<p>ibtelling: What you describe is exactly what I call trophy-hunting. Self-regarding "curiosity". I don't respect it. Sorry. Feel free to disagree with me.</p>
<p>ramaswami: Given your educational-equivalence hypothesis, it's hard for me to believe that your son couldn't have gotten equally acceptable results applying to, say, 8-10 colleges, including 4-5 of the Ivies. Or fewer. I recognize there's a prisoner's dilemma here. If everyone played by my rules, everyone would be better off, but if that's not true there may be a marginal -- but very, very marginal -- advantage in what your son did.</p>
<p>The problem with your thesis on prestige is this: 30 years ago, everyone could tell the difference between the students and faculty at Harvard and the students and faculty at, say, WashU, Northwestern, or Duke. Today, it would be awfully hard to find a statistical difference among them, or among 80% of them. What that already means, and will continue to mean, is that it is going to be hard to tell their graduates apart, too, and thus the prestige difference between Harvard and those schools is eroding (although the prestige difference between those schools and, say SW Missouri State may in fact be increasing).</p>
<p>You might be underplaying passion and commitment to a single institution. I have heard rumors that the ivies compare who applied to where. I am sure they don't look kindly on trophy hunters.</p>
<p>JHS, curious in the sense that you wish to know if your efforts have truly blossomed enough to be ivy-caliber, if all the passionate and sweet moments you've accomplished during high school can amount to something more, if you wish to know you can compete in our 21st century world. Not "curious" as by "Oh, it's Harvard, I'll give it a shot just for giggles."</p>
<p>If you need to get some schools approval "It's called seeing if you can get into these schools based on your individual merit. You have pride in yourself, yes, but you're also curious as to see how and what the colleges think about you. " that is almost sad, that you only apply to see if you are "worthy"- not that you want to go there but so somehow prove to yourself special- does it matter what soe admin person thinks of you if you really aren't interested in that school</p>
<p>it is trophy hunting in many cases, prestige hunters in others, parents wanting that Name in others </p>
<p>for supposedly smart kids to be so lazy about the process that makes me sad</p>
<p>and to be so interested in the "prestige" of 8 schools over the any dozens of amazing schools....</p>
<p>I am sooooo tired of the prestige word and the prestige hunters. When I see how many posters want to go to an Ivy because of the name, I wonder how truely intelletucal some of those classrooms will actually be if so many students went there because they want that name</p>
<p>You can have the Ivy league - I for one ain't all that impressed with the names alone- someone tells me, oh I went to an "ivy"- eh....I look beyond the school and look to the person</p>
<p>I see it as trophy hunting, though seems to be a whole lot of denial and defensiveness going on</p>
<p>If you believe it is a rational strategy for a child to apply where his/her SAT scores match up with current undergraduates, do you realize that not all of the Ivy League schools actually have the students with the highest scores?</p>
<p>I first said that the applicant already feels pride or a sense of "worthiness." They are not trying to prove themselves. Think in the students' perspective. Some need to give it a go. This isn't a matter of ego. They want to see if the most competitive universities in the nation will accept them. And these universities, unfortunately, are prestigious. Guess what? That comes with being labeled as having a collection of the most talented students. (I said collection because we all realize there are as smart, if not, smarter and more talented students at state schools, etc for diff. reasons) If we wanted to apply to small schools that have low admit. rates in the state, guess what? Most of you won't think of us as "prestige hunters" because the college isn't "prestigious" in your USNW rankings. Nevertheless, the reason to do this is the same as applying to HYPS (which I agree, have suffered the brand labels of "prestige" taken in the wrong direction by some). I admit some do this to find their "worthiness," but then again, there are many like me who do it for other and different reasons, which I described in above posts. Hope that ends the confusion and can help you guys think a bit.</p>
<p>ib, I didn't misunderstand you at all. I would not have been as harsh with you if I had noticed that you were a high school senior (congratulations!), not a parent. But the confusion is yours: Applying to multiple schools as a way of validating your efforts and seeking external confirmation of your worth is precisely what we call, metaphorically, "trophy hunting". You're not hunting for food; you're hunting to confirm what a great hunter you are. "Needing to give it a go" = ego.</p>
<p>since you attended both, care to chime in with the "similarities" of Columbia and Dartmouth (besides the fact that they belong to the same athletic conference and have smart kids)?</p>
<p>
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It's called seeing if you can get into these schools based on your individual merit.
