■■■ post.</p>
<p>kwu, the same un-right mindedness must have infected the many students who select a much smaller, more undergraduate focused school over Harvard… LACs like Williams/Amherst/Swarthmore/Wellesley/Pomona, or smaller undergrad focused Unis like Dartmouth/Princeton.</p>
<p>These schools are not apple/apple comparisons to Harvard in their missions or service delivery structure.</p>
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<p>Yeah. Hanover, NH is “a lot more fun” than Cambridge/Boston, MA. Harvard Square is sooo boring…</p>
<p>You do realize that the OP is not a real parental unit, right??</p>
<p>^^^ edit: there are actuallly only 16,000 freshman slots among the USNWR Top 10 Universities and Top 5 LACs combined. If every Valedictorian/co-Valedictorian applied to all 15 of these schools, and no other students could apply, there would not be room for 50% of them.</p>
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<p>^This sentence is the give away that this is not a post from a real Harvard partisan. These are the words a student or applicant at a rival school would put into the mouth of a Harvard parent, not something a real Harvard parent would actually say.</p>
<p>Harvard square is great but I’m talking about the college which has nowhere near the spirit, beauty and social life that Dartmouth does. It’s certainly individual, but I’d much rather spend 4 years in the magical Hanover. Whatever koolaid those kids are drinking, they love it. Harvard Students, on the other hand, are the most dissatisfied of ivy students.</p>
<p>Who cares if the OP is a ■■■■■, people still learn from these threads.</p>
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<p>It’s refreshing to find parents who are so objective about their kids’ schools…</p>
<p>My kid loved both Dartmouth and Harvard. To us it didn’t make any difference but in the end, she chose Harvard.</p>
<p>Ummm…Dartmouth is easily one of the most fun top schools. Harvard, not so much. I spent a couple weekends up at Dartmouth last semester and had a BLAST. Also spent a weekend down at Harvard, was, um…pretty boring to be honest.</p>
<p>I have kids at MIT and Amherst too with DD heading to grad school at Harvard, I attended Wharton and my DH Berkeley and Stanford–I don’t find any of them magical.</p>
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<p>How in heavens did you draw this conclusion? ED applicants reduce their chances at every other school to zero in order to increase their chances of admission to their choice college. It’s a win-win gamble for those students on the margin, those who are competitive for admission to Dartmouth, but not as competitive for admission to a school like Harvard.</p>
<p>The hypothetical I was remarking on is the case where one has been admitted to both Harvard and Dartmouth, and one must decide to enroll at one over the other.</p>
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<p>I agree that this is a fairly common phenomenon. I know a surprisingly high number of people here at Amherst who chose it over premiere research universities such as Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT. And, I’m sure it’s the same case at Dartmouth.</p>
<p>However, we’re talking about Harvard. You’re extremely hard-pressed to find a kid able to resist that sort of prestige.</p>
<p>You’re right that smaller colleges have very different priorities than Harvard. Yet, Harvard remains on the very top of Amherst and Dartmouth’s cross-admit lists. Why is that the case? Because Harvard’s prestige is irresistible, and when push comes to shove–which is what we’re deliberating here–Harvard will win.</p>
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<p>Surprisingly, there are. And they resist Harvard by not applying in the first place. They EA to Yale. They EA to Stanford. They EA to MIT. They ED to Columbia/Dartmouth/Amherst/Williams et al instead.</p>
<p>^ exactly. You’re right that the Harvard prestige is irresistible to most but not to all.</p>
<p>You kind of killed your argument with the EA to Yale/Stanford/MIT.</p>
<p>Clearly even if you would go to Harvard over any of those other schools, you could still apply EA…</p>
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<p>It’s cute when little kids refer to, say, DisneyLand as “magical.” When middle-aged people refer to their kids’ undergraduate institutions as “magical,” it’s kinda creepy…unless you’re trying to compare Dartmouth to DisneyLand, of course.</p>
<p>Actually, it’s an excellent comparison although I think more people refer to it as camp Dartmouth. All I can say is that I wish I had known about it as an undergrad. I do understand your comments, when we have kids visiting from all my kids’ schools, the others wonder what is up with the over the top enthusiasm for their school on the part of the Dartmouth kids.</p>