<p>I definitely agree with you - I was just responding to Odyssey's post #859 when I mentioned Harvard's perceived edge in prestige. </p>
<p>Also, although we live in the Northeast, our school and community is not one where parents and students are over the top about the college admissions race (like the ones described by GFG and others). Most students do not aspire to the most selective schools, and academic ECs such as the Math Team, Debate, Scholars' Bowl, etc. are glad to have anyone who cares to participate. For a long time, I thought my kids would be at a disadvantage by attending a school system which is not considered particulary prestigious or high-achieving, but it worked out fine for both of them.</p>
<p>Why do we live where we do? Because it's a 15 minute commute to where my husband works. As a biologist doing medical research he doesn't have a lot of choices about where he can teach. I don't think we live in the most toxic town in our county.</p>
<p>just as the NE colleges have geographic diversity as an admissions criteria, so do the private colleges out west. Pomona, for example, only accepts a handful of SoCal residents; thus, the same reverse geography admissions criteria applies.....</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd may or may not have stronger math and science than Harvard. It has some big disadvantages in my book - it's not very diverse either by gender or ethnicity/race or student interests. (Yes I know the other Claremont colleges may make up the first and last disadvantages to some extent.)</p>
<p>"And almost no one here would turn down Harvard for any other school regardless of fit, availability of major, cold weather, etc."</p>
<p>Because my son is interested in computer science I would advise him to choose MIT, Stanford and Carnegie Mellon over Harvard. If he were more well-rounded or interested in being well-rounded I probably wouldn't.</p>
<p>I can see the merits in applying to schools that are not right nearby. We live near Washington, DC, and a mind-boggling number of the top students here seem to apply to Georgetown and Penn because they are excellent schools within easy driving distance of home. There is no way that Georgetown is going to take 45 kids from the same high school, though. Some of those kids might have been better off setting their sights on a somewhat less convenient school of similar selectivity -- such as Northwestern or WUSTL or Dartmouth or Emory or Cornell or whatever.</p>
<p>epiphany, I'm sorry if my comments sounded a bit strident; I'm not saying that Northeast schools must accept more Northeast students. I'm just getting a bit tired of having the Northeast bashed for this "rat race" mentality. When I read comments like this:</p>
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How many students from the NE and Mid-Atlantic region apply to Carleton, Grinnell, Occidental, Kenyon and scores of other terrific schools?
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</p>
<p>it just kind of gets my back up.</p>
<p>Why do I make sure that my kid is working up to her potential, particularly in areas of interest? Because I want to make sure that she has kept all of her options open. (And, as I said, she has the ability. I'm not talking about trying to mold a kid who's uncoordinated into an Olympic gymnast.) If she decides that she wants to go to a safety on her list, that's OK. One of the reasons that this is OK, however, is that her safeties are very good schools. And they're safeties for her because she took a rigorous courseload and did pretty well in it. And because in her EC's she followed her passions and set her pace. All I required from her is that whatever she did, she did her best. (I don't have a perfectionist child.)</p>
<p>Kids don't have the ability to see long-term. Would she have preferred not to take honors classes, or to live in a community with a lesser school system without as many opportunities? Sure. But if she had done so, she would have eliminated the possibility of attending a top school. She doesn't have to, but the option is still open to her. She may not get in; that's the nature of the system; but they won't laugh at her application. There's a lot of moaning on these boards about kids having to decide where they want to go to school in November if they apply ED, and how 17 year olds shouldn't be pushed into making that binding choice. Well, deciding which classes to take in 8th or 9th grade can have similar long-term effects. Would I really want a 13 year old making that decision? Sorry, no.</p>
<p>Yes, I live in a high-pressure town. But we have as many kids going to 4 year state colleges as go to the Ivies. It's a question of balance. And only time will tell if I've achieved the right balance for my kid.</p>
<p>I don't quite get your response to Epiphany. With the kind of profile high-achieving NE students accumulate, they would have a good chance of admission at some Midwestern or West Coast schools; but, as Marian pointed out in post 886, if 45 from the same school apply to G'town or Penn because they are close to home, the chances of their all getting in are very slim indeed. </p>
<p>NE students face a lot of competition from fellow students; but they do have a wider range of schools to apply to than students from other parts of the country.</p>
<p>I would be interested to hear how your D does in the great college search. My son is unpackaged too, only took tests once but did well, good but not perfect grades, good, but not astounding ECs. Writes well, but is light on volunteer work/work experience. Good public HS in rural/suburban NE.</p>
<p>I think he'll do well, but no evidence yet. I'm getting a sense that over-packaging might backfire, but again no evidence. So keep me posted.</p>
<p>
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...our family did not assume that it was up to the colleges to which she was applying, to satisfy all of her desires & her need for convenience.
