That is exactly the case with our family and many other students from our high school. Being in the donut hole, most of these students, including DS, chose merit scholarship.
I think the merit scholarship vs Harvard thing is significant, especially for families in that 250K per year zone, But each year only about 380 kids are admitted to Harvard that don’t attend. With losses to other Ivies, MIT, Stanford, Williams, Amherst, etc, none of which give merit aid, I’d be surprised if Harvard loses more than a couple dozen kids each year to merit aid schools.
It’s also interesting that very few responses on this thread are first person. Most are “I know a guy”. Funny how many people you meet that got into Harvard but decided not to go.
I know a boy who got into Harvard but turned it down to go to NYU Abu Dhabi because he didn’t get enough aid from Harvard, NYU AD gives all its admits full scholarships, and he really fell in love with the place during their admit weekend. They fly students from all over to come to Abu Dhabi for two days of ridiculousness…
I got into Harvard EA but will turn it down to go to Stanford (if I get in!) because I’ve really fallen in love with the place from the research I’ve done on it and from the impressions I’ve gotten from friends I know who go there. My friends at Harvard seem substantially less happy, and I always figured the upside to going to Harvard would be access to its grad schools. I can always apply to Harvard for grad anyway, and would rather go to a school where I can perform my absolute best (and would subsequently be in a better position to apply for graduate schools down the line).
It is not as uncommon as one might think. There are plenty of them floating around at 350 people each year. Couple of years ago, I met 5 of them in one afternoon on a college campus from a single school year.
^ Yep, like Navy SEALs - about 300 guys each year make it through, but they sure do seem like they’re everywhere.
FIU? Really? There were no schools in between FIU and Harvard for this student?
I suspect the number who go elsewhere for financial reasons is smaller now than in the past, though clearly there are some.
I’ve had a number of people mention to me - normally in the context of a relevant conversation, like where their kids want to go - that they got into Harvard, or one of the other schools at the top of the pyramid, but just couldn’t afford it. All people where I found it very believable.
Before the enhanced aid policies, the net cost of these schools was higher for many families. Also the percent admitted was much higher in the past - my recollection is that HYPS were all admitting around 20% 20 years ago.
So the context was different than now, where it’s much harder to get in, but easier financially (for those eligible for aid) once admitted.
not undergrad, but for grad school, I know plenty who turned down harvard.
my brother turned down Harvard MBA to attend Columbia MBA due to location (he wants to live in NYC to do year-round internship at an asset management firm to make a career switch), scholarship, and the fact that he has a bunch of friends in nyc but none in boston.
my friend from college turned down Harvard Law to attend Chicago Law, due to massive scholarship he got. now he works at the same job that he would have got had he graduated from Harvard Law, just 200k less in debt thus more dough in his bank account.
for undergrad - I’ll say this. I’d think it may actually be better that you turn down Harvard to attend a top public U with massive scholarship, or some schools like Georgetown or something if you can get big merit money. If you are good enough to get into Harvard, you can go to a pretty nice place that will give you big scholarship. and at a ‘lesser’ school, you will likely to dominate your colleagues and get the best grades, and thus be the first pile of candidate pool to get the very top job interview slots on campus.
obviously Harvard will give you much better career and educational opportunities compared to attending a total no-name state U, but if you can go to a good school that still gets strong Wall Street / top employer recruiting with huge merit scholarship money (at schools like georgetown, u michigan, northwestern, etc), i think turning down Harvard is more than justified.
At a school like U Michigan, you will likely get a 3.9 GPA with the same effort / intelligence required to get 3.5 GPA at Harvard. With former, you are a serious contender for the top I-banking / Consulting jobs. With latter, you will struggle to get 1st round interviews at top employers.
In the end, it’s not what school you went to that matters. What matters is the outcome: your career.
