<p>I agree with SevenDad, that prestige often matters too much. The NYT recently reported that nearly 1 in 3 American students will transfer universities. With college impacting so much from your friends, to your hobbies, your network, where you will live, your career opportunities, etc. – fit (both socially and academically) is very important. I’m currently a graduate student at Harvard and will tell you that just pursuing the best “brand” often leads in a unhappy and difficult 4 years at considerable cost (average US private college costs over $30k per year).</p>
<p>What I don’t get, in this search for prestige, is the determination to make fine distinctions among equally qualified schools. As in: Which is more prestigious, Emory or Vanderbilt? Wellesley or Smith? UMichigan or UWisconsin? </p>
<p>MIT is more prestigious than WPI. I don’t think anyone would debate that (and I don’t mean to demean WPI, which is a great school). Just like Barnard is more prestigious than Sweet Briar. But when you start comparing schools that are within 10-20 ranking places of each other, you are splitting hairs and your decision-making process should involve factors other than prestige. I think the only people who are truly vested in the prestige differential of schools like Dartmouth and Brown, Harvard and Yale, etc., are the alumni. </p>
<p>Fireandrain, I agree. When I read these things, it make my hair stand up. There are some obvious things and then some thing make no difference at all or there are so many factors in there that would make the difference betw one and the other that looking at any rankings, ratings and stats really isn’t going to do it. I see this a lot with international student ans those with parents who are from other countries. But they do not have any feel for the schools and that is all they have to go on. There was a thread now closed on the fin aid forum where a parent was focused on the stats that showed Cal Poly to be better than UWash. Couldn’t get past the numbers. Off hand most of us would have no idea which was “better”. </p>
<p>Yes, I read that thread. He was basing his prestige opinion on average SAT scores that were about 120 points apart - really meaningless in the grand scheme of things. </p>
<p>There are also different types of prestige. One is social prestige and the other is academic prestige. </p>
<p>
I don’t think so–alumni know better. They don’t want their kids to attend their alma mater because of the prestige–they want it because they had a great experience there and think their kids would too.</p>
<p>I think the people most vested in prestige are people from other countries, particularly from countries where your college admission (and your future career) depends to a great extent on high-stakes exams. When they project this mindset onto US colleges, they think their kids’ futures are determined by the prestige of the college more than it really is.</p>
<p>^^There may be something to this. I recall a story from 20-30 years ago about the University of Tokyo. Kids will do anything to get into Tokyo (at the time, at least), because all you had to do was have a diploma that said University of Tokyo, and your career was set. Grades didn’t matter, degree didn’t matter, but you needed the brand. So you absolutely killed yourself in HS to gain admission, and then attended the world’s biggest party school. (This is mainly for guys, Japanese culture didn’t allow women to rise through the ranks of the corporations. The women were there to find top husbands.) Once you were in, college became one long drunken party. Anything you really needed to know, the company would teach you once you got there, but you weren’t getting there without the brand name degree.</p>
<p>My son accepted Cal Poly SLO, UCSB,UCD, Univ of Washington.UCI,UCR and denied by UCLA, UCSD.
His last choice is Cal Poly SLO…because Cal Poly’s Average SAT,ACT score is highest among the univs he accepted. is that right choice ?</p>
<p>@taehunchoi
It is my opinion that choosing a school solely based on admission stats is a exercise in insanity. One simply doesn’t just pick a university and take classes. That’s only the beginning. Choosing a university is tantamount to choosing a life (or a spouse) that you will have to live with for the next 4 years or more. It will literally be with you almost 24 hours a day and permeates every aspect of your life. You won’t choose a spouse simply because of the person’s IQ or height alone right?</p>
<p>Your son should just go to UW because it is a very good university (both reputation and teaching), and since you are in-state, it will have a significant price advantage for you. </p>
<p>All of the schools you mentioned are very good universities with solid reputations. UW is probably one of the better ones on your list. When I say better, I mean holistically better (reputation, curriculum, student body, campus facilities, post graduation employment, etc). UW is, in every way, comparable (or even superior in some specific attributes) to the UCs and Cal Poly except may be for the surrounding natural climate. </p>
<p>Cal Poly and the UCs will only make more sense than UW if your child wants to relocate to California on a permanent basis. </p>
<p>I think you have already created a million posts regarding the prestige of the schools you mentioned. It’s time to stop. </p>
<p>Just so you know, I am a Cal Poly SLO engineering graduate. </p>
<p>Prestige can be a factor, but it shouldn’t be the only factor. Being able to say “I have a degree from Harvard” will mean more to some employers than have a degree from a small, state school. Not so much in today’s society given the job market, but a lot of people want that bragging ability. </p>
<p>I only applied to one huge name: Georgetown University. I considered the Ivy’s for a while, Yale mostly, but I realized that it wouldn’t be a good fit for me. I applied to schools that could help me do what I want to do in life that are in locations that I would love to live in. </p>
