Frankly, I don’t see why a pre-med student (for instance) would risk going to a high-powered school where they might only garner a mediocre GPA rather than going to a less prominent school, excelling, and procuring a stellar GPA.
@happyalumnus The 25th percentile Math plus Critical Reading SAT score at Harvard is 1410. 78 schools in the IPEDS database have 75th percentile scores at or better than this number, including Michigan (1480). Not that scores are the only measure, but it shows the bottom quarter of Harvard students are measurably weaker than the top quarter at many other schools in this regard.
@foosondaughter: Yes, the IPEDS database shows that for a bunch of schools, the top 25% of their students, by SAT scores, would be at the bottom 25% of Harvard’s class. My point is validated.
To add to my post #82: the IPEDS database does not show:
- Aggregate SAT scores for a particular applicant. Someone may get 730 on the SAT Math but 600 on the other portions. That person would show up in the top 75% at Michigan for SAT Math, above the 25% Harvard level, but the aggregate SAT score of the Michigan person may not put him or her even at the 25% level at Harvard.
- GPAs. Someone with strong SAT scores could get into Harvard based on them if considered alone, but the person's GPA may be low, and thus not eligible to get into Harvard, or be equipped with the study skills to do well.
Thus my point is validated; the IPEDS data base doesn’t show that that 25% of so of a student body at a particular school may overlap with 25% of the student body at Harvard, despite first impressions. Only a handful of students at a non-USN Top 10 institution truly match the HYPS caliber (based on aggregate SAT scores, GPAs, and more).
@HappyAlumnus – Really, less driven to be #1? I would consider myself a pretty competitive person, but I, and many others, had no desire whatsoever to apply to Harvard. Given the fact that it’s not particularly strong in engineering and the fact that I don’t think it fits my personality, I’d think I made the right choice.
I know that this may be surprising, but some people just don’t want to go to an Ivy League institution. It’s not for lack of competitiveness or intelligence, however. Claiming that the students that enroll in Harvard each year are somehow so irreplaceable and talented that no other college in the country could boast the same kind of students is pretty absurd to be frank. Nobody would say that Caltech is clearly the best university in the United States because it has the students with the highest SAT scores.
Harvard is a great school, but I don’t think it is the end all and be all when it comes to admissions. It is surely competitive, but there are students who get into Harvard who are turned down from similarly competitive school. It’s worthwhile to note that many studies show that SAT scores have a pretty weak correlation with college GPA, and I think that an exceptionally bright student would be as successful at Harvard as he would at Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, et. al and even some weaker schools. It’s why people who go to a school like University of Delaware might be accepted into Harvard’s graduate programs (which, for the record, most people would consider far superior to Harvard’s undergraduate education).
@micmatt513: I’m not making the claim that “no other college in the country could boast the same kind of students”.
I’m saying, based on my own experiences, that a school outside the US News National Universities top 10 (or outside Amherst, Williams, Harvey Mudd, etc.) will not have the same kind of students in significant numbers. Other schools may have a handful.
Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Yale, Columbia and Cornell have lots of overlap with Harvard, and some of those schools are pretty much identical in terms of caliber of student body. Same for Duke, MIT, etc.
If someone has the grades, SAT scores and other “soft” factors that would make the person eligible for admission to HYPS or a peer school such as MIT or Duke, but decides not to go, then unless the person gets a Presidential scholarship or the like at another place, I would certainly question the person’s motivations and drive. The person described above who went to Rutgers instead of Columbia and Harvard is one such person.
Please provide evidence for your statement that “most people would consider” Harvard’s graduate programs “far superior to Harvard’s undergraduate education”. Is there a Gallup poll backing up your assertion? Or a survey of the general population or the like?
@HappyAlumnus – My friends/family who are professors basically unanimously say that Harvard has TAs doing the majority of its undergraduate teaching, as opposed to a school like Princeton where there is a much bigger emphasis on undergraduate students as a whole. I guess it’s not backed by a study, but schools like Caltech, Princeton, etc. have a much bigger emphasis on having full-time professors teach, as opposed to fellow undergraduate or graduate students. It’s debatable whether or not undergraduate students teaching other undergraduate students is effective, but at a school like Harvard where there are so many world class professors, it’s a little bit of a slap in the face to be taught by someone who doesn’t have an advanced degree in the field.
I think that a lot of people value different things than you do. I don’t think it’s unfair for someone who lives in Michigan but has stellar scores to choose to attend UMichigan or for someone who lives in California and has great scores to choose UC Berkeley or UCLA over an Ivy. I think that you mistake people being content with a college and not picking a school because of its prestige with shortchanging themselves. A lot of my friends would be completely fine going to a school like Purdue instead of stressing themselves out trying to get admitted into a top program like Johns Hopkins BME or MIT.
