Has anyone regretted sending kids to Ivy?

Parents Forum
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<p>Let’s start a thread about people who regretted their decision to “send” their kid to Stanford, just for the hell of it. :rolleyes:</p>

<p>FWIW, my kid was able to attend D for less than it would have cost to attend our undistinguished state flagship.</p>

<p>momneeds2no, the problem is that you are assuming that the services provided by the other LACs would be as advertised. Perhaps they are a little less glorious IRL also.</p>

<p>And I would not take anything like this from a first semester first year student very seriously. They do adjust.</p>

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<p>Hearing various anecdotes about these schools doesn’t really give any valuable information, imo. Take ANY school-ANY SCHOOL-and you can find individual stories of regret.</p>

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<p>I have a friend who really, really regrets sending her kid to Princeton. She feels the curbs on grade inflation artificially lowered grades, that it was too big and too impersonal. Her son ended up feeling dumb. He also still hasn’t graduated since he never wrote his senior thesis, though he walked with the class two years ago. Personally I think he had some other issues, both in terms of physical and mental health and parents who were way too helicoptery in high school. But his parents are probably right that an LAC would have been better for this kid, though I think it’s quite possible that the same things might have happened at the LAC he would have gone to.</p>

<p>Most kids I’ve known do very well at top ranked colleges. The kid I know at Yale loves it. I can only speak from my experience, but I didn’t think the work level at Harvard was that onerous compared to high school, but perhaps there are more type A types there now than when I was there. I didn’t especially enjoy taking Physics with the pre-meds, but I did fine.</p>

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<p>Sent one to H and one to Y. They were both amazing experiences, and both kids loved their schools. I haven’t heard either of them express any regrets. My only regret is that they don’t have a bigger college friendship circle here in CA where we parents live, to make them want to come back. I do still think they will eventually return, however.</p>

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<p>I don’t have (and never will have) kids who go to an Ivy, but I know of two students from my D’s high school who transferred out of Brown after 1 year, and have a friend whose daughter left Yale after 2 years. Friend definitely regrets sending his daughter to Yale. I know the parent of one of the Brown transfers regrets sending her son there because she knew at the time it wasn’t a good fit but for whatever reason he was determined to go there. I don’t think the Ivies are different from any other school in that if there isn’t a good fit, it’s probably not the best place. OTOH, my nephew went to Harvard and absolutely thrived there, but it was a perfect fit for him.</p>

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<p>

Note that the average class rank of students accepted to med school at highly selective colleges tends to be much lower than less selective colleges. For example, among accepted MDApplicants members who had a 33-35 on their MCAT, the ranked differences between median GPA of accepted vs estimated average GPA of class are below. The estimated GPA of the class is based on the GradeInflation.com data, with the trended extended . I realize this estimate may be significantly off, if the inflation trend has changed since ~2006 (much of GradeInflation’s data is old).</p>

<p>Estimated Difference Between Accepted Med School GPA and GPA of Class
Stanford : -0.02
Harvard : 0.03
Brown : 0.04
Princeton : 0.2
MIT : 0.2
Cornell : 0.22
Berkeley : 0.36
Texas : 0.61
Arizona : 0.62</p>

<p>At Stanford, Harvard, and Brown; there was no significant difference between the GPA of accepted med school students and the average GPA of the class. This implies that many students with below average GPAs were getting accepted to med school, which fits with my personal experiences at Stanford pre-med. In contrast, at the less selective colleges of Texas and Arizona, there was huge GPA difference. The accepted med school students were close 4.0, while the overall class average was in the low 3s. Selective colleges with less grade inflation fell somewhere in between.</p>

<p>Is it easier to get an average GPA at Stanford/Harvard/Brown or a top GPA at Texas/Arizona? I wouldn’t recommend letting this answer dictate college selection.</p>

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<p>Way too much emphasis is placed on separating the “Ivies” from all other universities and colleges. They’re excellent schools and they attract excellent students, for a variety of reasons. My daughter is a third-year at Barnard College, which can make a solid argument for being included among the “Ancient Eight”. She and her friends are pretty much typical college kids - just incredibly bright, motivated, and engaged. Daughter loves what she’s gotten herself into, despite (or partially because of) the strenuous demands. Attending an ‘Ivy’ is a great gig, if you can land it, but they’re still just college kids trying to make their way through the maze. Regrets? Absolutely not; because DD is so happy with her decision.</p>

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<p>I found H a (welcome) increase in workload from my suburban highschool with 0 AP classes, but then the IB diploma kids all complained how light it was.</p>

<p>Then again, I dont’t feel like any semester really killed me, other than the first time I took an extra class, and maybe the completely absurd schedule I put together for myself senior spring.</p>

