<p>Proudpatriot, you’re preachin’ to the choir. I’d add to your wish list, I wish people would mind their own d*mn business when it comes to criticizing another family’s kid’s college choices. I’m getting sick and tired of hearing people tell my D, when she says that one of the career options she’s considering is public education, “there’s no money in teaching” - as if they were revealing some deep dark secret that she’s too stupid to know.</p>
<p>I can understand when kids do it. Adults should know better.</p>
<p>^ ihs76 (post #93),
I see your point about Montana and Montana State. What’s really shocking is that both schools offer a Ph.D. in math, without offering much math even at the graduate level. That seems almost unconscionable to me.</p>
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<p>Right. And even more important than prestige, in my opinion, they are not the only schools where you can get a high quality education. It’s the elevation of prestige over quality that makes the Ivies “special” in the minds of many. I’ve always valued educational quality more than prestige. There’s certainly educational quality to be had at the Ivies, but I’m totally convinced my D1 is getting every bit as good an education, if not better, at her tiny, academically supercharged, but low-visibility LAC (Haverford) which is completely undergrad-focused and where her professors are there for her every day, all her classes are small (not true at the Ivies), and as a sophomore she’s on a first-name basis with all the faculty in her department.</p>
<p>MiamiDAP, I WAS comparing the calculus based physics course for science & engineering majors at MIT to the one at my daughter’s ivy to the one at my small college. The courses were all for the same target audience - science and engineering majors. The lectures at my midrange, masters providing institution were sadly lacking in comparison.</p>
<p>I agree about adults that comment negatively on a kid’s chosen major or occupation. My son has been accepted at the Naval Academy and was told by one adult “That is a complete waste of your talent. You’ll never achieve anything in the Navy.” WHAT ???</p>
<p>To all the newbie parents out there- it doesn’t get better once the acceptances are over. Near strangers feel free to comment on your kids choice of major, where they are living, and even their post grad plans.</p>
<p>So buckle your seat belts.</p>
<p>My kids are all done. They are all happily employed, pay their taxes as far as I can tell, are self-supporting, and even manage to clear the table when they are home. So I feel justified in taking a breather from active parenting. And just last weekend I heard, “boy, I bet X regrets having gone into Y field now that it’s so hard to find a job”. So I said, “Well he feels so fortunate to be loving what he does and knows how lucky he is to be employed.” To which I got, “Boy, he’ll regret it soon if he doesn’t regret it already”.</p>
<p>I also hear, “I’ll bet you wish you hadn’t blown all that money on undergrad so you could help pay for grad school” which is hilarious since that kids employer is paying for grad school (every cent I might add).</p>
<p>Did I ever ask for financial planning advice? Did I ever complain about “blowing” all that money? Who gives random and uncalled for advice like this?</p>
<p>Answer- virtually everyone. So toughen up folks.</p>
<p>For that matter, there are actually many great schools out there, well worthy of consideration, which are not “prestigious.” </p>
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<p>YES.</p>
<p>My D2 goes to a college prep school which sends a high proportion of its students to very prestigious colleges. D2, while a very bright young lady with good test scores and solid yet not outrageous grades, is not the caliber of student to be accepted into an Ivy or similar uber-selective school. </p>
<p>She could have applied to any number of “prestigious” smaller LAC’s and been accepted to some of them. But she really wants the “BIG U” experience that her father and I had, so has applied to several of them which have good honors programs. In the early stages of her college application process, a number of people registered SHOCK at her choices, saying “Are you kidding? Wouldn’t you want to shoot higher than that?!” One of these was a teacher, another a guidance counselor, and a third was a student. She has kept mum about all this ever since because she really doesn’t care to hear any more of that kind of nonsense. She has loved her school, but if she were a student at even a very high performing public school, no one would ever make those kinds of comments about the big public universities. Sometimes I just shake my head about all this.</p>
<p>When I hear a student has been accepted to an Ivy, I think they must be a very bright and accomplished kid, and I’m happy for them. But my admiration for that doesn’t extend to thinking every other school save Stanford, Duke, and a couple of ultra selective LAC’s would be a huge let down or cause for embarrassment, and there are apparently a fair number of people out there who not only think that way, but feel perfectly comfortable making judgmental statements about others’ choices.</p>