I don’t really like to categorize everyone as having the same motivations for choosing one school or another. At most colleges within the top 50 (and the top 15 or so LACs), you’re going to get a fine education and it will not preclude you from most opportunities. Maybe I’m just naive though, and there is some hidden benefit of going to a top five or ten school that I’m too shortsighted to see (besides the obvious alumni network).
@micmatt513: Their statement about TAs is true, but having gone to a Harvard graduate school, it would be difficult to say that the graduate program is “far superior to Harvard’s undergraduate education”. The TAs are usually the top students from Harvard’s graduate programs, so they are mostly potential Harvard professors and the like in the making.
And, “for the record”, my classmates at Harvard who went there for college and grad school complained most about the grad school classes and generally liked college better.
Back to the topic, it’s certainly not unfair for someone who is HYPS, etc.-eligible to attend UNC or Michigan. If someone does so, the person should at least get a top scholarship. I had at least one friend growing up who went to UNC-Chapel Hill as a Morehead Scholar, which is certainly worth doing.
However, my point is that the UNC Morehead Scholars (and the like), while certainly equal to HYPS, etc., students, are just few in number; the general student bodies, and even the top 25% or so at a #30 school, just isn’t on par with HYPS, etc., so you can’t expect to go to UNC or Michigan and have the same experience with your classmates. I certainly didn’t in college, even though I was at a higher-ranked school than #30.
My point about being less competitive does not apply to someone like a UNC Morehead Scholar. If someone could get into HYPS, etc. and not only doesn’t get a Morehead Scholarship but for some reason ends up going to a mid-tier school without a Morehead, that person is clearly not driven (enough).
@HappyAlumnus – I really think you’re splitting hairs when it comes to the SAT scores and experiences with classmates. Vanderbilt isn’t in the top 10 for USNWR, but its average SAT score is only marginally lower than Harvard (we’re not even talking about a one question difference). A school like Duke or UPenn might be ranked in the top ten for USNWR, but its average SAT score puts it in the same category as Tufts which is barely in the top 30. I think it’s pretty close-minded to say that the number of top students at a top ten school is just so much higher than at other schools. Look at Purdue. It’s a top ten engineering university, and I wouldn’t say that it has top students by any stretch of the imagination. Would it be insane for someone who is dead-set on engineering to attend Purdue over Harvard if they knew that they wanted to do engineering?
Feel free to disagree with me about SAT/ACT scores and whether not they’re representative of student abilities. I believe that there’s a certain point where it stops mattering how intelligent someone is, and it starts to matter more and more what other qualities a person has. I don’t love Outliers, but I think Malcom Gladwell does a decent job of explaining that there’s an IQ threshold where it matters less about your intelligence, and more about other abilities and what he calls “concerted cultivation” or someone’s upbringing.
@micmatt513, what I’m finding is that Vanderbilt’s SAT scores are about 60-80 points lower than Harvard’s:
Vanderbilt:
SAT (Admitted 25-75th Percentile)
[ Actual ]
Total: 2010-2270
Critical Reading: 660-750
Math: 690-770
Writing: 660-750
% Submitting SAT: 55%
Harvard:
SAT (Admitted 25-75th Percentile)
[ Actual ]
Total: 2070-2350
Critical Reading: 690-780
Math: 690-790
Writing: 690-780
% Submitting SAT: 96%
If someone is HYPS, etc.-eligible, but wants to do engineering, while some may go to Purdue, I would expect that most would go to Columbia, MIT, Harvey Mudd, etc.
I turned down HYPS to go to a tech school.
Although my mom wanted the “lay prestige” of Harvard, i just didn’t care about that. For most sciences/engineering, tech schools are a lot better at the undergrad level. Plus, another allure was not being around people who only went to a school for the “name.” There are fewer douchebags at non-HYPS top schools for that reason alone, even though many of us got into most, if not all, of the HYPS.
I’d say half the people i know who got into Harvard are great scientists; and the other half are legacy admits (Dad made a phone call, donated some money, and got Junior in). There’s a lot of legacy admits at Harvard (maybe up to a third of the class).
This is the ranking that I saw from Forbes:
I think you also overestimate the difference of 60 points. You’re talking about a difference of quite literally two questions, or possibly about what one essay reader thought of someone’s essay vs. what another essay reader thought of someone’s essay. Also, what happens if someone doesn’t like Columbia, MIT, Harvey Mudd, etc.? Harvey Mudd is a tiny school in Southern California that has general engineering courses with no real focus. Some people may not want to go to an urban school like Columbia or MIT, and Columbia is ranked worse than Purdue in every specialty for engineering, according to USNWR.
By the way, I don’t know what stats you’re reading for Vanderbilt. Here’s their reported middle 50% for SAT, per their website.