<p>But I intentionally didn’t apply to any school that was academically difficult, like UChicago or Swarthmore.</p>

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<p>I think this tells us approximately zero. We know medical schools make admissions decisions on the basis of MCAT scores (primarily) and GPAs (secondarily). We know there are more high GPAs than high MCAT scores, i.e., high MCAT scores are the rarer and therefore more valuable commodity. We also know there are more strong standardized test-takers at highly selective private schools; that’s a large part of how they got there in the first place. We also know GPAs tend to be much higher at highly selective private institutions than at publics. So we would expect that among applicants to medical school with strong MCATs, those from highly selective private schools would tend to be clustered around the (very high) average GPA of their college class, while those from less selective public institutions would tend to be higher than the (much lower) average GPA of their college class. Translation: medical schools tend to accept applicants with high MCAT scores (primarily) and high college GPAs (secondarily). </p>

<p>If the data you presented tell us any more than the obvious, please enlighten.</p>

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<p>bclintonk, why are GPAs higher overall at selective private universities than publics?</p>

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Regardless of MCAT-GPA-selectivity correlations or how much MCAT is weighted vs GPA in med school admissions, the results show that a lot of students with lower class rank are getting accepted to med school at the listed highly selective colleges , which makes my earlier point of not avoiding selective colleges due to fears of med school GPA issues. And with the same MCAT score, the average GPA was near 4.0 at the less selective colleges. Yes, it’s possible that they would have been admitted primarily on MCAT with a much lower GPA, going against typical advice. When the site comes online, I’ll look into this case and provide more specific numbers.</p>

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<p>My kids had little or no interest in Ivies and never bothered to apply to any; they were much more drawn toward academically oriented LACs, where they both ended up. </p>

<p>I do have many friends and colleagues who attended Ivies as undergrads. Most were quite satisfied with their undergrad experience, but to be honest, not visibly more so nor less so than those who attended other good private universities, or good LACs, or good public flagships. Most people I know speak quite highly of their undergrad alma maters. Those who went to Swarthmore and Chicago seem to have more negative things to say about the workload, but at the same time they seem to take a kind of perverse pride in having endured it, and I think that kind of self-pitying pride in the difficulty of it is just part of the culture of both schools, or at any rate was when my associates attended.</p>

<p>I do have one friend who complained that his son went to Cornell and ended up “majoring in beer” because he got so deeply drawn into the Greek scene there, and the father hoped that for what it was costing him, the son was at least drinking good beer. But that could happen at any number of schools.</p>

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<p>H’s coworkers weren’t too happy. One had a kid who was miserable at Brown, where parents paid full-freight. The other was getting engineering degree at Cornell but had no job offers and lots of debt. </p>

<p>I’m sure there are many happy and unhappy everywhere with colleges attended for many reasons.</p>

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<p>Grade inflation has progressed farther and faster at selective private universities. In the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, the average GPA at both public and private colleges and universities was about a C+. It spiked sharply upward in the 1960s, reaching a B- at public universities and a B at privates by about 1970. It has continued to climb from there, reaching about a B at publics (on average) and about a B+ at privates (on average). But there are wide variations from school to school, among both publics and among privates.</p>

<p>Average GPAs at the Ivies are among the very highest, except at Princeton which has adopted a conscious policy of grade deflation. This tends to hurt Princeton grads in med school and law school applications, and some complain about it, though many Princeton grads turn in very strong MCAT and LSAT scores, so it may not matter all that much in the end as high MCAT and LSAT scores are rarer than high GPAs, therefore they tend to count for more than grades in the medical and law school admission context.</p>

<p>These schools justify their higher GPAs by saying they have stronger students, and strong students who turn in A work deserve A’s. I have no problem with that. But there are also pressures driving grades upward everywhere. A lot of it is economic. No one wants to spend $250,000 to send their kid to college and have Junior come home with a 2.33 GPA, as was the norm in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s; that 2.33 these days is going to scare off a lot of employers and keep Junior out of a lot of graduate and professional schools. But if the average Brown undergrad comes home with a 3.6, everyone’s happy, Junior moves on to the next stage of education or employment, and the parents convince themselves the 3.6 at Brown would have been a 4.0 at State U. And maybe they’re right. Or maybe not, but who can prove them wrong?</p>

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<p>Interesting! Thank you. :)</p>

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<p>D is graduating from H this spring. Its been a very good fit. I’m thinking it’ll be a bittersweet day when she walks out of those gates in May.</p>

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<p>No first hand experience, but a family in my neighborhood sent their son to Penn where he had a great experience. OTOH their daughter, who went to Dartmouth, did not like the social environment. She transferred after her first year. Despite the Ivy label, it still comes down to fit.</p>

1 Like
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<p>I disagree with bclintonk. In this message, I’ll say why he’s wrong about Brown; in the next why he’s wrong about the Ivies in general. </p>

