<p>If any of your children’s teachers (K-12; no points for nursery school or day care) have ever said, “Your kid is possibly the top student I have ever taught” award your kid 10 prestigiosity points. For every school that your kid applies to and either gets rejected, deferred, or wait listed, your kid gets another point (what kind of a lame college doesn’t want my kid-- the best 6th grade world history/social studies student that Darien CT has ever produced?) Once your kid hits 20 points, he/she can become a paid college counselor to help other kids produce stunning applications to various colleges which will change lives.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I always the thought the process went as follows: Elite school graduate cannot find job after graduation, hangs around admissions office doing part-time work, eventually gets hired full-time, works for a few years, gets cocky helping to reject applicants similar to the ones he or she just hated in high school. Then hangs out his or her own shingle after realizing how gullible the American public really is.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think there are even more prestigiosity points if your kid HASN’T been labeled “top student ever taught.” Too striver-y, and striver-y isn’t congruent with prestigiosity.</p>
<p>
LOL. That should get the “spray the computer monitor with coffee” arc and distance contest award.</p>
<p>Would that award be a hook? I must know now.</p>
<p>It would be a real pi$$er if it wasn’t.</p>
<p>Gourmetmom-
Your post#82 is still making me grin, but I can’t think of a clever response 
It guess its left me in the dark.</p>
<p>It’s only a hook if it’s a math competition. Otherwise, it’s a tip. And the person leaving a tip always has more prestigiosity than the person receiving one so that can’t possibly be good for prestigiosity points.</p>
<p>That just doesn’t add up.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Tip: Don’t bet on the horses.</p>
<p>Does that get me prestigiosity points? Are they like green stamps or frequent flyer miles?</p>
<p>Sorry if this has been posted but according to USNWR, the colleges with the lowest acceptance rates are:</p>
<p>Curtis Institute of Music
Philadelphia, PA 3.2%</p>
<p>Juilliard School
New York, NY 6.0%</p>
<p>Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 6.3%</p>
<p>Columbia University
New York, NY 7.0%</p>
<p>Stanford University
Stanford, CA 7.1%</p>
<p>United States Naval Academy
Annapolis, MD 7.5%</p>
<p>Cooper Union
New York, NY 7.7%</p>
<p>Yale University
New Haven, CT 7.7%</p>
<p>Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 8.5%</p>
<p>Brown University
Providence, RI 8.9%</p>
<p>College of the Ozarks
Point Lookout, MO 8.9%</p>
<p>Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA 9.7%</p>
<p>Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH 10.1%</p>
<p>Florida Memorial University
Miami, FL 10.5%</p>
<p>United States Military Academy
West Point, NY 10.6%</p>
<p>United States Air Force Academy
USAF Academy, CO 10.8%</p>
<p>University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 12.4%</p>
<p>Berea College
Berea, KY 12.5%</p>
<p>California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, CA 12.8%</p>
<p>Amherst College
Amherst, MA 13.3%</p>
<p>Duke University
Durham, NC 14.0%</p>
<p>Pomona College
Claremont, CA 14.0%</p>
<p>Claremont McKenna College
Claremont, CA 14.1%</p>
<p>Swarthmore College
Swarthmore, PA 15.1%</p>
<p>Bowdoin College
Brunswick, ME 16.1%</p>
<p>Now, according to this, the College of the Ozarks is a better school than MIT, CofO, with it’s middle range ACT scores of 21-24 and only 2% of the students scoring 30 or better :D</p>
<p>SteveMA, only a chump would go to MIT given the number of AIME/USAMO qualifiers it rejects every year in favor of some loser kid from flyover country who attended a HS nobody ever heard of. So clearly, College of the Ozarks wins in prestigiousity!</p>
<p>College of the Ozarks is interesting–it does not charge tuition–instead, all students must work in on-campus jobs. They end up with no debt. This is interesting, and perhaps explains why they have such a low acceptance rate.</p>
<p>But it still has no prestigiosity, because I’ve never seen anybody on CC express a burning desire to go there.</p>
<p>^Until I came to CC I had never heard of Bowdoin, Swarthmore, Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Berea, Cooper Union, McGill and many, many other schools that are talked about frequently here. Even those schools which many hear think are prestigious are not so outside of their regions :D></p>
<p>
This is why I created the “CC Darlings” adjunct to my prestigiosity scale. This kind of information (being serious for one second here) is one of the greatest services CC provides, in my opinion.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This gets to the perennial – does something have to be well-known to be prestigious? I think Swarthmore, just as an example, is both not-well-known by the general public esp outside the Phila area – and highly prestigious. Prestige can only be measured by referring to the audience. In the lay public’s mind, Ohio State is more prestigious than Swarth-what? What I love about Hunt’s prestigiosity measure is that he’s implicitly stating that the audience is, indeed, CC.</p>
<p>In the first thread on this topic, Hunt said that “facts” had no bearing on the prestigiosity ratings. I think Steve’s list may come dangerously close to facts, meaning easily verifiable statistics. Hunt’s system is superior anyway. :)</p>
<p>Exactly. For example, in the real world, only about 5% of college applicants care about going to Harvard. In the CC world, about 98% do. 98% > 5%, so by the transitive property invested in me, it is a truth that 98% of people you meet will care just as passionately as you do about going to Harvard, and will judge you according to whether you got in or not. QED. See how that works?</p>
<p>There was someone on CC last year who declined Harvard, Yale, Duke and went to Baylor.</p>
<p>Who gets points - the kid or Baylor? How many?</p>
<p>Doesn’t count if it was for:
(a) financial reasons and/or some ya ha special scholarship with lots of bennies
(b) to follow a girlfriend
(c) to study some specialized program offered there
(d) to stretch the umbilical cord and/or not cut the apron strings
<strong>but</strong> it gets double points if it was to pi$$ off parents</p>