<p>I thank my lucky stars everyday that IRL, I’m an introvert. No one “registered shock” about any of my kids’ college choices – or if they did, they were the proverbial trees falling in the forest. The idea of having people who aren’t directly involved in my kids’ college choices expressing unasked-for opinions (in a context other than here on a message board, of course) gives me the chills. I mean, really. Some other person who has nothing in common with you other than your kids go to the same high school has an opinion and you come across it and listen to it and let it resonate in your head – why, again? I really don’t get it. I don’t know why you would treat it as anything other than a blah-blah-blah in-one-ear-and-out-the-other situation.</p>
<p>Proud, my son was at the Army-Navy game last weekend. Unfortunately, he had to sit on the Army side, but claimed “A victory is a victory!” Anchors Aweigh!</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, it mainly resonated in my daughter’s head, therefore mine. She’s pretty thick skinned, but she is still young and does have feelings which can occasionally be hurt, especially by people she respects,such as teachers and her guidance counselor. I’m sure there are people out there who are completely impervious to others’ barbs, but we don’t function 100% successfully in that regard. Yes, we are imperfect.</p>
<p>We didn´t tell that many people where D2 was applying until her ED application was in because we didn´t want anyone´s opinion. Many D2´s friends´parents are our friends, we have tried not to discuss colleges with each other. This week, I am not emailing anyone unless they email me first to let me know the news. D2 sees everyone´s new status on FB anyway.</p>
<p>Isn´t this the same as when we were pregnant and raising our kids? Strangers would come up to us to tell us what we were doing wrong - not feeding properly, not holding the baby correctly, too much TV, not enough sleep…</p>
<p>As someone who attended a high performing NYC public magnet exam school, I had a GC recount how he strongly discouraged one older classmate/alum with Ivy-level stats from applying to BC because it was “below his academic level” and his main reason for making it his #1 choice was because of Eagles football. </p>
<p>Had a teacher who frequently tried to dissuaded anyone from applying to what he considered “schools which charge Ivy league tuition for a mediocre state university education”…BU was one of his favorite examples. </p>
<p>I also personally witnessed one teacher tell a top-stats upperclassman friend to not even consider applying to SUNYs or CUNY schools like Brooklyn College Honors or CCNY because they all would be well-below his academic level and “he’d get mugged at the latter school for his above-average intellect.” Friend ended up going to Harvard and is now a STEM Prof. at a academically topflight Big 10 school. </p>
<p>In short, these types of comments are also quite commonplace at many high performing public high schools.</p>
<p>^^^^Oldfort, D2 had a head of thick curly hair as a newborn. In the grocery store, a woman said “Oh my God!!! Why would you put a wig on a newborn?”</p>
<p>Since your school was in NY, I imagine that would be more common than where I live, which is in Texas. Texas does send kids to all kinds of prestigious schools, even Ivies, but the kind of mentality that you describe is far less common, if for no other reason than that many of those schools are in the northeast, so are not on the radar of the majority of students here just due to the geography.</p>
<p>One factor in this is that NY’s state and city colleges weren’t regarded as topflight choices for the tippy-top or even above average students who could end up at an elite college/university. Especially those who attended academically rigorous high schools like the one I attended where state/city flagship colleges were regarded as fallbacks for those at the middle-bottom of the class. </p>
<p>That’s different from states like California, Virginia, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, North Carolina, Texas etc where they have topflight flagships which match or sometimes even exceed the academic cred of the elite private universities.</p>
<p>At my D’s “high performing public high school,” we parents discuss college issues all the time, and I have yet to hear a put-down or a disrespectful comment; and if my D is hearing them from her classmates, she hasn’t told me so. Where my D gets the comment about the career choice is from (a) nosy inlaws (one in particular), and (b) adults we know in our community.</p>
<p>You sometimes hear the expression “You never really know what goes on in anyone else’s marriage” and I’m thinking a correlary might be “You never really know what goes on in anyone else’s college applications.” I have a friend whose kid is brilliant and could probably go anywhere. She told me the other day that after years of being hauled around the world by his Army family, he really wants to go to college in his hometown because he likes the idea of putting down roots. That’s not necessarily something you share with a stranger at the PTA, but it makes perfect sense for their family. Some kids want to stay close to home to help with younger siblings (as my sister’s oldest did – she’s a single mom). The kid whose choices you are questioning might struggle with depression or some other not obvious ailment and might like to have a support system close by. The bottom line is you never really know what goes on in someone else’s house or family. Kids mature at different rates – and not everybody is ready to move thousands of miles away at age 18. That’s OK too.</p>