<p>thanks this is really helpful</p>
<p>This is one of the most useful threads ever on College Confidential! Thanks so much for doing this and keeping it in the forefront. It is invaluable.</p>
<p>tokenadult says it very well. </p>
<p>As our family began the college admissions process with our son this past year, a friend (who by profession is an educator), offered words of advice based not only upon her professional expertise, but also upon her experience as the parent of a college student.</p>
<p>She, her husband, and her son (who will graduate from Boston College next month) have reflected upon this young man's undergraduate academic experience and believe that in hindsight, he might have received an equal or perhaps better education, at less cost, by having given more serious consideration to attending the University of Massachusetts at Amhest's honors college -the Commonwealth College (ComCol). Reflecting upon his BC undergraduate experience, both he and his parents now feel that for a $47,000-a-year tuition/room/board investment (slighlty less given their small financial aid package), too many of his courses were delivered in large lecture-hall formats. Proportionally, they also felt that too many courses had been taught by TAs rather than BC professors.</p>
<p>The Commonwealth College (ComCol), established at UMass-Amherst in the 1990s, has quietly gained recognition over the last decade for the excellent academic, research, and international study programs available to students accepted into the program. (It was recently profiled in the March 24 edition of The Boston Globe (Cream</a> at the top is sweet for UMass - The Boston Globe) . </p>
<p>This same young man has a slightly older cousin who opted for ComCol over undergraduate acceptances at several highly-selective and prestigious colleges and universities. Her long-term goal was law school, and through serious long-range financial planning with her parents, felt that the investment in her terminal academic program (law school) would be paramount. To the dumbfounded amazement of her peers who headed off to Ivies and other prestigious schools, she attended "ZooMass" and the Commonwealth College. She was later accepted to and graduated from Harvard Law School. Today, she is a young associate partner at one of Boston's top, nationally-known law firms. Among her law school associates are a number of Ivy-league undergraduate- and law-school peers...many of whom are saddled with large educational loans. This young woman, on the other hand, has very little academic debt and is one of the few associates who has been able to make her first real estate purchase (a Boston condo) because of her more net-positive financial situation.</p>
<p>Our son decided apply to UMass purely as a safety school, and was notifed in his acceptance letter a few weeks back that he has been selected for the ComCol program. (Incoming freshmen are selected for and invited to ComCol in their University acceptance letter; they may not "apply" to the Commonwealth College as part of the freshman application process. Upperclassmen may apply for admission to ComCol based upon their academic performance while at the University).</p>
<p>We and our son, whose current long-range career goals will likely require graduate school, are going to give ComCol very serious consideration as we weigh this program against the merits and costs of some of the more expensive and perceived more "prestigious" schools to which he has been accepted. In recent conversations about ComCol with other people as we've moved into the acceptance evaluation phase of the college admissions "process," we have begun to hear more ComCol stories that are similar to the young law associate's. Just last week, one of my husband's business acquaintances happened to learn "throught the grapevine" that our son had been accepted to ComCol. She made a point of contacting my husband, noting that both of her daughters graduated from the program; one is now a student at Harvard Medical School, and the other has just been awarded a graduate research fellowship at Harvard in a science field. And...both loved their ComCol experiences.</p>
<p>The moral of this long-winded story: Motivated, mature students may fare better with far less expense at some fine, though perhaps not media-hyped, colleges and universities, particularly if they think they will need to continue their education beyond their undergraduate degree. If your child applied to a a state university "safety" school and was acceped into its honors program, you may not want to be quick to dismiss it.</p>
<p>The 37-year-old, highly-regarded oral surgeon who removed our son's wisdom teeth last year graduated from a very small Massachusetts state college, and then went on to received BOTH MD and DDS degrees from top medical and dental schools. </p>
<p>In the end, it will be personal motivation, determination, and hard work that will ultimately yield true career and life success. Given the current, sorry national economic condition of our country and the credit-bloated lives led by a vast and ever-growing number of financially-strapped Americans, pragmatic higher education financing should be given very serious consideration by starry-eyed students (and their parents) alike.</p>
<p>The research behind this list of top schools is impressive!</p>
<p>It looks like the juniors are building their college lists, as it appears on other threads, so I hope this thread will be helpful.</p>
<p>tokenadult:</p>
<p>i strongly feel you list is very impressive and should serve as a good guideline for hs students searching for good colleges. perhaps to make your two lists of about 300 colleges more classified, you may consider doing a breakdown by school types as follows:</p>
<p>1) state research universities
2) private research universities
3) liberal arts colleges</p>