<p>As to Brown’s high GPA…Brown allows students to take as many courses as they wish S/NC–Brown’s version of pass/fail. There are many students–especially those who want to go into performing arts and,to a lesser extent, visual arts, who just want a degree and spend most of their time focused on performing or creating art. Such students exist at many other top schools, e.g., Yale. At those schools, they have to take courses for grades and in most cases, they help bring down the median grade. </p>

<p>At Brown, those students take all or most of their classes S/NC and thus do not affect the median grade. The “typical” Brown student takes 4 courses a semester; three for a grade and one S/NC. Usually, the student chooses the S/NC in areas outside his/her comfort zone or in unusually difficult courses. If the courses were taken for a grade, the student might get a low B or a C. </p>

<p>Reality is that it is no easier to get an A or B at Brown than it is at any other college. Brown students have higher GPAs because instead of having grades in 32 courses, they often only have grades in about 24–which are usually the courses they expected to earn their highest grades in. A few students will have no grades at all. Some will only have grades in their English and theatre courses or only in their visual art courses. As a result, the median GPA at Brown is higher–but that does NOT mean that it’s easier to get an A in most Brown courses than it is at other colleges.</p>

<p>People who enroll in Brown expecting that they can rack up all As in every course they take–especially in the sciences–will be disappointed. </p>

<p>The strength of the Brown system is that it encourages students to take real courses outside their fields of interest and take them S/NC. At many other courses, students take guts in order to protect their GPAs. A LOT of top colleges have gut courses that can be taken to meet distribution requirements–courses like Rocks for Jocks, Physics for Poets, Computer Science 1 (How to Send EMail), Clapping for Credit (Music), etc. Instead of taking this type of course, many Brown students take the same courses as those who major in those areas, but take them S/NC. </p>

<p>In theory, many other top colleges offer students the opportunity to take 3 or 4 courses pass/fail. However, at many of these colleges, profs can prohibit students from taking the courses they teach P/F. The end result is often that the best, most interesting courses, especially in math and science, can’t be taken P/F. At Brown, you CAN take organic chem S/NC because you are interested in it, but have no interest in going to med school and know that you’re not going to excel in it. At most other colleges, it’s UNHEARD of for a non-science major to take organic chem, or ANY math or science course which has mostly math and/or science majors taking it.</p>

<p>So, at Brown, in addition to knowing someone’s GPA, you’ll want to know how many of his courses he took for grades. If (s)he does want to go on to med or law school, the answer better be most of them.</p>

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<p>Huh? Using Berkeley as an example, undergraduates in the College of Letters and Science can take any course they want P/NP (passed / not-passed, where P means a C- or higher), subject to the limitations listed at [Office</a> of Undergraduate Advising: Passed/Not Passed Grades](<a href=“http://ls-advise.berkeley.edu/registration/pnp.html]Office”>http://ls-advise.berkeley.edu/registration/pnp.html) . Up to a third of one’s courses can be taken P/NP.</p>

<p>So if someone (not a pre-med) wants to take organic chemistry P/NP, not needing it for his/her major, s/he can take it that way if s/he so desires. Granted, it is quite rare for (non-pre-med) humanities, social studies, and business majors to take math and science courses that are more rigorous than required for their majors (pre-PhD economics majors loading up on math and statistics courses are probably the most common exceptions other than those who started as intended science majors or pre-meds but switched out). But the opportunity to do so with P/NP grading certainly exists.</p>

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<p>with all due respect Jonri, the defense of Brown disregards basic logic and math.</p>

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<li><p>for example, if the masses of Brownies take 3 courses for a grade, and one P/F, then they obviously have more time to study for those three courses, do they not? Students at other schools are busting their butts for grades in 4/5 courses, while Brownies only have to score in 3. How can that not be a better deal to free up time for other pursuits?</p></li>
<li><p>if a bunch of students do sign up for Organic P/F, their goal is a low C, correct? Since the course has some sort of curve, the bottom of that curve is just brought down by all such students – making it “easier” for those desiring the B’s and A’s. (“Easier” than other comparable schools, that is.)</p></li>
<li><p>a former Brown grad who used to post on cc, admitted that some/many of the premed prereqs at Brown have an A- average curve. In other words, mostly A’s and B’s. That is just unheard of anywhere else.</p></li>
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<p>Regardless, LS is ~45% GPA and ~45% LSAT score. </p>

<p>Statistically, Brown students and Dartmouth students are indistinguishable (test scores, HS GPA/rank). Yet, Brown grads have a 3.6 mean GPA while Dartmouth’s is closer to 3.4. Thus, the average Brown grad has a good shot at top law schools (T14), while D grads will need a higher LSAT score.</p>