SAT Critical Reading Middle 50% 710-780
SAT Math Middle 50% 720-800
SAT Writing Middle 50% 680-770
Combined, that puts them right in Harvard’s range (and actually using your stats they are slightly higher).
http://admissions.vanderbilt.edu/profile/`
I think it is funny that you are boiling down the admittance to these schools (and the student bodies) to SAT scores and GPA. I know many kids with SAT scores above 2300 and perfect or near perfect grades with many AP classes that are not getting into HYPS, or even some of the lower level ivy league schools. These schools are no longer looking for just smart kids, they are looking for those kids who make the class diverse and add something special. If you don’t have a hook good luck getting into these schools. The hook can be diverse, good athlete, social minority, already published a scientific paper, started your own company, parents gave a big check, the list goes on. Bottom line is many kids without a hook end up at other universities, yes they are not surrounded by the same type of student (diverse group of kids, many with money, already accomplished in one way or another beyond grades and test scores) but maybe that is OK. Research says if kids are capable of going to HYP they will succeed to the same level whether they attend HYP or not.
Funny story, we visited Yale and one of the parents we ran into had a freshman at the school. She told me I was wrong and that the kids were just normal kids. She then went on to tell me about her daughter who attended boarding school and started a web design company as a sophomore in high school. She didn’t see this as any different than any other child because that is what you are surrounded by at places like Yale. Privilege and talent. So really choosing not to go to HYPS is about choosing who you will be surrounded by, not whether you will succeed.
Ugh, there’s an accidental character at the end of the link I posted. Here’s the correct link for Vanderbilt’s class profile:
http://admissions.vanderbilt.edu/profile/
And I agree with @terp2B. Most people who would get into HYPSM would be successful at other schools.
BigLawLawyer is obviously not aware that there’s a cap of about 15% on legacies at Harvard – the entering class never has a higher percentage of legacies. I don’t know exactly what that means for admissions, but since the overall yield for Harvard is so high, there can’t be a much greater percentage of legacies who are offered admission if they don’t want to exceed the target.
Based on my unsystematic, observed experience, based on the strength of the legacy pool it’s far from clear whether applying to Harvard as a legacy is an advantage or a disadvantage. One of the last two legacies I know to have been admitted was also admitted at Yale, Stanford, and Princeton without any kind of boost; the other was admitted to several other Ivies, and Z-listed at Harvard.
People on CC with connections to Harvard admissions have reported that their internal data show they admit Yale and Princeton legacies at about the same rate they admit Harvard legacies (but there is no special procedure or review process of Yale or Princeton legacies, of course).
15 percent is a pretty high percentage. I also read an article that Princeton accepts around 30 percent of its legacies and single digit of regular applicants. I can link it later.
You don’t really find legacy admits at tech schools in contrast. The core curriculum is just too hard for the average HYPS liberal arts major to pass (presumably what most legacies major in). I personally don’t think going to HYPS and majoring in a liberal art means much…
In an interview, the retired long-term Amherst admission director (incidentally, an Eph) said that 50 percent of of legacies who apply get in, to make up 10 percent of a typical class. But he stressed the emphasis on “of those who apply.” They work through the alumni network to get out the word not to bother unless you’re otherwise competitive, wanting to avoid angry phone calls about alumni little darlings. Williams, which does not do interviews, offers college counseling sessions to alumni kids–to evaluate where they should apply and also to dissuade hopeless applications. I suspect something similar is going on with the Ivys, significant percentages of legacy acceptances from a self-selected pool of otherwise competitive legacy applications
Anecdotal but two of my friends growing up were rejected initially from Harvard. Dads who were alums made a few phone calls and got the kids in after they were rejected. They also have money though so maybe they donated money as well as being connected alums. This rarely if ever happens at the tech schools. Core work is too hard and the students have to be really into science and tech to even graduate. Whereas at HYPS the legacies can just study English and graduate easily.
Harvard accepted me SCEA in December and I’m still trying to get my head around it. It’s simply bizarre how strangely people are reacting to my good fortune. I’m being put on a pedestal for my allegedly vaulted intellect (“I had no idea you were so brilliant!”); peers who have been accepted to other incredible schools denigrate their accomplishments in my presence. I hope not all my future classmates are geniuses or I’m in for a hard landing. What is it about Harvard? Shit’s starting to go to my head!
I don’t know how old you are, but if you are over 35 you are talking about a bygone era at Harvard (and it may even have been bygone then). What you are describing does not happen today, at Harvard or at any comparable school. I am not saying money can’t buy admission, but it has to be an awful lot of money (at Harvard, if there is any amount, it would be at least 8 figures), and it has to start flowing well in advance of any admission decision. I don’t think there’s any sum of money that would reverse a decision that had already been made.