<p>main reasons: there are key differences among the three in terms of student body size, faculty/students ratio, number of programs/majors offered, class size, tution/room & board fees, in-state vs out of state acceptance policy, teaching/learning environment and so on.</p>
<p>thanks for consideration.</p>
<p>Hi, dconcerned, </p>
<p>Thanks for your suggestion. I hear you as to systematic differences among various types of colleges, as it happens that my oldest is only shopping for research universities (categories 1 and 2 in your list). Here on College Confidential, I have encountered other families that mix those categories as they put together their application lists (as my son does with categories 1 and 2), so I took the risk of combining those categories. In most cases a student who looks at the college's website will rapidly be able to tell a college's size, presence of substantial on-campus research, and whether it is state administered. I do hope the list helps college-seekers go beyond the usual list of colleges in their own town and the often-mentioned list of the twenty or thirty most nationally known colleges when deciding what colleges to apply to.</p>
<p>tokenadult:</p>
<p>i understand your viewpoint quite well. the reason i'm suggesting the breakdown is college applicants can have a quick start and as they go deeper into some of these schools, be it state, private or liberals arts, they'll soon realize that there are many more equally good (if not even better in some aspects) schools to choose from.</p>
<p>for example, liberal arts colleges like elon, hendrix, hiram, kalamazoo, beloit, new college of florida, knox college are all exellent schools but less-known and that's why i'm naming them on purpose.</p>
<p>or for example consider as safeties (no offense since they are all good) state us like ncsu-raleigh, msu-lansing, ut knoxville, just to name a few.</p>
<p>i really feel hs students next year need to explore more and keep options open for a good mixture of colleges to apply to.</p>
<p>by the way, if cc participants start to look more into these less-known but really good colleges, they will eventually make an impact on the college choices as these many schools are as good as many other better known, and even better in my opinion, reaches and safeties</p>
<p>I'll put a new post here to bring this thread to the attention of the many juniors who are building their college lists.</p>
<p>Regarding CommonWealth College,</p>
<p>
[quote]
But with a 600-student freshman class that boasts an average SAT score of 1,315 and a 4.0 grade point average, Commonwealth College, the state's honors college at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, stacks up favorably against selective colleges throughout New England and increasingly competes for a caliber of high school graduate typically bound for more prominent schools.</p>
<p>"It is the jewel of our university system," said Aaron Spencer, a former chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education who spearheaded the creation of the college. "I think the public is beginning to recognize Commonwealth College as almost Ivy League in its quality. It's virtually the equivalent of [University of California] Berkeley."
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The average SAT and GPA at Berkeley for everyone is a lot higher than UMass honors college. It is not even close to being virtually the equivalent of Berkeley. Boston Globe, while trying to make a point, printed stuff like "almost Ivy League" for this college and try to compare it to Berkeley. And they say East Coasters do not think highly about top publics like Berkeley.</p>
<p>It's a good idea to closely compare multiple characteristics of colleges before deciding which to attend (or even to apply to) and it is a good idea to look outside one's own region to find hidden gems.</p>
<p>TokenAdult: This is the best and most useful thread on all of college confidential. Being able to see in one glance a consolidation of multiple rankings in one glance is extremely useful. Thank you for your efforts.</p>
<p>This is a great thread that has given us some new ideas for schools to heck out.</p>
<p>Thanks for the kind words. I hope it helps a bunch of applicants this year.</p>
<p>TA - thanks for this great list. Any chance you would be willing to update your <em>'s to reflect the 2009 Barron's? For one example I noticed, Rensselaer went from </em> to **. I am sure there are others. </p>
<p>Thanks either way!</p>
<p>Thanks for the compliment. Yes, I have the 2009 Barron's book at hand and am checking for selectivity changes. As one might guess, must changes are in the direction of more colleges becoming more selective at the top end of college selectivity.</p>
<p>I'll bring up my post here for reference for seniors comparing offers of admission and deciding where to enroll and for juniors deciding where to apply in the fall. </p>
<p>And I'll link here to a source I learned about from another CC participant, </p>
<p>Harvard</a> Number One University in Eyes of Public </p>
<p>which doesn't tell the whole story about how colleges compare, but may be food for thought.</p>
<p>Now that class of 2009 seniors have mostly committed to what colleges they will attend, I’ll bring up this thread for reference by class of 2010 juniors who are looking for colleges to apply to.</p>
<p>This list is getting to be almost two years old, but movement in college reputations is slow, and most of the best known colleges just get more selective over time, so with that in mind, take a look at this thread if you’d like to round out your college application list for this admission season. Good luck to all of you from class of 2010 applying this fall.</p>
<p>At this time of year, many class of 2010 seniors are refining their college application lists, and I hope this thread is helpful for those of you looking for other colleges to consider applying to.</p>