<p>@blindmonkey: That is kind of poor to simply choose the one with the highest SAT scores. For example, back to the Emory vs. Vanderbilt and splitting hairs. Vanderbilt’s students have much higher SAT’s and yet I have found that the coursework is the same or less rigorous there at least in many of the sciences (I did research comparing analogous/equivalent science courses across “selective” schools, and there were some surprises, some good some bad. I thought Emory was kind of “sketchy”, but apparently it’s fine). You can go to course websites or coursehero and basically compare. I know it’s an instructor by instructor thing, but it seemed like, for equivalent science courses, Emory had far more difficult instructors (as in, there were a higher abundance of difficult instructors. Chemistry courses are like night and day for example, and so are many biology courses). I did more research and discovered that students with instructors far less difficult than our top instructors for a course actually thought it was difficult which suggests they have less tolerance for challenge or the teaching quality for many courses is not as good or geared toward the same kind of learning. I don’t think that Emory is intentionally more rigorous in the natural sciences. It seems it’s just more by happenstance. However, it just seems students tolerate or accept the extra difficulty (according to ratings). For example, for the two organic chemistry instructors with similar difficulty ratings (both rated as very difficult by a solid sample size. You don’t have to know Ochem to tell which assessment is more difficult. It’s obvious if you just look at the length difference and differences in question type):</p>
<p>Emory:<a href=“https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B456FmeCw42BVVRISUFjNzd3bHc/edit”>https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B456FmeCw42BVVRISUFjNzd3bHc/edit</a>
Vanderbilt: <a href=“https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B456FmeCw42BbUdfT2NOY1V1TE0/edit”>https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B456FmeCw42BbUdfT2NOY1V1TE0/edit</a></p>
<p>This sort of pattern persists over several biology and chemistry courses (and yes, these instructors still teach these courses and haven’t changed a bit). And in this particular example, I can show you 3 more instructors for this course at Emory (who would be teaching in the SAME semester) who are also that much more difficult than that so called “difficult” instructor. </p>
<p>You just wouldn’t know this by looking at the difference in ranking and SAT scores. Environmental differences can make a huge difference. One can argue that perhaps additional rigor in some science classes at Emory is more well-received because the classes are smaller or perhaps students are less “distracted”, as in Emory is less “fun” in the traditional sense because we don’t have the D-1 sports scene and the Greeklife influence is a bit more subdued. How would you know these differences by looking at SAT scores? If anything you would for sure assume that Vanderbilt and other schools with similar SAT ranges are far more difficult and just “better” in general. I would be very careful with this, especially after the schools cross a certain threshold in prestige. For example, based on rank and student body, you don’t expect Chicago and WashU to be so different (with both being intense, but Chicago being a different sort of intensity altogether) given that they have equal student bodies. Both of these have the same SAT range as Vanderbilt (and some other schools) and yet they are more intense…It’s really messy. Institutional character, environment, and a lot of randomness play a role in determining rigor and quality. </p>
<p>NO. It’s all about making money. Graduating from “prestigious” schools tend to result in higher incomes. </p>
<p>@NothingImportant: Well, yeah but partially because students at prestigious colleges tend to pursue the high paying professions (law, business, and medicine, and in some cases engineering if the school has a solid engineering program) disproportionately. Many selective institutions are extremely pre-professional in nature, far more so than even the best state flagships. Also, the students have a higher talent level overall, so it just makes sense. In some cases, it’s not the school enhancing the already good students so much as it is the schools harboring talented individuals for four years and letting them do their own thing (as kind of hinted above, some schools don’t bother letting academics “get in the way” of students exercising their talent in their EC lives, The best of the best schools do, but many don’t try all that hard). </p>
<p>Payscale has done a good job at ranking schools by ROI, <a href=“College Education Value Rankings - PayScale 2013 College ROI Report”>http://www.payscale.com/college-education-value-2013</a> it a cost benefit analysis thing if all you are looking for is a job after graduating. If you are going on to graduate school, the names SEEM to help, but as @bernie12 said, these schools captured a great deal of the very smart kids right out of school so it only makes sense I think if one were to follow all the truly great kids who has stats to get into the Ivy’s you would find they are all (mostly ) successful, jsut as you wold see some burn outs from the Ivys.</p>
<p>Only the top 4 or 5 schools does prestige matter. Outside of HYPSM as an undergrad, prestige means very little.</p>
