The problem with anecdotes like your friend at App State is that those situations are extreme exceptions. You say they are “very doable” but in fact, only a tiny handful of people ever manage to do them. You can’t count on being that one person at the very top of your class, no matter where you go. One bad semester, one bout with depression or one whatever, and you have lost that small chance.
Meanwhile, the majority of the students at a school like Middlebury end up with great opportunities every graduating year.
I see so many posts on CC that assume that all schools provide the same opportunities because the person at the top of the class goes to the same medical school as a Middlebury grad. What about the other 99% of the class? Because that is where you are likely to be.
With that said, St. Olaf is a fine school and I would not suggest that anyone spend $30,000 a year that they don’t have to go to Middlebury instead.
Our daughter has a similar decision to make. She is choosing between St. Olaf (cost after scholarship appriximately $34,000), Carleton, Wellesley, wait listed at Williams, waiting to hear from Ivies. We do not qualify for need based aid so all the other schools will be at least $100,000 more in addition to travel expenses to/from the East coast. I believe it is a mistake to assume that a student will be at the top of their class at St. Olaf just because they have been admitted to more selective schools. I know several top notch students who chose St. Olaf over more “prestigious” schools because it was more affordable, is highly regarded for its music and math/science departments as well as its study abroad programs. Middlebury is a wonderful school (my sister is an alum) but it will not give you a leg up on med school. One suggestion is to research the incoming class of students at various med schools, Harvard, UMN, etc. I’m guessing you’ll find that they come from a wide array of colleges/universities. Speaking from experience, your GPA, community service, and MCAT scores will count much more than perceived “prestige.” Just read in the paper today of several students who are graduating from med school with an average of $200,000 debt-you don’t want to add to that if you don’t have to. Good luck wherever you go!
I think you should go to St. Olaf. My husband went to Middlebury and I went there for two sessions of summer school I just visited St. Olaf with my son a couple of months ago, and it felt, to me, like a midwestern Middlebury with a touch of religion. My husband and I both went to very highly ranked LACs, but our colleagues went to regional state schools and are just as bright and competent as we are (if not more so!)–so college is really what you make it. The main advantage of a rigorous education is that you feel that you can handle anything afterwards. I got the feeling that St. Olaf was very rigorous (and the conversation programs look great), but that’s totally subjective based on limited experience. $30,000 a year is a lot. Congratulations on the merit award!
This is also similar to our situation. Received good merit at Olaf, Grinnell, Oberlin but none from Carleton or Kenyon.
While Carleton is a top fav, and certainly highly ranked, the prospect of an ADDITIONAL $120,000 for an undergradate degree seems nuts to us.
Olaf has great stats. It’s not a sucky sub par school.
4 in life science Phds
6 in best undergraduate teaching
36% acceptance (not exactly rolling admissions)
And they gave you lots of cash!
These are not terrible, third world rankings! Both the son and daughter of a close friend went there and are now successful doctors. And they weren’t even Lutheran (or Norwegian!).
If reputation means anything, I can say in my circle Middlebury is a language school. You go there to learn French etc. so don’t let reputations drive your decision. Everyone has an opinion!
Well, as was said before, Middlebury’s also strong for Finance/Consulting… but OP wants to be Premed and it’s quite possible StO is the better school for that.
Yep. 65K x 4 (maybe 5). Sounded ok when it was hypothetical but not so great when the reality of writing checks and cleaning out the savings hits home. It’s also hard when in your own profession, you don’t see any advantage of that expensive education. I have an Ivy pedigree but it is very rare at my work (I’m a research scientist at a university). The majority of my colleagues got their undergrad degrees at big research universities and state universities. Saint Olaf is well-known for being excellent in the sciences and it regularly pops up as a school that has a high proportion of students that get PhDs in science. You also see they score high in # of NSF Grad Fellowship awardees (hard to get 3-year fellowship for grad work in the sciences). Similar #s as Middlebury (St Olaf has a higher # but also more students). http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19554928/#Comment_19554928
We told our D the same as everyone is saying here. Think ahead to what you want to do next. Does the school have a strong track record of getting its students onto to the next step that you see yourself making? Look at the size of the department and where the faculty came from. You are buying that network. Those are the rankings you need to consider not the USNEWS rankings or layman’s name recognition.
P.S. I’d probably become irrational and throw all this out the window if my D got into an Ivy. But D wanted small LAC in a rural setting so that was never a consideration.
I don’t think that-objectively-there is any way to justify spending an extra $120k for Middlebury v. Olaf for a pre-med student. I would submit that Olaf might even offer the superior science education, and is certainly not inferior. To spend that kind of extra money–which costs double that in earnings after all the taxes, would seem foolish unless money truly is meaningless to those spending it.
Check out where Ole’s are going for Med School. The Mayo Med School is not too shabby!
I didn’t read any of the other posts; go to St. Olaf. Goodness, no, do not spend so much more for a Middlebury education. This isn’t a topic of Harvard vs St Olaf. This is a topic of LAC vs LAC… Honestly, once you are knee-deep in college, the prestige of the school does not matter at all.
This implies, and I’d say overreaches for, a presumed equivalence among a hundred or more colleges. Though I commented, it would seem, in favor the choice of St. Olaf on this topic, I do see how the numbers 4 and 51 would not appear as being in any way equivalent by many posters.
“4” according to who and why? You have to look deeper than simply numbers posted by one magazine.
The OP is premed. So the analysis has to be based on premed outcomes for grad’s of both schools, and their own performance in med school which should, in some way, reflect the education received in undergrad.
By that specific analysis, arguably, Olaf is stronger. It may not be, but it can make that argument. Both are ranked “Tier I” by Rugg’s Guide for premed. Olaf produces more Phd’s.
Given that parameter, the cost difference is decisive, IMO. Again, unless money is largely meaningless to the OP’s family.
This is not a shot in any way at Middlebury, which is an excellent school. But for this student studying this track, the cost differential is very hard to justify objectively.
Consider this: If a tornado reversed the location of each schools’ campuses, and did nothing more, what would the “rankings” be then?
@ColdinMinny your argument has a lot of merit and you had me agreeing with you . . . until you tried to argue that the difference between the two schools is based solely on the locations. I think you may be stretching just a bit.
I think @OnTheBubble meant: if it didn’t have the name given by Scandinavian immigrants referring to their home country’s king and saint. Not a good ol’ Anglo name and not even Catholic.
Schools with the words St. Or Saint are a natural aversion whether they are religiously affiliated or not. Macalester gets about 50% more applications than St. Olaf and they are pretty comparable schools in the same area.
There are quite a few people out there that don’t know Boston College and Georgetown are Catholic. No one in NJ knows Muhlenberg is Lutheran.
My point on the geography: Middlebury is a super school. But it enjoys an advantage being in New England, surrounded by numerous population centers. Olaf is also a great school. But it is in “flyover land” in the “tundra.”
If Grinnell, Carleton and Olaf were in Vermont or New Hampshire, their rankings would be much higher. They would generate many more applicants, which would skew the rankings dramatically. (Although Carleton really does not have much further to go anyways…)
Back to the original question, Olaf unless you are very blessed financially.
A big part of the problem here is that in terms of fit, St. Olaf and Middlebury are so remarkably alike. I’m not sure the OP could have picked another NESCAC college so like a LAC located in a Northern Plains state (in terms of student body, surrounding community, academic offerings, etc.) The real question in my mind is how St. Olaf is able to get away with a sticker price that is 33% less than its New England rivals in the first place? Is the cost of living between Vermont and Minnesota that much different? I think I’d want to know the answer to that question before I made my decision.
