<p>Over the past couple of weeks, for some reason or another, I have been feeling nihilistic about the college process. Based on my grades and my resume, I am right at the point where any Ivy League school is a stretch for me, but schools of a lesser caliber may not offer me the challenges I seek. I just found myself tied up in a debate with my parents about why people put so much value in Ivy Leagues... as far as I'm concerned I just want to learn as much as I can for the sake of learning and because I can, not for prestige and history that others weigh so heavily but to me seem rather irrelevant. I am not a very competitive person: I only want to excel knowing I achieved my potential. </p>
<p>Also complicating things is the fact that I want to go to graduate school as well. My ultimate dream is a PhD in physics, which I would love to be from a prestigious school where I study under the smartest professors, but several teachers who I hold in very high regard told me that undergraduate degrees are not nearly as important, and getting a solid foundation on a budget is a wise decision. </p>
<p>The crux of the issue is, I understand that Ivy Leagues are the best, but are they really that much better? Is it so worth it that I have to sell my soul just to go somewhere that may only be marginally better? Are Ivies only marginally above other schools? I feel like I need somebody to give me a good reason why I should take the extra step and the extra drain on my family's bank account.</p>
<p>The term “ivy league” is over-hyped. Ivy League schools are only part of an athletic conference which happens to include all good schools. Duke, MIT, Stanford are not in the ivies and they are arguably better than Brown or Cornell. </p>
<p>For undergrad, if you want to go to a graduate school, I would go to a public school, do really good there and then go to a prestigious, expensive private school.</p>
<p>There are many schools in the country where you can get an excellent education. It is up to you to take advantage of the resources that the college has and to make the best out of anything. If you do so, hey you might be able to get a better education at BU than an ivy league school.</p>
<p>Ivies offer great finaid and therefore end up being cheaper than the privates in the tiers below them. The real price tag of an ivy isn’t financial…it’s the strain of getting near perfect grades/scores, juggling ec’s, getting superb recs, rewriting essays, etc.</p>
<p>If you have the ability to get in without making yourself miserable, sure. But it seems like you’re at the point at which you will only get in by putting yourself through extreme pain.</p>
<p>Are you a junior? You have plenty of time to create a list of schools that are the right fit for you, across a range of admissions selectivity.
Read this year’s senior threads to get the message that thinking carefully about the match schools on your list is a better use of your time than this.</p>
<p>I should clarify: I don’t mean just Ivies, I was using the term loosely. I’m very seriously considering applying to MIT but I’ll face the same hurdles I’ll face applying to an Ivy or other top school.</p>
<p>EDIT: Yes, I am a junior. I have a pretty good idea of schools I’d like to apply to as well, since I’ve done my best to get a head start since I’ll have a busy summer. So far my list includes MIT, Cornell, RPI, SUNY Stonybrook, Rutgers, UConn (only for the honors program and even then I don’t particularly like it), and a few other tentative choices.</p>
<p>stradivari, considering your planned future, it might be in your advantage to go to a “not as competitive school”. If grad school is your planned future, I would go somewhere where you think you can get the most opportunities and get the highest grades possible which may mean an honors college at a state university. If you can get some research opportunities and high grades, you will have a easier time getting into a grad school and you will save yourself some money.</p>
<p>but in terms of getting a great rec for grad school, doing cutting edge research, and gaining problem solving skills for the GRE, MIT will do you a tad better than Rutgers. not to mention the brilliant peers you’ll live and play with for 4 years.</p>
<p>That’s the exact dilemma I’m facing… the atmosphere of the school is the one thing I prefer about the top schools, but I just don’t know if that justifies everything else.</p>
<p>You have fallen victim to the hype; you have a specific goal which does not generally match the Ivies. First posted by interesteddad:</p>
