<p>My daughter is not planning to apply to any Ivy League schools. They just don't appeal to her. But we are getting this question so much that she is doubting herself, and maybe I am too. And when you look at how good the financial aid is supposed to be at those schools, perhaps we are making a mistake. I am not even sure she could get in.</p>
<p>Her "boyfriend" is applying to Yale. Yale looks great. But, he goes to a prestigious private school. He has been afford many opportunities in life. His test scores are slightly below hers, but almost the same. Neither have taken the SAT yet but will be taking it in the spring. (she took it a long time ago for a science/math program). She has a 3.8 uwgpa. Her PSAT score was 216. She is not in the top 10% at her mediocre public school (but is in the top 12%, because she transferred in, and the way they weight grades and treat transfers, it has been hard to be much higher, hopes to hit top 10% by graduation, or at maybe even by fall). She has great ECs and volunteer work and references.</p>
<p>She really liked Rice. But it sounds like schools like Princeton and Yale would give much better financial aid. However, she really does not like the idea of going so far from home. </p>
<p>Also, she is a person who rejects the brand conscious culture. She won't wear things or carry things with brand names on them, like Aeropostale or Coach. So, going to an Ivy just because it is an Ivy does not appeal to her at all. Which, actually, I agree. You should have much better reasons to like a college than a label or a number on a ranking.</p>
<p>If she likes Rice, she might like the residential college system at Harvard or Yale too. Or she might not. I certainly don’t buy into the Ivy or bust culture in parts of CC, but I also hate to see kids who say they don’t want to apply to any Ivy on principle. First - they are very different from each other - someone who likes Dartmouth shouldn’t also like Columbia (though I know lots of students who apply to both), and second they are not only populated by brown-nosing, snobby over-achievers (though there probably are some). </p>
<p>My suggestion is that someone with Ivy type stats should take a look at a couple that are similar to other colleges they like (location, size, strong majors) and spend enough time on a visit to see if their preconceptions (good or bad) hold.</p>
<p>I made my older son apply to Harvard, because I thought it was better than he thought and still worth considering over his safeties and I thought he had a better than average chance of getting in, though it’s not a powerhouse in his major. He liked it much better than he thought he would, and he did apply. He also chose to go to Carnegie Mellon with our blessing.</p>
<p>If the question is purely FA driven, I would say why not apply. If you are on the lower end of the socio-economic scale, this would make sense to me. FYI - my son got almost identical FA offers from Rice and an Ivy. They were within $200 of each other.</p>
<p>If your daughter likes Rice, I as a student and daughter would love to get 100% support. Rice is a great school, and if she has ivy stats she stands a greater chance of actually being admitted to her top choice.
I would never apply to an ivy for the sake of applying to an ivy; in fact, I won’t. There are great schools out there, some of them might offer your daughter much more than an ivy. So don’t push your daughter. If she thinks she doesn’t fit it and doesn’t want to go far from home, there is no point in applying to any school that fits those criteria, and there shouldn’t be any exceptions, also not for ivies .</p>
<p>If your D has no interest in any Ivy, then she shouldn’t apply.</p>
<p>But, frankly, I think it’s absolutely idiotic to refuse to apply to any Ivies because you “reject the brand name culture.” If you live in Texas or elsewhere in the Southwest, I think Rice would be more of a “brand name” than Dartmouth, Penn, Brown or Cornell. </p>
<p>The “Ivies” are a sports league. Each of the Ivies has its own unique culture. So, while I think it’s idiotic when kids apply to all 8 simply because they are Ivies, I think it’s equally idiotic to refuse to apply to one of them if the college is a good fit simply because it is an Ivy. </p>
<p>That said, I don’t know if your D will get into any of them. But then, I don’t know if you’ll D will get into Rice. If it is closer to home than any of the Ivies and she doesn’t want to be too far from home, that’s a perfectly valid reason to decide to apply to it and not to the Ivies. </p>
<p>But please don’t buy into the nonsense that all the kids who attend the Ivies are status conscious and prestige seeking while all the kids who apply to schools like Rice don’t care at all about prestige.</p>
<p>Who’s to say your daughter won’t get financial aid or merit scholarships at Rice? </p>
<p>If money is an issue and she is (thankfully) not status-obsessed, consider liberal arts colleges outside the very top tier. Many would love to have a student like your daughter and would offer generous merit aid if her stats continue to be good. She also may enjoy a smaller, more intimate environment. If you are in the south, maybe take a look at Rhodes, Hendrix, Centre, etc. They are all fantastic schools that prepare students well for graduate school or whatever their future may hold.</p>
<p>There are many, many wonderful colleges in the USA, there is no requirement to apply to a school merely because it is in one conference or another. There is no sound reason to refrain from applying to a school that otherwise appeals to you merely because it in one conference or another. She should just apply to the school she finds appealing and not worry about the athletic league. Be sure that she applies to at least one financial safety. (The ivies like top 10% of the class.)</p>