<p>“Caliber” does matter, but unfortunately sometimes prestige and caliber don’t go hand in hand. Caliber could mean the strength of the research and graduate programs (and often does) more so than the undergraduate education. Again, some schools with prestige really don’t have but so much caliber (at least relative to peers) in the undergraduate arena (many of the very top do indeed measure up here). They all have great students, but sometimes level of the education on the other hand can often leave something to be desired at these places This is of course versus the ideal that the level of richness and challenge at a school is supposed to develop the students intellectually. Don’t get me wrong, if you look at most top 20s, most students at all the schools are more than content with the way academics are at the places. The students at very academically and intellectually intense schools would have it no other way and those at less intense schools could not see it any other way. In fact, I would argue that the latter would find it hard to believe that there are indeed similar ranked schools with more intensity and would deny that higher ranked schools are that much more intense. For example, many outside of HYPSMCh, etc still like to always claim that the education and level of rigor is identical. I hate to be the blunt barer of bad news, but often it simply isn’t true on the whole and you can use various means to find out. Even when you look at top 20s, there seem to be tiers of UG education caliber and the courses show it, whether it be through how they are tiered or the level of content and assessments in the courses. The idea that you will necessarily get the same education as you would at HYPetc everywhere else isn’t true. You certainly “can”, but most people won’t (I would say that many schools outside of that tier have indeed raised their level such that it is resembles these schools more closely, but some of the others have to go quite a long way to have academics that challenge the student body at the level that these places do. Some schools have adapted well to their “better” student bodies, some haven’t as much) . Those sorts of environments are hard to mimic and are ripe for more consistently high throttle academics. </p>
<p>This goes despite the grade inflation claims. If I see that the HYPetc biology or economics classes are much more difficult than, say, the Emory econ. or biology class, then I honestly believe the inflation is justified because the expectations are higher. I have never been down for the pretense that there are no differences or that it doesn’t matter. Maybe if you are pre-professional (non-business), it doesn’t matter as much because you simply need to make lots of A’s where you are (as in, easier/more laid back is probably better), but if you are training or prepping for industry or grad. school opps, the intensity and caliber of the UG education could very well matter and this does indeed differ across schools and programs, even among “top” ones (For example, I don’t think wall street and other finance employers take HYPetc economics students for fun or merely because it adds prestige, it’s because the students are really smart and the coursework in economics at such schools is very challenging, much more so than other selective institutions. These schools usually have more quantitatively intense majors, which would make many of them favored over BBA’s for example, especially those that didn’t go to Wharton). I suppose the question is: “Does the academics in your department of interest match up to the prestige of the school?” Again, if pre-prof., this matters less, but if you’re into learning or prepping for whatever, differences could very well matter and you have to see what is behind the prestige (is it merely allure and popularity, or is it because it challenges even the brightest people and pushes folks to new heights. Some are still stuck in the former phase, the very best schools have lots of the latter to back up their reputation. Needless to say, many of the research U’s in the former categories are the so called “new Ivies”, many of us who, at the undergraduate level are known for quality of life more so than academic prowess and intensity. Heck, even some of the Ivies are kind of sketchy. I won’t drop names, but among them, there seems to be a pecking order, where a few of them are more academically similar to the new Ivies I mention than the very top schools, 3 or 4 which are Ivy league members). In some cases, it could be all hype and you attend a school that isn’t great in your area of interest. </p>
<p>As @Hunt points out prestige is relative and seems to be influenced by location ( and of course major.) I would think UNC (Chapel- Hill) is more prestigious- especially for a business degree. </p>
<p>Always need to balance risk/return.</p>
<p>Prestige, financials and other qualitative things (such as being able to tolerate the city, weather, people, etc.) matter a lot as well. The reality is that most people don’t take the time to think about all the aspects and focus on what impresses them or other people. </p>
<p>I don’t think there’s anything wrong with choosing a college based on prestige: after all, your life, your choice. Everyone has different circumstances.</p>
<p>I DO, however, think there’s something wrong with saddling yourself with massive amounts of student loan debt (especially to study something in low demand) and then proceed to complain about it for years to come when the bank starts calling. </p>
<p>Sorry if this sounds negative, but I think if four years of glamour and being at the top of the world are more important to you (and your family) than 20-30 years worth of potential debt payments, you shouldn’t complain. If you go to an ivy you can’t afford, accept the loans, and then find yourself dealing with a harsh sting of reality after graduation, there’s only one thing to say; you get what you ask for. But hey, if you can manage to get in and get a free ride through scholarships, no problem. Seriously, that’s great for you.</p>
<p>Plus, I feel as if so many students entranced by the thought of an ivy league forget about their parents. Unless you’re paying for the school, you need to understand that your education is a huge financial burden on them. So many kids today act like their education only affects them, when in reality, it’s a choice that impacts everyone around you </p>
<p>My sons both chose small, lesser-known schools that fit their needs perfectly. Both sets of grandparents were really disappointed…because they wanted bumper sticker “name” colleges. Wanted to be able to strut around the senior center, dropping the schools’ names. I still shake my head. Grandpa in particular ONLY wanted a prestige name, above all other factors, for his grandsons. </p>