@Nomorelurker bring the banner convo over here where negative visit observations are more than welcome, indeed they are the point of the entire thread 
@OHMomof2, South Carolina was actually NOT my least favorite when visited. As mentioned, although I liked other schools better, I think South Carolina does a good job of selling their Honors college and the IB program is solid. As a matter of fact, I already posted on the other “unexpectedly-your-least-favorite” thread about Cal Berkeley!
@Nomorelurker I see you thought of the same issues as I have. I think it was Univ of Alabama and another Honors College in FL that offered a guaranteed admission to medical school if you went to their undergraduate school. I think Univ of South Carolina had a kind of guaranteed route to law school also. If you plan to practice in that region, I would think it’s not a bad idea to go to Honors College at Univ of South Carolina and then get into their law school.
I think you should note that although many colleges probably do have “better” business schools than Univ of South Carolina’s own Darla Moore Business School, they do appear to have a strong program in the Int’l Business. I believe IB is a sub-category or a combination of business and int’l stuff, so unless a school spends many years focusing on that specific area, it’s not easy to develop a specialty in that area, especially because the IB area is divided into 5 or 6 sub-areas of studies based on the industries needs. Other higher ranked business schools appear to focus on the general business areas and not as much in the IB area. So in the area of IB, it could be argued that Univ of South Carolina is pretty prestigious, not only because they developed this area for long time but other business schools simply do not focus per se on the IB side of business. Of course, I never went there but I did look over their course list, and in the area of IB, they did offer comprehensive courses. As for general business school, I would agree with you that there probably are better, not just higher ranked, general business schools.
Now, let me give you one real life example of where I thought the parents were too pre-occupied with the prestige of schools when making a choice. I met a parent at a Stanford event whose kid was accepted to both Stanford regular admission and Brown’s special program where you are sort of guaranteed acceptance to their medical school if you manage to graduate Brown undergraduate with something like 3.3 GPA (not sure). I told the parent that if I were in his shoes, I would advise my kid to go to Brown for the following reasons:
- Brown is a darn fine school in its own right.
- Brown puts less academic pressure so you can use your time to pursue many activities which would help you when you attend a medical school, such as volunteering etc.
- It's so hard to get into a good medical school that being guaranteed to attend a medical school at Brown is very valuable.
I have no idea what they chose but the parent was really serious about Stanford. I have my own practical reasons for thinking that Stanford will help my kid in his career. I actually feel I am being practical by choosing a full pay Stanford over almost free Honors College. For my wife, it was 100% Stanford. For me, it was 70% Stanford and 30% Honors College. But ultimately, our kid wanted to go there and it was also the best fit for him, even though it was the costliest one. I thought Berkeley was the worst fit for him after the official visit.
@nomorelurker we were impressed by the UGA Honors Program and think they do a great job of offering a differentiated experience for the students in the program, but our son is leaning toward UNC-Chapel Hill route at the moment. He is still waiting to hear from Duke and Vanderbilt RD as well. So many lessons learned this time around that we can apply to the next two that follow!
@Nomorelurker By the way, nothing wrong with being prestige driven as long as you got into one really prestigious colleges or program and you can afford the school.
@websensation , it is great you had the funds for Stanford full pay. You are fortunate. Most/many parents are not in that position. We were full pay for two kids for our state schools. We did not pursue merit. You did, but still took the most expensive route. Were the other options the back up plan if not admitted to Stanford or similar schools? Just curious, as you have made lots of posts about choosing Stanford over less expensive options .
Older high stats son just missed the more middle class initiatives that private colleges started around 2007. The landscape seems to have changed in the last 10 years. More prep, more looking for merit, more realizing that privates with large endowments could be within reach, more applications sent out. I am glad I am beyond all that. It makes my head spin!
@Panther92, glad the UGA Honors experience was worthwhile. UNC is a great school too. Sounds like there are already some good choices for your son while waiting for more decisions.
@websensation, agree that South Carolina has done a good job of creating an area of specialization for business majors. Totally understand your reasoning for encouraging your son to go with Stanford. Prestige is a relative thing and is not always the right fit or choice for every student, but it seems to be working out for your family.
@sevmom As CA residents, dutifully applied to some UCs (It’s just one application with a separate payment for each UC so it’s really one application), including UCLA/Berkeley. Didn’t apply to Pomona or Claremont LACs because our kid didn’t like small schools which seemed smaller than his high school. Applied to two Honors Colleges which were among tops in two particular fields of studies to take advantage of NMF status (big merit money due to NMF) and as a good option. Actually, the UC applications and Honors College applications had to be submitted BEFORE we ever heard from Stanford – because you can’t really count on getting into Stanford. The order of acceptances were chronologically: Honors Colleges, Stanford REA and then UCs. Stanford was the only “reach” school; did not apply to any other reach school because frankly it was only reach school he wanted to apply to. UCLA/Berkeley were I thought “match” schools. Then Honors Colleges were “safety” schools. But ultimately, took a gap year then Stanford route. Those were the only schools (3 applications plus one sheet of info submission) our kid applied to. One Honors College application wasn’t really an application at all; we just had to fill out one page and supply evidence of NMF status and then full cost scholarship was offered for 5 years! If you are curious to know, it was UNLV Honors Program, and we applied there because it had one of the best Hotel Management and Hospitality Program in the country. Univ of South Carolina Honors application was actually lengthy but we applied for Honors International Business Program. Univ of South Carolina actually invited us to some nice steak restaurant, so it was free steak dinner to listen to Honors College and merit scholarship, so we attended the dinner event. If he did not get into Stanford, there was some chance he might have gone to Univ of South Carolina Honors IB major with a minor in language or International Relations route. We chose Hotel Management and IB as two potential areas because my kid’s skills and interest in languages; those were areas we thought his multi-language speaking skills could help.
I never looked into Honors Colleges until our kid got NMF status, so I thought it would be wise for me to have him apply to one or two Honors Colleges which had strong majors related to his language skills/interest.
Great outcome and great you had the resources to make Stanford happen!
Honestly, wasn’t even thinking about getting accepted, so I know from experience there are many kids who could get in had they actually chosen to apply but they don’t for various reasons. My kid would have been happy if he got deferred from Stanford because they defer very few students. We were all shocked that our kid got in. Before our kid got in, we thought all Stanford kids were geniuses or something, but after having attended several events, we found out they are not.