<p>Here are 100 to consider. These one hundred colleges and universities produced the highest percentage of future Physics/Astronomy PhDs per graduate over the most recent 10 year period. Obviously a lot of tech schools are represented, but there’s something for just about everybody (different sizes, different locations, different selectivities):</p>
<p>PhDs and Doctoral Degrees:
ten years (1994 to 2003) from NSF database</p>
<p>Number of Undergraduates:
ten years (1989 to 1998) from IPEDS database</p>
<p>Formula: Total PhDs divided by Total Grads, multiplied by 1000 </p>
<p>Note: Does not include colleges with less than 1000 graduates over the ten year period</p>
<p>
1 California Institute of Technology 96
2 Harvey Mudd College 64
3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 29
4 New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology 20
5 Reed College 13
6 Carleton College 13
7 Princeton University 13
8 University of Chicago 13
9 Rice University 13
10 Case Western Reserve University 9
11 Harvard University 9
12 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 9
13 Swarthmore College 9
14 Haverford College 8
15 Stevens Institute of Technology 8
16 Whitman College 8
17 Grinnell College 7
18 Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology 7
19 Colorado School of Mines 7
20 Yale University 6
21 Williams College 6
22 University of Rochester 6
23 Amherst College 6
24 Goshen College 5
25 Cornell University, All Campuses 5
26 University of Dallas 5
27 Wabash College 5
28 Stanford University 5
29 Beloit College 5
30 University of California-Berkeley 5
31 Carnegie Mellon University 5
32 Johns Hopkins University 5
33 Hastings College 5
34 Lawrence University 5
35 Illinois Institute of Technology 5
36 Columbia University in the City of New York 4
37 Oberlin College 4
38 Monmouth College 4
39 Bryn Mawr College 4
40 Gustavus Adolphus College 4
41 Kalamazoo College 4
42 College of William and Mary 4
43 Earlham College 4
44 Worcester Polytechnic Institute 4
45 Pomona College 4
46 St Olaf College 4
47 Georgia Institute of Technology, Main Campus 4
48 Rhodes College 4
49 St John's University (Collegeville, MN) 3
50 Bates College 3
51 Macalester College 3
52 Brown University 3
53 Wesleyan University 3
54 Bethel College (North Newton, KS) 3
55 Brandeis University 3
56 Kenyon College 3
57 Hope College 3
58 St John's College (both campus) 3
59 Franklin and Marshall College 3
60 Bowdoin College 3
61 Washington University 3
62 Walla Walla College 3
63 Middlebury College 3
64 University of Missouri, Rolla 3
65 Drew University 3
66 Guilford College 3
67 Southern College of Seventh-Day Adventists 3
68 Moravian College 3
69 Clarkson University 3
70 Polytechnic University 3
71 Hamline University 3
72 Tougaloo College 3
73 Vassar College 2
74 Andrews University 2
75 University of California-San Diego 2
76 Lehigh University 2
77 College of Wooster 2
78 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 2
79 Wake Forest University 2
80 Duke University 2
81 Albion College 2
82 University of Virginia, Main Campus 2
83 Trinity University 2
84 University of Alabama in Huntsville 2
85 Benedictine College 2
86 University of Puget Sound 2
87 Michigan Technological University 2
88 Dartmouth College 2
89 Cooper Union 2
90 Pacific University 2
91 Florida Institute of Technology 2
92 Xavier University 2
93 Northwest Nazarene College 2
94 South Dakota School of Mines & Technology 2
95 Hendrix College 2
96 Bucknell University 2
97 Millsaps College 2
98 Southwestern University 2
99 Bethel College and Seminary, All Campuses 2
100 Wofford College 2
101 Wellesley College 2
<p>Choklitrain, I’d like to argue against several of your points:</p>
<p>“but in terms of getting a great rec for grad school, doing cutting edge research, and gaining problem solving skills for the GRE, MIT will do you a tad better than Rutgers. not to mention the brilliant peers you’ll live and play with for 4 years”</p>
<p>Recommendations - You will have a harder time distinguishing yourself at MIT while if you go see your professors and do really good at Rutgers, you may get a better rec there
Gaining Problem Solving Skills for the GRE - honestly what they teach you in classes at most schools are basically the same, the only difference are the peers that you go to classes with and the prestige of the faculty
Cutting Edge Research - You may get more research opportunities if you are at a state college honors program because you are at the top of that school while at MIT you might not be.</p>
