Regarding posting #154, I apologize to Harvey Mudd, as yes it’s on the top for both CR and M above 700 with 87% CR, 97% M - stellar!
@homerdog I see it has been mentioned already, but check out UGA honors. And if it seems like a good fit, have your S apply for the Fellowship, which is one of the best undergrad scholarship programs in the country, imo. Please feel free to pm if you have any questions.
@twoinanddone Thank you for clarifying . My son attends an Honors College at a medium sized ( 11,000 students) . This definitely was the best choice for him size wise and program wise. . I also have another son more a combination of your D1 and D2. We’ll see how it works for him.
BTW, the 75-25th ACT percentiles (according to PrepScholar) for UW-Madison is 31-27 while the 75-25th ACT percentiles for Macalester (a fine LAC) are 32-29.
Given that honors colleges tend to only include the kids in the top quartile (and usually more like the top decile), I find it hard to believe that you can’t find plenty of honors colleges where the vast majority of kids are of similar intellectual ability to those in the top 30 LACs.
It’s not a matter of intellectual ability. It’s what you find important, your “turn of mind”. It’s the difference between Northwestern and UChicago.
@MYOS1634, yes it’s different, but it’s like the difference between different LACs who take in student bodies with similar test scores* (and different honors colleges differ from each other as well).
http://publicuniversityhonors.com is a good place to start looking in to honors colleges.
*W&L and Vassar are ranked close together in the USNews LAC ranking, for instance, but very different from each other.
I think we are saying the same thing, but not sure. Your numbers were very interesting.
For example, Amherst college has around 480 freshmen, and 83% and 85% were above 700, so around 400 students scored above 700 on CR and around 408 scored above 700 in Math.
At University of Pittsburgh there are around 4,000 freshmen, only 26% scored above 700 in CR and only 35% in Math. However, in hard numbers that would be over 1,000 students who scored above 700 in CR and 1,400 who scored over 700 in Math! So there are more than 2.5 X more students at U. of Pittsburgh who scored above 700 in each SAT section.
Or at Claremont-McKenna College where 60% of the 350 freshmen scored above a 700 in each section – that’s just 210 total freshmen above 700 at CMC versus 1,000 and 1,400 respectively at U. of Pittsburgh.
Unfortunately, I think employers, grad program admissions, and the general public often doesn’t appreciate that in hard numbers, there may be 5 or 6 times as many high scoring students at U. of Pittsburgh than at CMC. They focus on “median” or “average” without realizing that the students above the median at a larger university would fill 4 LACs. So the drawback to honors colleges versus small LAC is that it is much more difficult to stand out because your student will be among 1,000 or more high achieving students instead of just 400 or even 200.
And the other difference is that there will also be a few thousand lower scoring students in the class as well. But in terms of finding other students who are high scoring – there are 5 times more at Pitt than at CMC. (Using anything above 700 to mean “high scoring”).
@observer12, are you referring to Pitt as whole or the Honor College specifically?
While there is an automatic eligibllty standard for those that are interested, matriculation isn’t required; furthermore outside of automatic admission as a Freshman with an academic profile of 1450 SAT / 32 ACT amd a certain GPA /Course Rigor, it’s also possible to participate in the Honors College after admittance so I don’t think there is any way of understanding the Honors College academic profile in its totality.
Not diminishing the distinction, but it’s hard to compare to a standalone LAC.
@Chembiodad to further the stats you posted, many of those LACs are test optional, therefore for those schools, those scores listed as top 25% are the rosiest because students with low test scores did not submit their scores.
My daughter received full tuition to Pitt and an invitation to interview for room and board. I loved Pitt… D did not. When she interviewed, she came out saying how incredibly intelligent and accomplished these students were. Besides the stats, these kids were involved in all sorts of things and several of them had their research published in HS. She said she found the experience to be humbling.
I have no doubt in my mind that if D attended the honors college at this school, she would have been surrounded by some amazing young adults and would have had some outstanding opportunities. I agree that the honors college is difficult to understand…
Pitt is not an LAC, but not everybody likes LACs ( spoken as somebody who thought her daughter would attend one).
@m22boys We were in similar situation in that our kid somehow also made NMF and was a strong student although not an academic super star. We also had saved up money for a private college or to an in- state UCLA or Berkeley. I knew we would pretty much be a full pay and it bothered me enough that I began to research about Honors Colleges and made him apply to 2 of them, get in and get merit based scholarships so we could visit later and decide. I wasn’t so much concerned that I would be unnecessarily throwing money at expensive college as regretting not explaining to my kid what he could do with the money he would be saving by attending a low cost or nearly free Honors College. After the after glow of having gotten into Stanford early wore off, I began to ask why should we pay full for Stanford when he could get a solid undergraduate education at OOS Honors.
