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What are the Minnesota state flagships that are so good?</p>
<p>First off if you think your choices for a good education are either Ivy’s or honor colleges, you’re overlooking an awful lot of opportunities. Can’t help you there, if that’s what you think. </p>
<p>However I do have some opinions about honors colleges. Honors colleges are often oversold, the glossy pamphlets giving the impression a small LAC has been set up inside a larger university. Honors colleges do offer some very valuable perks and let you meet some of the top students at your college. But when you’re thinking of honors colleges the pitch is often that you’re getting an elite private education at the public school price. Regrettably this isn’t really the case.</p>
<p>Depending on the U’s program, what they offer may range from taking separate honors classes to taking just one honors seminar per semester. Some of the honors offerings may just be a special discussion section of the regular class (at many U’s classes can have 100-500 students, then everyone meets once a week in a smaller group with a TA). You really need to dig in to find what a particular school offers. And keep in mind honors college programs typically offer the small classes and top profs the brochures promise during the 1st two years of college, because it doesn’t take that many classes to come up with a set that will meet the lower-division requirements for most majors.</p>
<p>It is rare to find more than a token amount of offerings upper-division since the honors program simply doesn’t have enough faculty members to duplicate an entire major or set of majors. So the last two years most/all classes are taken with the rest of the students in the regular U’s classes. The teaching of the profs will be geared towards that level, the discussions and student involvement in class will be dominated by the regular students, and so on. And class sizes may balloon, too, if you’re in a larger public U and a popular major. Peer effects are big, too; when almost everyone around you at school is a strong student you have lots of good examples of how hard to work, of extras like doing research or internships to get a leg up for post-college. If the top kids are a few hundred strong dispersed among tens of thousands at the U then good examples may be harder to see. When it comes to finding a job, employers are less likely to send recruiters to campus with a limited number of honors college seniors compared to the campus-full they’ll find at more highly regarded schools.</p>
<p>Honors colleges do offer some valuable perks in addition to the classes. Typical ones include registering for classes before everyone else so you get the classes you want (a perk worth its weight in gold!), special counselors, guaranteed housing, special library privileges. They will stamp your diploma with some indication of honors college or make a note on your transcript. But I would be skeptical of attending a college for its honors program in place of a more highly regarded U if finances are not an issue.</p>
<p>I’d go with the ivy any day</p>
<p>For a lot of lower to middle class families, an honors program and an ivy could be around the same cost. Would it be smarter to apply to many ivies with good aid or to some ivies and some honors programs?</p>
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<p>With a family income of around 100,000, my Ds have paid between $10-15,000 a year at Harvard.</p>
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<p>The “flagship” institution in a state is the primary university of the state system, usually called “The University of [name of the state].” In Minnesota, that would be the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Kajon was commenting about some states in which the flagship university has a high-profile honors program; I don’t think s/he was suggesting that there is or isn’t such a program in Minnesota.</p>
<p>Go to the best college you can afford.</p>
<p>Given that money will be an issue, until you have your financial aid offers this discussion is somewhat pointless. After you have your fin aid then you can try and decide if “Ivy” is worth it vs your in-state options. Frankly, if you want to be an engineer, the Ivies financial offers are going to have to be very good to pass up UVA or VT (assuming their fin aid is competitive).</p>
<p>Gadad, what’s your point about how much your daughters paid for Harvard?</p>
<p>^^^ They paid about the same at Harvard as they would have paid at our in-state public flagship for room, board and fees AFTER getting full tuition scholarships. Don’t dismiss private schools off-hand on cost alone.</p>
<p>Yeah, that’s what I thought too. I think it’ll be a much better idea for me to try to get into great private schools.</p>
<p>Apply to both and wait for admissions decisions and financial aid offers before deciding. I don’t think there’s a right answer to this question. The only wrong answer would be taking on crushing debt.</p>
