<p>The tippy top schools provide great aid along with a great education.</p>
<p>I agree that schools with need based aid only ( to which category the ivy colleges belong), do offer good aid to students who qualify.
However, since it is up to the private colleges to determine how much a family can afford and how they want to meet their need, whether it be from grants, work study, loans or a combination therof, families may also be stunned to learn they dont qualify for aid, even at a school with a COA of $60k.</p>
<p>Luckily, there are many excellent schools with lower COAs, many even offer merit aid!
Ive taken informal polls of profs from ivies & you might be surprised where their children are going for undergrad.</p>
<p>I think that’s true. And if your criteria is - I want highly selective schools - and I want or need to stay in the Northeast - then pretty much, you’ve got yourself the 8 Ivies plus MIT.</p>
<p>However, that’s not what people say. They say - I want HYPSM. Which says - I’m not bound by geography; I’ll go anywhere so long as it’s top notch. Well, then why would you then restrict the rest to the northeast? Really, what do Brown and Dartmouth offer that, say, Duke doesn’t? Not a thing, except membership in a particular athletic league.</p>
<p>If you took the top 25 or school research universities, you’d find “themes of commonality.” You might put Princeton and Vanderbilt together. You might put Cornell / Penn / Northwestern / Wash U together. You might put Columbia and U of Chicago together. And so forth. And it’s perfectly legit to like, say, the P / V combo or the C / P / NU / WashU combo or maybe both combos. But it’s kind of weird to array those schools by commonality and then use membership-in-a-certain-athletic-league as your final cut. It just doesn’t make any sense. It’s as arbitrary as selecting only the schools with the one syllable names.</p>
<p>It’s worse. At least the one syllable list would yield some interesting matches and safeties to round out a thoughtful set of schools beyond Yale, Penn, Duke, Brown, and Rice.</p>
<p>While there are likely some students who will find all of them acceptable fits, those same students will likely find many other schools to be acceptable fits.</p>
<p>^^^^ I would take it a step further and say if you put in the effort and dig deeper, you should be able to develop a customized list with better than ‘acceptable’ fits.</p>
<p>If a student is from a very competitive high school of a reasonably large class size, has the stats like 2300+ SAT I, all 800 SAT 2, rank-1 or 2, plus being a state-level competition winner of a “not very obscure” kind (the last one is very crucial), he or she would have a decent chance to get into one of these schools.</p>
<p>I also think it is better to AVOID applying to all ivies + M + S, to show that you are not too obsessed.</p>
<p>Uh, not exactly. What about all the excellent liberal arts colleges in the Northeast? What about Carnegie Mellon and NYU? What about the top women’s colleges? And, if your definition of Northeast extends down into Maryland and DC, what about Johns Hopkins and Georgetown?</p>
<p>Even in the Northeast, the Ivies aren’t everything.</p>
Even staying in the NE there’s all the LACs, the women’s colleges Georgetown and NYU and Tufts and many more I’m sure I haven’t thought of. All in the top 50 of you know who’s list.</p>
<p>Ivy schmivie—not thrilled with my DD’s choice. From 23+ mandatory engineering hr to rude, snarky fin aid, not to mention last week’s stress-related suicide (incredibly sad for the family), I’ve got to wonder if it’s worth it. Time will tell.</p>
<p>Bates, Colby, Bowdoin, Amherst, Williams, Boston College, Tufts…and…Boston University
, Northeastern, Trinity, Wesleyan, Conn College…</p>
<p>And if you are willing to consider all the Ivy locations, there are any number of other schools in the greater Philly area (Haverford, Swarthmore, Villanova, etc) and in NYC area too.</p>
<p>And if you venture to the DC area…LOTS more…</p>
<p>Gotta say also, there is nothing wrong with the NE flagship universities either.</p>
<p>The best advice, imho, is to provide maximum educational opportunities all along, not structure an education with the goal of getting into certain colleges. That is the wrong goal and makes for very unhappy students and parents here every year at decision time, lamenting they’ve have done “everything right” and didn’t get the results they’d planned on. </p>
<p>I agree with alh #73, except that it is important to plan high school course selection for possible choices. For example, the UCs have course requirements that must be met (like a full year of fine arts) for admission. Looking at admissions requirements for even reach colleges is a good idea early in high school, even while keeping in mind that admission there may be unlikely.</p>
<p>We didn’t expect our kids to get into Ivies, either; they were never on the list until the end. But we did plan for the UCs because we live in CA. The UCs have the most stringent req’ts in the country (or did at the time), so if one complied with those requirements, they would be good to get in anywhere.</p>
<p>Although some kids got into great schools without doing this I don’t think there’s a way to prepare for top schools vs. not top schools or for one top school vs. another.</p>
<p>My kids took all the hardest classes offered (unless they were not able to because they wouldn’t have been able to get through them or the school wouldn’t allow them to). They took foreign language, English, science, social studies and math all four years. Some kids didn’t do this - like they took extra science and not social studies as seniors but my kids didn’t.</p>
<p>They took no “fluff” courses. Every period was a core course or a substantive elective. No study halls.</p>
<p>They were serious about their extracurriculars. If you’re going to play piano, play for 10 years and go in front of a judge once a year. </p>
<p>What else is there? Of course get the best grades you can and do great on standardized tests. Isn’t that what you need for every top school?</p>
<p>If, while in high school, students take advantage of educational opportunities that have value for them, do ECs for enjoyment, and community service for its own reward - then if the ivies don’t accept the student, no one is going to be saying “I jumped through all the right hoops and it was a worthless exercise.” The high school years should be worthwhile in and of themselves, not just as a means to an end.</p>
<p>Top end grades in hard courses and top end standardized tests are necessary, but not sufficient, in most cases, to gain admission to super-selective schools.</p>
<p>
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<p>The UCs’ requirements versus what students aiming for the most selective UCs and privates are likely to take:</p>
<p>Math: Required: through geometry and algebra 2. Better: through precalculus, calculus, or higher.
Science: Required: two of biology, chemistry, physics. Better: all three of biology, chemistry, physics. Even better: all three, plus an extra year of one or more at an advanced level.
Foreign language: Required: level 2. Better: level 3. Even better: level 4 or higher.</p>
<p>I said that. Take the hardest classes available which in our school was 2 APs in English and Social Studies, AP language, one AP science and one or two AP math classes. Most good high schools (I think all?) have you take bio, chem, physics and then an AP in one of them. You would have actually 4 or 5 years of foreign language culminating in the AP exam. Your high school will guide the kids through the first couple of years. I think kids sometimes deviate as seniors by not following through with language or social studies.</p>
<p>Also, I don’t believe that all APs are equal although I disputed this with a few guidance counselors. I would take US History or European History over Psychology or Geography or Human Ecology. Also one of the hard sciences over earth science. </p>
<p>Some people also don’t think you should do 2 AP English’s because some schools don’t give you credit for both but I think you should.</p>