<p>Acceptance rates at the Ivies are so low that there is only a small chance she would get in anyway.</p>
<p>However, I don’t get this attitude that the Ivies don’t appeal to her.</p>
<p>The Ivies are very diverse.</p>
<p>Columbia in New York City.</p>
<p>Dartmouth in a small town in New Hampshire.</p>
<p>Harvard in Cambridge.</p>
<p>So how can she say that none of them appeal to her?</p>
<p>You can’t lump them all together.</p>
<p>In any case, don’t fret too much, because she probably won’t get in anyway. My son had a 2300 SAT last year and unweighted gpa, and didn’t get in to any Ivies.</p>
<p>If she concentrates on schools ranked #10 to #30 in the rankings-----schools like Rice----that is more than fine.</p>
<p>jonri, I appreciate your point about Rice–it is a prestigious school, and its “name” may matter to some–but I’d hardly say it’s “nonsense” to suggest that many, many kids who apply to Ivies do so because of the status they perceive in their names. Take a look at the number of “Chance me for top schools!” and “Ivy or bust!” threads on this site if you want evidence.</p>
<p>floridadad: I would not call the Ivies “diverse.” All eight are in the Northeast. Half of them are in big Northeastern metropolitan areas. (And remember that the OP’s daughter has stated that she does not want to go that far from home.) Yes, there are differences in their strengths and weaknesses but they do tend to attract the same kids–again, as evidenced by the number of individual students who apply to most if not all of them.</p>
<p>The Ivies aren’t special snowflakes and their affiliation is an athletic one. If you are interested in a top education, it’s quite possible that some will make it on the list, but you would do so on each school’s individual merit and appeal, not because they are Ivies or not-Ivies. Beyond HYP, their brand power is largely northeast concentrated anyway, which may or may not be relevant to you anyway. If someone is looking at top 20 or so schools, the smart thing to do is pick schools that are of personal interest. The dumb thing is to think about “only Ivy” or “only not Ivy.”</p>
<p>It’s just as silly to not apply to an Ivy because it’s an Ivy than vice versa. My son didn’t apply to Harvard because he didn’t like the smug attitude the school projected, but he didn’t hold that against Yale. In any case, the financial aid given by the top 20 or so colleges is comparable, whether it’s an Ivy or not – for my son, the financial aid offers for Brown, Amherst, Williams and Northwestern were all within $500 or so.</p>
<p>My son wanted to attend a school with smart peers and demanding classes, but also held some reservations about having to deal with possible elitist attitudes. He began to fall in love with Brown as soon as he saw their opening presentation for accepted students yet to make their final decision: a collage of film and TV clips that systematically made fun of Brown. You’ve gotta love a place that can make fun of itself, especially right in the midst of a recruitment pitch!</p>
<p>What I meant is not that she is avoiding Ivies just because they are Ivies, but rather, that she would like to go for schools that appealed to her anyway. I have no intention of telling her where she is to apply to, it is all her choice. This was just a conversation we were having. Obviously, if she suddenly started looking up schools in the Northeast, it would not be because she has a sudden desire to go to the Northeast, it would be because they are Ivies. So then, it feels like looking at those schools for all the wrong reasons.</p>
<p>Put another way, if you took the top 20 schools, took off the labels and sorted them into similar buckets, you’d throw Princeton and Vanderbilt together. You’d throw Columbia and U Chicago together. You might throw Stanford and Duke together. You might throw Penn, Cornell, Northwestern, WashU together. Point is not to argue about the exact sets but to draw the point that if you’re interested in the Penn/Cornell/NU/WashU type of school, then that’s your interest and who cares that 2 are Ivy and 2 aren’t? It’s irrelevant beyond the world of CC high school seniors and unsophisticated parents who think that Ivies provide magic dust. These are all great schools. Take the labels off and just pick what you like.</p>
<p>Please prove to me that there aren’t "many, many kids who apply to " Rice because they care about prestige. If you haven’t met them, I have. </p>
<p>I live in NYC. A lot of kids here who apply to schools like Rice, Vanderbilt or Emory–prestigious schools outside the Northeast–apply because they know they might not get into Ivies and want to go to the most prestigious school that will admit them. They think they have better odds of getting into top colleges outside the Northeast.In other cases, they are in search of merit money–and this is especially true of kids with divorced parents with one parent who doesn’t want to pay. There are also a fair number of kids at Rice who did apply to Ivies and didn’t get in. They are every bit as interested in prestige as their classmates who applied to Ivies and got accepted.</p>
<p>There’s just not some sort of sharp divide in values between kids who attend Ivies and kids who attend other top colleges.</p>
<p>LoremIpsum is right. In his case, Brown appealed to his kid. Great! Why take it off the table because it’s an Ivy? The Ivies are 8 school that have no more commonality ( aside from NE location) than any other randomly selected 8 schools in the top 20. It makes as little sense to think of them as a group as thinking of Duke, Rice, Yale, Brown as a group because they have one syllable names.</p>