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</p>
<p>epiphany, I really haven't seen this attitude ....that northeasterners should get preference so as to have convenient choices. In my town, they are only too happy to drop down a tier or two (or three!)</p>
<p>I don't live in a "soul-sucking" town. My 15 year old d will say that when she is in an overly dramatic mood. </p>
<p>garland: Why do people stay in these hyper-competitive towns? It does sound like a hellish experience. But if their attics are anywhere near as crammed with junk as mine, it could take years to get their houses ready for sale.</p>
<p>garland, I live where I do because I got a job here when I graduated. Met H here and we liked it and stayed. My son was 5 when we moved to the competitive suburb where we now live, and he attended school outside of our district. In that way, we avoided some of the extreme craziness that permeates life here. And I slowly learned that I don't have to be friends with the people who drive me crazy. </p>
<p>In retrospect, would i move here again? I would (because of all of the things that are great about it here), but I'd try to write a book about the craziness of it all. I just started "The Overachievers" last night (a friend gave it to me), and it describes just incredible examples of craziness in a highly competitive suburb. I wonder if it is all true.</p>
<p>well I guess that I interpreted your post about knowing dozens of NJ residents who found it "unthinkable" that S or D could not handily visit for a family occasion -- as indicating that no alternatives were acceptable. I just think families need to make some flexible choices and not act shocked when colleges do not bend to <em>them</em>.</p>
<p>And btw, I don't think for a moment that NE elites do not consider the absence of competitive public colleges when making their decisions. I believe that one reason for the large presence of N'easterners at these schools is not just accommodation to Town & Gown, not just the reality that a huge percentage of the applicant pool resides there (and is qualified) & thus cannot, should not be dismissed lightly, but also a sense of some stewardship over promising students. That is aside from any legacy or donation considerations or ability-to-pay, if there is.</p>
<p>No stress here! DS is mostly applying to big State Schools - instate, took the SAT's twice, plans to pound out his essays in the next few weeks then send all the apps in. Bright kid, definitely not driven, watching football on the couch as we speak. (Dang! It takes all the angst and EXCITEMENT out of the application process. ;) )</p>
<p>StickerShock... all your junk is in the attic? You are soooo lucky.... I'm still working on trying to clean out the clutter from the living room. Also, I think I have a dining room table hidden underneath the folded laundry and file boxes...but I haven't seen it in a number of years, ever since the dining area was convered to an auxiliary computer lab. ;)</p>
I live in a community that has one of the lowest per-capita spending per student in the state... and this is California, which I think already ranks about 43rd among all the states when it comes to school spending. At one point, there was a real danger of the district declaring bankruptcy. Both my kids went to the same local public school from K-8. My son went to a high school in our district within walking distance; my d. went to a neighboring district, but while her high school is more highly regarded, it is not known for academics and only a small handful of kids end up going to private colleges -- my guess is that only about a third or less of the graduates each year go on to 4 year colleges. </p>
<p>Now there is "lesser" and there is "lesser", and certainly even in poorly funded suburban and urban schools, my kids had better opportunities than they would have in many rural districts or with inner-city schools... so they were no where near rock bottom. So in fairness, if the kids in the competitive areas are going to "A" schools, I'll say that my daughter went to a "B" school -- the B school having acceptable academics, but nowhere near the sort of competition that some have described. (So I'm not talking about the C or D or F schools; the point is, nobody was laughing when my kid applied to top colleges from her B public).</p>
<p>It's not that it doesn't exist locally -- one of the reasons I was happy to move OUT of the city to a working class suburb was the level of competition for schools that I was seeing at the time my son was 5 and entering kindergarten. In my opinion at the time, too many of our friends were yuppies already stressed out over waiting lists and competition to get their 4 and 5 year olds into the "best" private schools, and I was just as happy to move to the kind of laid-back community full of aging hippies where I could sign my son up for the local public and let him go to the same school as other kids in the neighborhood. </p>
<p>I'm posting because despite the B school education, my daughter ended up at a pretty darn good college. When we went to the local counseling session for admitted students, it seems like there was a single "representative" student from each of the top local private prep schools in our area also entering this year's class. So I can't say that the kids whose parents opted for "competitive" fared worse.... but my d. obviously wasn't hurt by choosing the less competitive option available to her. And given the fact that there was no more than one from any particular school, I don't think that the kids at the more competitive schools had a great advantage. My d has friends who went to some of the more prestigious private prep schools for high school, but they didn't do particularly better when it came to admissions -- in fact, some did far worse. I think it's the silk purse out of a sow's ear problem -- the kids who weren't all that bright to start with didn't end up being Ivy material just because they managed to get into the better prep schools; the kids who were the brightest and most highly motivated came out o.k. no matter what high school they attended. </p>
<p>I wouldn't criticize anyone's choice... if it is a choice. But I think those who bemoan the pressure their kids are under and then also claim that they have no choice may have a view that is somewhat skewed simply because of their own surroundings. I mean, if everyone around you is running like crazy just to stay in the same slot, it would seem reasonable to assume that you've got to keep running ... and it can seem like a rather odd and risky choice to step down and walk away from the treadmill. But I'll bet that there are those who do opt for a different path even in the most competitive of communities, some of whom still end up as high achieving students who get into top colleges. </p>
<p>A good deal of the end result is NOT a matter of the school or the hoops that the kid has jumped through, but the kid's basic personality traits, talent and intellect. And sometimes the less competitive option gives a kid more of an opportunity to grow and excel; the kid from my daughter's high school who was accepted at 4 Ivies this year started out as a rather shy and unassuming kid, but by the time he was a senior had amassed a very impressive array of leadership credentials through his involvement in student government and participation on local community boards. Maybe at a more competitive high school he simply would have been overshadowed by others and the results would have been less impressive.</p>
<p>Thanks, Marite, for the fuller explanation aways back on your son's choice of Harvard over Harvey Mudd. I do get it, and I also do know that Harvard is not the right fit for many kids. It just seemed that there had to be more to it than just a weather thing. I think Harvard would also be the logical choice (over a Harvey Mudd type of school) for a math kid who, while wanting to be among some of the best math contemporaries, would also want to have greater diversity among the student body.</p>