To add to NYU Lawyer’s post. Just as very high school is different – some being more rigorous than others – so too is Harvard and other schools. From what I have observed, Harvard is more intense than other colleges such as UMich. For example, last semester my daughter took LS2, which is one of the courses Harvard students thinking of going to medical school take (http://www.registrar.fas.harvard.edu/courses-exams/course-catalog/life-sciences-2-evolutionary-human-physiology-and-anatomy). However, as it’s Harvard, the course was jammed packed with things you wouldn’t be asked to do at UMich – like identifying every bone in the human body by week two in the course – something my wife didn’t have to do until medical school! So, sometimes students who attend other colleges do have better GPA’s and are in a better position for applying to medical school, law school, consulting etc.
http://www.dukechronicle.com/articles/2013/05/23/scholarship-yields-reflect-competition#.VMDfxEfF9Lg
- There are kids who don't apply to Harvard at all because they do not expect to get any money from the school. These kids focus on merit scholarships that will fund their undergrad education. Take a look around cc and you'll see just how dazzling these kids are.
- People have a misguided notion that Harvard is rigorous, that its students are all exceptional and that the "lesser" ranked schools are populated by mediocre students where you automatically get to be that big fish in the small pond. I have never understood that thinking. We talk over and over and over about the mission of the elite school being to create a diverse class with diverse talents and diverse backgrounds and that this means ** not ** always taking the most intelligent or most intellectual applicant. We talk about the school's ability to fill its class with highly qualified individuals 3x over. Yet when we talk about the student populations at "elite" schools vs. something else (here we have UMich given as an example) we somehow forget about all the conversations we've had about all the qualified students out there. Where do you think they are going?? Don't expect that going to UMich will mean that you'll automatically be a top student in that pool. There may be a wider range of students, some but not all classes may be easier, but I can all but guarantee you that the top performing student pool at UMich isn't going to look a whole lot different from the top performing student pool at Harvard.
Just like every high school is different – some being more rigorous than others – so too is Harvard and other colleges. From what I have observed, Harvard is harder and more intense than other schools, and the top performing students at Harvard are indeed a lot different from those say at UMich. For example, one of Harvard’s pre-med suggested courses is LS2 (http://www.registrar.fas.harvard.edu/courses-exams/course-catalog/life-sciences-2-evolutionary-human-physiology-and-anatomy), which my daughter just completed. In the course students had to identify every bone in the human body by week two – something my wife didn’t have to do until medical school. I can all but guarantee you that the top performing students at UMich did NtOT have to do that to get an A in UMich’s version of their pre-med course. Harvard professors have higher expectations than those at other schools, as pretty much all classes are geared towards the gifted and talented students: http://www.nagc.org/resources-publications/gifted-education-practices/what-it-means-teach-gifted-learners-well, which is vastly different than teaching the mainstream student – which is why Harvard is not for everyone!
@3girls3cats wrote: People have a misguided notion that Harvard is rigorous. I can all but guarantee you that the top performing student pool at UMich isn’t going to look a whole lot different from the top performing student pool at Harvard.
As someone who went elsewhere for 1 degree and Harvard for another, Harvard certainly is rigorous! The subject matters may not necessarily be any harder, but since basically everyone at Harvard would be the top student in most any other school, it’s just incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to stand out at Harvard, and the classes can just require a higher level of performance, both in typical class discussions and at exam time. Even the people who graduated at the very bottom of my class at Harvard are intelligent people who have gone onto have sterling careers with big-name employers.
I was #1 in my class at a top-10 LAC for 3 years of undergrad and #4 overall for all 4 years.
At Harvard, I was middle of the pack at best.
So maybe the top couple of students at any school may be equal to the top couple of students at Harvard, but at least my LAC had no more than maybe 10 or 15 students who could have gotten into Harvard. I can’t speak for the others but at least I am far below the top student at Harvard, but I was the top student in my LAC.
Even though it is all hypothetical at the moment, I can think of two schools my daughter would attend over Harvard, even if it were cheaper. But chances are, this will stay hypothetical. Not everyone thinks Harvard is the apex of intellectualism. Of the elite schools on her list, it’s probably somewhere in the middle.
We have a max that we can afford and I will not encourage her to just pick the cheapest option. As long as the FA package is sufficient, she’ll be free to choose the school she likes best.
Ok, I was going to leave it be but I see have to come back to clarify. There is no period at the end of my sentence that begins “…Harvard is rigorous…” I’m not doubting that Harvard is rigorous and can be plenty rigorous.