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<p>Trophy hunting or seeing if you can get in...a distinction without a difference. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>It's only trophy hunting in the sense that all the Ivy Leagues are good schools. Many kids are adaptable and can live with many different social and political environments. Unless they've decided on a major and know exactly what they wanna do, it makes sense to apply to a whole bunch of strong academic schools... name-brand schools, but that's how brands work, you trust the one that has a reputation enough that you've heard good things about it. <em>shrugs</em> </p>
<p>It's not all about bragging rights. That's simplifying it.</p>
<p>Then, I would submit that you short-changed your child. Did you know that Cal-Berkeley has more high SAT scorers in absolute numbers than Harvard, i.e., Cal has more "grandmasters". :)</p>
<p>
[quote]
I do believe in the future prestige will matter more.
<p>UC Berkeley is a huge school. Also, absolute numbers are only one way of looking at it. Relatively, there are larger no. of mediocre scorers there. I never said prestige is unimportant. It is. Did I not mention signaling effects. There is the self-confidence effect. Also, what is the point in ending up at schools where your lower-functioning classmates ended up. There is a discriminant factor.</p>
<p>Unless the folks who have differed are unusual, I find one thing odd: Americans are so much into prestige where it does not count for much, big houses, fancy cars and vacations, name dropping of the exotic destinations they have been to, exotic wines they know, younger and younger second and third wives, yet when it comes to these discussion boards, some airily dismiss the effects of prestige on child's career.</p>
<p>I mentioned the future in one post. It is already here. The select colleges, not just Ivies but also Duke, Swarthmore, etc, place higher proportion of students into professional schools. Just one example.</p>
<p>JHS,
This is where EA applications make the most sense to me. DS applied to three schools EA, in part because two of them were very high on his list, but more importantly, to test his competitiveness in the admissions pool. He was accepted at those two, deferred/waitlisted/declined WL at the third.</p>
<p>What he did differently was to <em>drop</em> two high-ranking schools from his list after hearing EA. I know some would have been emboldened to apply to even more top-brand schools after getting fabulous EA news. But with two stellar schools <em>that he wanted</em> in hand, he was very sensitive to his friends who did not fare as well in EA and were applying to many other top schools. S refused to apply to schools just because they were highly ranked in his major. If he didn't like them, he wasn't applying. Period.</p>
<p>He kept three RD applications open at schools that he would seriously consider and/or where he stood an excellent chance for merit $$. He reluctantly added Harvard, largely at our request, to see what FA would look like for us under their new guidelines. </p>
<p>In the end, he did better in EA than RD. Go figure. He said a year ago he really didn't want an Ivy League school, but he liked Cornell in spite of himself. ;) They and Harvard both turned him down. He got into the ones he cared about, and raking in any other trophies would have been unseemly as far as he was concerned.</p>
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He said a year ago he really didn't want an Ivy League school, but he liked Cornell in spite of himself.
