<p>Dad 2, it is understandable that you want the most highly desired schools for your kids. That is what makes those schools so desirable, for the most part. Not a problem to add them to the college list for your kids. But please bear in mind that it takes little to make a list with the ivies and other top schools. Not a challenge at all. And oh, it feels so good to visit them and lovingly try to assess one against the other. Oh, to discuss the merits of Harvard vs Yale, and whether MIT is better in another way. It really feels great and is ever so satisfying. </p>
<p>The tough part of the college search is to find those schools that are not so well known, not as selective and can yet deliver what your student wants in a school and home for himself. That is where the real work lies.</p>
<p>“To “impress the people from old country” I should probably descripe myself as affluent and rich.”</p>
<p>Perhaps you might want to consider that there’s no point in impressing the people from the old country in the first place. You have over double the US average income; you are upper middle class by anyone’s standards. </p>
<p>“At one period, I was considering LAC as an option. However, I have a very difficult time understand the concept of LAC. More importantly, DS has not shown any interest in LAC.”</p>
<p>He’s not shown an interest in them because he probably has only heard about HYP and similar schools between you and your dd’s search. They are undergraduate focused. They won’t have business schools, law schools or medical schools. That’s all. Many have just as much prestige (not among the common person, but among people who know better) as the top schools, and they offer more personalized attention. FWIW, my biggest personal regret is that I myself looked only at universities and not LAC’s.</p>
<p>Dad II, your daughter is a rising freshman. Who knows what the future holds? She may or may not want to go get a graduate degree. She could change her mind entirely – and that’s just fine.</p>
<p>What if your daughter loves it out there in California and decides to apply to a UC for graduate school? What if she changes her mind entirely and decides to apply to, oh, I don’t know, divinity school? Who knows? Why does it need to be predetermined? I think a lot of the frustration that people have with you is that you pre-judge that only certain places are worth going to and that only certain paths are worthwhile. She’s 18 yo and her path to H/Y/MIT grad school is already being written for her. That’s not great, that’s sad. </p>
<p>I echo the other poster in that it’s not a good idea just to expose ds to Harvard, Yale, MIT (and presumably Stanford), because you’re doing exactly what we’ve all been telling you not to do – hanging your hopes on several schools that are complete crapshoots for almost everyone, no matter how smart.</p>
<p>PG, per your post #102, you miss the whole point as usual. I have not ever been trying to impress anyone at the old country. If I had, I would have said I were affluent and rich. </p>
<p>DD knows she is going to get a Ph.D. or what have you since probably before she was 10. It was partly her idea to do the trip. She had all her four year pretty much planned out. Between interns and study abroad, she will not have much time in her junior and senior summers.</p>
<p>From this round we learnt that we will not be able to afford our EFC from the like of Duke or WashU. So, we, including DS, have agreed that DS will apply to ultra High and middle tier schools.</p>
<p>Dad II, I’m afraid to ask what you consider a middle tier school.</p>
<p>Your daughter is going to love Harvard, Yale and MIT. Why wouldn’t she? Who wouldn’t? At the point where she decides to actually go get that master’s / PhD, she may have a whole host of other considerations in mind. Like I said, maybe she’ll want to stay in California and a UC will be of interest to her. Maybe she’ll want to be under the tutelage of a particular professor who is affiliated with a completely different school. You are setting up, for both your daughter and your son, that the world revolves around the ultra high schools and that they are the best choices for everything. That is not accurate. It’s a big, big world out there. Please, let her explore it. </p>
<p>If your family is going to be in Boston anyway, would you be amenable to looking at, say, Boston College or Boston University to give your son exposure to something other than Harvard / MIT? Can other posters suggest good LAC’s that should be included on the trip for the benefit of the son?</p>
Oh really??? Then why have you written many, many posts in the past, speaking of the shame you will feel if D’s university is not recognizable by relatives? Why were you writing about how upset you were, worrying about how your D’s school would compare to those your neices & nephews attend?</p>
<p>Dad2, I think it’s great that you are looking at the high end possibilities so you know what is needed to get the foot in the door when the time comes. What I am saying is that you should also look at the lesser known possibilities as well, and they require more time and effort, as there is not as much info out there on them.<br>
As for your son, since you now know what schools like Duke and Wash U expect in terms of contribution from you, looking at schools with merit money is going to be a goal for you. I just want to comment that both Duke and Wash U are in the rare category of being top dog schools that also give merit awards, albeit to the most highly desired students. Many schools like HPY do not give a dime for merit. You get need only, and you now have an idea how need is defined. To get substantial merit money, you need to look at schools that have it and will give it out. There are threads out there that list those schools. You may not want to apply to schools that give need monies only, and need to look at how many merit awards a school gives out.