What I’m trying to underscore is that there are top flight, brilliant kids who don’t even apply to Harvard and in addition that the pool of non-admitted students is filled with top flight, brilliant kids who then choose alternate schools. Check out the competition for coveted merit scholarships at schools like Emory, Davidson, UVA, Wash U, Duke, the UCs. I think it’s a mistake to think that choosing a school–like U MIch for example–is going to be an easy ride to the top of the class. There are too many highly qualified, motivated, multi-dimensional applicants out there to think that there’s such a substantial difference between the talent you’ll meet at the top of the heap at Harvard vs. plug in the name of the school you want.
I’m in the trenches this year and I can attest to the fact that the kids applying widely (and not to Harvard) are indistinguishable from the ones accepted here. That’s all.
@DavidSonDaughter here under new ownership 
An updated tally that also takes into account the interesting Stanford link from @exodius and feedback from @nynyparent, @JHS and others. Keep the examples coming!:
Harvard – 81%
Other – 19%, as follows:
Ivy League – 5%
✓✓✓✓ Yale – 2.75%
✓✓ Princeton – 1.25%
✓ Other Ivy – 1%
✓✓✓✓ Stanford – 4%
Tech Schools – 2%
MIT – 1.5%
✓ Other Tech – 0.5%
LACs – 1.5%
✓ Williams, Swarthmore, Amherst – 0.5%
✓✓ Other LACs – 1%
Service Academies – 0.25%
✓ Music, art, and other specialty schools – 0.25%
✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓ All other schools – 5%
Something really different – 1%
An anecdote that my doctor’s son is graduating from Columbia, but after getting a bunch of Ivy acceptances including Harvard out of HS, and deciding to go to Rutgers because he “wanted to have fun in college”. He wised up and transferred to Columbia as apparently he realized you can have fun and get a great education too.
No offense to Rutgers, but…
@3girls3cats: unfortunately I completely disagree with you. I attended one of the other schools that you list, and Harvard.
While it wasn’t easy to be #1 at that other school (it took a lot of work), I could be #1. At Harvard, with the same brains and same study skills, I was in the middle of the pack.
Schools below the US News National Universities top-10 list have just a handful of Harvard-level students at them, in my own experience, and so at those other schools, you can float up to the top with them. At Harvard, by contrast, EVERYONE would be at the top of the class at another school, and being a standout is just impossible unless you’re near-genius level.
Plus, perhaps a md-ranked school will have someone who could have gotten into Harvard, but the fact that the person is at the other school but not Harvard perhaps indicates that the person is less driven to be #1 (less competitive) than someone who’d have enrolled at Harvard. I did have classmates at the other school who at least had test scores close to mine, but their GPAs were far lower; they didn’t push themselves. At Harvard, everyone pushed himself or herself hard in some way- either to work at the most prestigious employer, to have the best grades or the save the world. At the other school, some did, but many didn’t.
@HappyAlumnus, just curious–when did you graduate from college? I have daughters who graduated several years ago and even in that short space of time the landscape has changed dramatically. Families are dependent on merit aid and the kids don’t apply to the HYPMS schools. I can rattle off a long list of kids like this. Others want a different experience. I can rattle off another list of these kids. And more kids are increasingly well prepared, with very sophisticated coursework and ECs. Harvard can’t accommodate all of them. We can all rattle off that list.
We certainly can agree to disagree and perhaps I’m just easily impressed but increasingly I see many, many kids who are extremely bright and extremely motivated and they are interchangeable with Harvard level students. And believe me, they push themselves very hard–too hard, in my opinion. I mean, people should do what they want, but going in to a “lower ranked school” and expecting to “float to the top” is setting yourself up for a very rude awakening.
@3girls3cats, in the '90s. My posts on this board should be taken with a grain of salt due to my age.
However, I see the Harvard admissions criteria and grade/test score ranges, and Harvard has gotten even more competitive to get into since I was there. I certainly wouldn’t be let in there now, as the student body is sharper now than it was then. Financial aid at Harvard has also gotten a lot more generous since then, hopefully broadening the pool of students. So I think that my point (that even a #1 student at another school might be middling at Harvard) still stands, although 3girls3cats, I can certainly respect your views and position.