<p>^ did you go to a prestigious high school? as someone who went to an elite high school, i think there are so many benefits that people don’t consider. it’s just about a culture of success that molds you for the better and pushes you to strive further.</p>
<p>I don’t know why so many high school students assume that they have to attend the universities in the top 1% of the nation to be challenged, but that’s just not the case. If prestige and history are not important to you, and your dream is to get a PhD in a research field later on, it completely makes sense to go to a school that is “lower-ranked” and may cost less (and thus free up money for later graduate school decisions, even though Ph.Ds in research fields are usually free of cost to you). And you are right in thinking you should go to a prestigious school where you study under the best professors for your Ph.D, because that’s when it really counts.</p>
<p>I went to a second-tier liberal arts college on a full scholarship, and I was certainly challenged there. My professors were friendly and accessible, and I grew so much as a person, and I also got the opportunity to do research as an undergrad and study abroad. All at minimal cost to me. Now I’m in a top 10 Ph.D program in my field at Columbia, studying with the top scholars in my field, and I absolutely love it. It will be far better to have Columbia listed as my Ph.D school than my undergrad.</p>
<p>If your goal is eventually a Ph.D in physics or advanced study in general, go somewhere that is a good fit for you and (most importantly) somewhere that you can get excellent research experience as an undergrad. They don’t have to be top professors, just people who are actively conducting research in their field. Research experience is the single most important factor in admissions in the sciences, since that’s what graduate school in the sciences is all about.</p>
<p>Pierre’s points are right – the top scholars at MIT are not doing research with undergrads. They are focusing on themselves and their grad students, and if you work in their labs, you may be working with their grad students (the undergrads here work with us, not the professors).</p>
<p>^^I go to a prestigious high school and have developed my viewpoint by seeing the over hyped and cutthroat competition to get into the “ivies”. I myself am not a “good” student but found many excellent options that were not considered a “top” school.</p>
<p>Would your opinions change if I said that I am second in my class, attend a half-day math and science magnet school, and have a long and varied list of EC’s? This is why I am considering the highest-ranking schools in the first place.</p>
I was an undergrad at MIT, and I categorically disagree with this.</p>
<p>MIT is a fairly small place, as research universities go, and there are undergraduate research opportunities available for all students (not just the top ones). Undergrads are seen as a part of the research team – an individual undergrad might work from day to day with a grad student or a postdoctoral fellow, but they work with the professor in the same sense that the grad student or postdoc works with the professor. As an undergrad, I had regular meetings with my faculty supervisor (one of those “top scholars”, actually) to discuss my research and also to discuss my academic progress. I wasn’t at the top of my class by any means, but I had no problem getting three outstanding letters of recommendation and a ton of free advice for my graduate school applications.</p>
<p>I agree that a student interested in the sciences doesn’t have to go to MIT to get into a great graduate program. But it’s easier to do from MIT, with direct contact with the top scholars in the field, and (for me at least) it was a lot more fun, too.</p>
<p>definitely not, take a school like the University Of Georgia for example, 53% of the people there graduated in the top 10% of their high school class so it isn’t that all smart people go to ivy leagues only. I would put blinders on and ignore everything people say about prestige, find the best college that you like the best and you think you can do the best at and that is where you should go.</p>
<p>My opinion would be to go for the top tier schools, find some safeties you are happy with, and then weigh your options once you see where you are accepted. You will certainly not be accepted to the top tier schools if you approach the application process tentatively and with reservation. Why not ask post a question to physics undergrads about what type of research opportunities they have had at various schools? Not matter where you go, the experience will be what you make of it.</p>