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This is a good point, and in fact some of the elite schools actually have very generous programs with grants and not loans for lower-income students (of course you have to get accepted first!) But a lot of times on this forum when someone talks about financial help what they have in mind is the gap between what their parents will contribute and the cost, expecting the money to materialize from somewhere else even if the FAFSA says the parents should be able to pay more.</p>
<p>There is obviously a myriad of opinions on this subject, but the main arguments that I have heard are 1) to choose Ivy’s for their prestige 2) to choose public schools for their cost/nearly equal quality of education.</p>
<p>The final decision will be largely based on dollars and cents, but I’m inquiring as to long-term benefits of either. My father has employed Ivy graduates before, and he, along with many other men/women who hire and fire, have expressed a sentiment that those who attend Ivy’s have the tendency to be cocky and overrated, with few if any advantages over other intelligent, well-qualified job applicants. I currently work at a research laboratory, and a few of the men/women that work there are incredibly famous and prominent. Some of the schools represented are California - Berkeley, Texas - Austin, Colorado School of Mines, and MIT (not a single Ivy). </p>
<p>Essentially, my question isn’t asking if I will feel more superior, or if I’ll get an ego boost, from attending an Ivy. I’m asking which provides more practical, long-term benefits.</p>
<p>^ Depends on your field and desired location.</p>
<p>^Well, I listed my desired field. I think the rest can be extrapolated from that.</p>
<p>My feeling is it’s more student dependant than school dependant. A bright, highly motivated student will do well in school, whether ivy, elite, top 50, or good private/public honors program. A bright, lazy kid won’t go far whether he/she comes out of HYP or state U. I tend to agree with your father.</p>
<p>Look at recruitment stats. Many public schools provide lists of employers who hire their grads.</p>
<p>It’s really, really all about fit. My state school’s “honors” program couldn’t come close to matching my current school in terms of what they offered. Sure, I’d get to choose classes first, but I wouldn’t be taking more than 1 or 2 honors specific classes, and from my friends who went there, a majority of the students in class weren’t that interested in being there. Plus, too many of my friends/acquaintances from HS were going there, and I didn’t want to have a 13th-grade experience.</p>
<p>But from the classes I have taken, and compared to my friends who’re in honors programs in-state, my courses were more rigorous (in the sciences/math), and required more independent thought/creativity. Plus, I don’t have to deal with counselors telling me not to take a class because it’s not necessary for my major, and here I can take classes I’m not, (in terms of pre-reqs), qualified for, which was near impossible at my state school.</p>
<p>For someone considering engineering, VT or UVa will offer virtually identical long term opportunities as the privates and your ROI will be significantly greater. </p>
<p>The Ivy’s, with selected departmental exceptions at Cornell and Princeton, offer engineering programs that are measurably inferior to programs in the general sciences, humanities and SS’s AND inferior to engineering programs at any number of top state universities. </p>
<p>If you had an IB career planned, sure, there could be argued a ROI advantage holding that Dartmouth or Princeton sheepskin and alumni list of connections. If grad school in any form is on the horizon, you as an individual leaving a state school (though probably not your graduating class as a group) will fare just as well as you would with a degree from a better ranked private. The job you get will have almost everything to do with the quality of that grad program and your performance there - your undergrad experience a mere footnote.</p>
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And Columbia…right?</p>
<p>So for a bachelor’s degree you’re trying to tell me going into debt just to get an ivy’s name stamped on the piece of paper is worth the long-term effects? A graduate degree would be much better from an Ivy, obviously. But how many people look at a resume and say “Oh, he obtained his doctorate from Yale, masters from Duke, but only U of _____ for his bachelor’s? Nope, can’t hire him.” I think the smart choice would be (if and only if money is an issue) going to a State school’s honors, where they would offer you plenty of scholarships, do exceptionally well, and then apply for graduate programs at HYP schools. If you’re able to go to undergrad school there, chances are you can work hard enough at a State school to earn a place in their graduate school; all they’ll look at is you GPA and degree area test (i.e LSAT).
This, however, is coming from a student who is in this dilemma and parent’s are expected to pay 20k+ a year at a school like Harvard even with their help. If I didn’t have the money issue though, it would undoubtedly be an easier choice: I’d take the better ranked school any day.</p>