Anyway, your kid took the route that our kid chose not to take due to the fact that Honors Colleges don’t hold a spot for you if you decide to do a gap year, but I think your kid would have done well at any college. Crazy that a school like Tuft or Dartmouth would
not accept a kid like your son though.
I can tell you that if Honors College allowed us to reserve a spot for the year after the gap year activity of studying language abroad, I would have kept that option open and give my kid a chance to decide after he has had a chance to step back from his high school experience.
@observer12, grad programs and most employers aren’t as stupid/ignorant as you assume they are. Grad programs, especially. The general public may be, but the general public also isn’t making admissions or hiring decisions (the general public also hasn’t heard of most LACs, especially those outside their own region). In any case, grad programs/employers admit/hire individuals, not schools. This brings to mind an anecdote from a previous life. I had interviewed at a small financial company but later went somewhere else. The guy I went to work for knew/had interviewed a bunch of the people there. We both agreed that one of the guys there was extremely sharp. Neither of us remembered what uni in Denmark he had attended and we probably wouldn’t recognize it even if we had.
If you have talent and know your stuff, that will shine through. That’s why the education itself is paramount (and network, though that matters more in some fields than others).
@Sue22, a few are Test Optional amd a few are Test Flexible, which in that case still requires submission of very specific testing data. Not sure that I get the “rosiest” comment as Bowdoin is Test Optional and Colby is Test Flexible - do you think scores would be even lower at the USNWR #3 and #12 ranked LAC’s?
^You mean, @suzyQ7 , not @Sue22 when she said,
Personally, I don’t think it would make a difference whether the school was test-optional or test-flexible. I would need further corroboration before I could say conclusively that LACs are turning away massive numbers of applicants with SATs >700.
@circuitrider, thx for correcting the “S”. Are you saying that you would need further corroboration to confirm that Test Optional or Test Flexible LAC’s aren’t turning away massive numbers of applicants with SAT’s > 700?
If yes I think we have that corroboration, as in the case of Hamilton the admittance rate for SAT 1400-1500 / ACT 31-33 was only 37% - I am sure all of the others that are either Test Optional or Test Flexible are the same. We also know in the case of Hamilton only 10% of Applicants submitted under the Test Flexible Option, which is only 16% of the Admitted Class.
I was using the stats of all students at U. Pittsburgh, not just the Honors College. I was responding to the comments about finding other students at a state college (versus a highly selective one) who are also academically strong.
There are apparently over 1,000 students at U. Pittsburgh who scored over 700 in CR and 1,400 (Many are probably the same) who scored over 700 in Math. There are significantly fewer than half that number (sometimes only 1/4 of that number) who have scores that high in many top LACs.
And I suspect if you took the stats of the 400 or 500 frosh students in the Honors College at Pitt, their academic statistics from high school are likely on par – or perhaps even better – than the entire class of students at a similar size very selective LAC.
So attending an Honors Program will expose you to just as many - if not more - academically strong students as a small LAC. There are other reasons to choose one or the other, but certainly not the lack of smart kids at state university Honors Programs because there are enough of those students there to fill 2 or 4 small LACs.
@observer. yes I agree that larger numbers are on campus at a university, but the question is whether one would interact with them at the same rate as when one is at a smaller LAC.
Maybe I’m being cynical, but I think the real question that some people are asking is “would one have to interact with all those lower-scoring and obviously less desirable students as well?”
Because the big difference is not the number of very smart students, since there are twice or three times as many at Pitt. The real difference is that there are even more “less academically accomplished” students at that university who those very smart students may actually have to interact with as well! Oh dear! At a small LAC that wouldn’t be a problem since those other students are excluded from the environment. I suppose if you think that their mere presence would be a burden to those many high performing students, then a small LAC would be the way to go.
(I know this is cynical, but I wonder how many parents who say “but there aren’t enough smart kids” are really saying “but there are too many students who just aren’t up to my child’s high standards.”)
Yes, think that is being cynical as a small class LAC learning environment is very different from a university - could be better or worse depending on the student.
That said, yes the sheer number of students below a 1400 SAT is greater at most large universities, including many of the very best universities such as Duke, Northwestern or Wash U.
I don’t think it has anything to do with “high standards” as that is a subjective, and in my mind an aloof concept, but I do think one would want to surround their S or D with as many academic peers as possible, regardless of whether that is at a university or LAC.
I agree with you that a small class LAC learning environment is different.
But that is not why I posted. I posted in response to the notion that there would not be enough smart kids in that university.
“I do think one would want to surround their S or D with as many academic peers as possible, regardless of whether that is at a university or LAC.”
Exactly. And you will get a larger number of academic peers at a larger university than at a small LAC.
But you will also get a larger number of students who perhaps are not “academic peers” and I suspect that bothers people more than they are willing to acknowledge. As if their mere presence would affect the learning and experience of the many high performing students.