I was just answering to a thread about UPitt. The question was how hard it is to get a full tuition scholarship there. My impression is that it is a school that does give generous awards to more kids than most. Those are the type of schools you may want to examine. A school like BC with a generous tuition paid award is great, but only 25 or so are given each year, and those kids who get them are HPY material. The chances of getting that money is very slim. There are some schools like Arizona or Oklahoma where if you qualify stat wise, it is pretty much automatic what you get. The whole idea when going for merit money is to diversify the apps so you get different odds there with some good and sure ones to balance the lottery tickets.</p>
<p>Oh please tell me this is a joke. Your daughter hasn’t even started at Stanford yet and you’re already starting to prepare for her graduate program? </p>
<p>And how do you think your son will feel knowing that part of the reason for the trip is to prepare for his sister’s graduate schooling?</p>
<p>There are some fabulous smaller schools out there where your son would likely receive good merit aid, and would certainly be welcomed as an Asian fellow. Agreed that Kenyon is a good choice. What about some of the other LAC schools in the midwest? There are not flocks of Asian students applying to these schools. If your son is interested in engineering (MIT would give me this impression), perhaps you might consider Lehigh or Lafayette, both smaller schools with well regarded programs in engineering, computer science and the like. Have you considered Case Western? Maybe that’s too close to home for DS, but it is a fine school. What about UPitt, UMD College Park for state universities. Both offer merit aid to OOS students. If your son’s stats are quite high, he could be in the running for a McNair Scholarship (total cost of attendance) at University of South Carolina. The school is a hidden gem and on the rise. Their sciences are excellent and the engineering school strong. Their medical school is well regarded in the south. What about schools like Hamilton and Haverford? How about Muhlenberg? They have great sciences there and a very high percentage of acceptances into medical schools too (not that I think your son is a medical school propspective…but it says something about the quality of their science programs).</p>
<p>DadII, it will be cinch for you to understand the concept of a LAC. In a nutshell, it represents the undergraduate college of university. Unfortunately, the dividing lines are often blurried For instance, many large universities have created Honors Colleges to offer programs typically found at Liberal Arts Colleges. Also, all LACs are not similar. While many are “in the middle of nowhere” and are residential in nature, you’ll find LAC is large cities as well, or in close suburban areas. In addition, there are consortiums (loosely adapted from the UK Oxford) that offer access to other neighboring colleges, or even within the same campus.</p>
<p>Further, the lines between programs offered are also blurry. While some believe that LACs do not offer programs in engineering or “business” and are weak in sciences, the reality is quite different. While everyone (well most at least) has heard of the greatness of MIT or Stanford in engineering, the closest UNDERGRADUATE competitor to Caltech is none other than a LAC most people never heard much about. Indeed, Harvey Mudd does not ring many bells, but its accomplishments are nonetheless remarkable. Take a look at the recently released study. </p>
<p>I would highly encourage you to learn a bit more about the LACs. All you really need is invest a few bucks and purchase the next online version of the US News (in exactly) 3 weeks and spend time clicking on the links. This said, for some reason, I believe you must own the 2008 version. </p>
<p>Since financial aid is extremely important to you, you should not discard LACs because many of them offer very generous financial aid packages and some cover 100% of need via grant. If HYPS is generous, so are many LACs. </p>
<p>Lastly, since you are a PhD yourself, you know that the pursuit of a PhD in many scientific avenues does not equate to a trip to the poor house. Many graduate students are able to survive quite well with a combination of assistanships and stipends. As fas as you daughter is concerned, you have done your part by making the sacrifices to move around the country and select a good school district. You have been able to let her choose a school where she can flourish and be happy. While such school does not come without expenses, you seem happy with the current outcome. All the next steps should be hers! </p>
<p>The same should apply to your son. In the same way, I wrote when you started your daughter’s quest, things WILL work out. Parental guidance and support are great (and needed) but micromanaging the process by creating a persona from bits and pieces is not a good idea. </p>
<p>Your job is to polish the person your son is today, but not developing new “hooks.” Your job is to expand his horizon of possible schools, not to restrict them through erroneously perceived values (or costs.)</p>
<p>Again, relax … it will work out! But DO read about LACs, even if they are in the middle of nowhere. :)</p>
<p>Great advice! Dad II, if you are driving to Boston from Ohio and have a specific route in mind, you might even be able to stop at some of these places along the way and let your son have a look.</p>
<p>If you are driving from Ohio to Boston and back again,you could look at Oberlin and Kenyon in Ohio, Cornell in New York, Williams and Amherst in Massachusetts. You could take a drive up to Bowdoin from Boston. While in Boston you could look at Tufts. While en route between Yale and Boston you could look at Brown and/or Wesleyan. What about Columbia? How about a swing down to the Philadelphia area to see Penn, Swarthmore, and Haverford? Others have already mention the other schools in PA. The possibilities are endless, and your son’s ultimate stats and interests are unknown.</p>
<p>Again, all of the schools named are pretty well known. I think it is a good idea to look for the gems out there with some good merit money that are not well known. It’s easy to come up with a list of the colleges that are in practically every guide book. It’s the lesser known ones that are hard to find.</p>
<p>I agree; I don’t think that merely adding on the rest of the Ivies and the very top LAC’s is going to further what Dad II needs to do to best serve his son and expand his thinking.</p>
<p>Dad II, would you ever consider, say, a UPitt for your son if the money were right? It doesn’t have the name recognition of HYP but plenty of people do quite well coming out of there. The UPitt grad that I know has two homes that together total $5 million, if that makes you feel better, and was able to send his own kids to top 20 schools without breaking a sweat :-).</p>
<p>Want also add that when we looked at schools for each of our sons, we did add some lesser known schools on our list and were surprised to find some great schools that are not so well known. Loved visiting St Mary’s in MD, College of Charleston, Wooster, Washington College in MD, Mary Washington, to name just a few. Have heard great things about Elon, James Madison, Washington & Jefferson. With each kid I tried to add a few schools that were not usual fare, and there were some nice surprises out there. I really liked Fordham and Fairfield along with a couple of specialty schools this time around, that were very good deals. Just last week we were in Seattle and I loved visiting U Wash there. Not on enough kids’ lists, in my opinion. Macalester, Whitman, Lewis&Clark, Roanoke also are schools that have caught my eye this time around, and interest is there for U Oregon as well.</p>
<p>Dad II, this may sound trite, but have you looked at Colleges That Change Lives? It may be a good starting point for you in terms of hearing about all the different types of schools that are out there, many of which offer outstanding opportunities.</p>