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<p>He should not feel bad about this. Cornell is the least Ivy-like of the Ivies, in my opinion (and I went to school there). It's by far the biggest Ivy and it's the only one where the majority of the kids are not in liberal arts majors. That gives it a unique atmosphere.</p>
<p>ramaswami,
I do not believe that your son needed, or should have, applied to 8 Ivies. I never believed it. You have posted quite a bit about your son, your own (& wife's) philosophy of education, and that approach perfectly aligns with exactly one Ivy: Columbia. Now, there are other colleges/U's which also emphasize Great Books, but not all of those include as great a proportion of intellectual peers for your son as does C. I agree with blue: Dartmouth & Columbia are not similar in respects <em>beyond</em> the athletic conference category. Lots of people would actually argue that a place like Swarthmore (intensely intellectual), or Cooper Union (superby talented student body in engineering), or Rice (heavily talented internat'l student body) also have a great deal in common with your selection criteria. Forgot one important one: University of Chicago. (interested in studying, not athletics, partying, etc.)</p>
<p>He applied to Rice, rejected but that was a safety and he was probably rejected because in the section on other schools applying to he had all the 8 Ivies.</p>
<p>I agree that our philosophy matches only Columbia, now Chicago and St. John's (when applying he wanted to study engineering). The core was one important aspect, the SAT scores of peers another (rejected by MIT but never keen on it anyway because it did not align with core philos nor does Cooper Union).</p>
<p>Why the other 7 Ivies? All have some sort of engineering, in all you can construct an equivalent of Columbia's Core and all have the prestige factor important to us.</p>
<p>But in an eerie way, Columbia sent a likely letter early in February, eased our pressure way off, maybe they saw the match as exactly as you did. Thanks.</p>
<p>I can certainly imagine students applying to most of the Ivies for the reasons already offered. But to apply to all of them does seem to mean that the criteria of prestige outweighed every other characteristic. Even if "fit" is defined as a school with an intellectually equivalent peer group and that is the primary quality one is seeking, still some quality experienced on a campus tour or some tidbit gleaned from a course catalog should have distinguished certain schools or eliminated others from among the Ivies. </p>
<p>After visiting a variety of schools including matches and safeties, S liked Yale the best and so applied EA. He was deferred and then denied. S did not even want to consider Harvard and didn't apply. After visiting Brown, he was unimpressed and decided not to apply. Columbia and Dartmouth were his favorites after Yale. I think both of them seemed to have a quality in the student body, in addition to smarts, that he identified with. Princeton didn't appeal to him as much (the personality it presented didn't fit him so well), but he applied for financial aid reasons since their calculator showed we'd receive about $10,000 more there than at other schools. My point is that I would think there would be something which would cause a student to eliminate at least one or two.</p>
<p>If your S is truly interested in Engineering, ramaswami, then you are undeniably a "trophy hunter" and a pretty sad one at that.</p>
<p>If you had truly focused on "prestige," with respect to Engineering, then you would have been more upset by the MIT rejection (ranked #1 in Engineering) and your S would have applied to Cal-Berkeley and Stanford (tied for #2 in Engineering rankings). I can assure you that the SAT scores at those schools, in those departments, are through the roof. But, personally, I think you are WAY too hung up on SAT scores (and my son is a NMF).</p>
<p>When my S and I toured the "big 3" last Spring (HYP), I was very proud of how he took in all the info, tried to get a good read on the intangible "atmosphere" at each of the schools, and decided he only wanted to apply to one.</p>
<p>The fact that your S applied to all 8 Ivies is ridiculous, a sign that either you or he have no idea about what you want out of college, other than a brand name.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, to err is human, and I wish your S the best of luck in college!</p>
<p>lextalionis, I like your dismissive comment about to err is human, etc.
I said he wanted engineering but did not add that he was not too keen. He wanted an engineering and lib arts background to try operations research or econ in grad school or finance. </p>
<p>Second, the SAT score band for MIT is almost identical to Columbia's and other Ivies.</p>
<p>Third, prestige or brand consciousness, signaling effects are a more valid way to choose a school than the intangible "my son did not like XYZ or liked ABC". USNews and the Shanghai rankings or the Times etc are a better guide (not infallible, not ones you should necessarily follow) than a kid's feelings about a visit. For Pete's sake, if you and I have raised kids who cannot be unhappy for 4 years because of a poor fit of atmospherics then we haven't done a good job of being parents. Out with this hedonism and fit and taking kids on college tours. A whole industry has sprung up around this stupid college visit.</p>