<p>You know many unemployed or underemployed Harvard grads? I personally do not know that many Harvard grads, whether employed or unemployed.</p>
<p>This is what I like, when your own kid goes to a top tier school, it is for getting the best possible education, when someone else kid goes to a top tier school it is because someoneis is prestige-obsessed.</p>
<p>Jumping in to say that yes, the offer my son received from his SCEA school is excellent and would cost less than our local UC school. However, it’s not free, so I can totally see my son weighing his options carefully should he get full rides from his safety schools.</p>
<p>"Then your kid never got on the mailing list of the Philadelphia Biblical University.</p>
<p>Grinnell was pretty close, too. "</p>
<p>I was going to suggest target market proximity but I had to look up Grinnell to see it is not on the east coast. </p>
<p>"Those “prestigious schools” also tend to open up more doors too, lets not kid ourselves. "</p>
<p>If there is no motivation other than money, 8000 + national merit finalists should be knocking the doors of Alabama taking the free money.</p>
<p>Arnold Schwarzenegger won California governor election because of his popularity.</p>
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Hence the source of the myth. I know quite a few. I think 90% of them end up leading lives that are not much different than grads of other reputable universities.</p>
<p>Speaking of mass mailings, is there any school that’s opposite of Chicago, i.e., sent you nothing while you expected them to?</p>
<p>What calmom said. </p>
<p>I know a lot of successful people who went to all kinds of schools, and less successful people who did as well. My successful boss and her boss both went to “lesser” schools than my humble state university, and six of the eight people who report to me went to “better” schools than I did. Vis-a-vis getting into the BEST schools: Everyone here who is an adult knows that our kids (wherever they go to school) will encounter many paths to success, many opportunities to slip and/or fail and many ways to meander (productively or not) before they reach adulthood. Maybe College Confidential is not representative of the parent community in general, but I get the sense that many parents buy into this notion that only a top 20 school is good enough even when they truly know better, or should.</p>
<p>When my kids were young, the big debate among parents of bright kids and educators was whether gifted kids needed to be in gifted programs or if they could do fine/be challenged at their neighborhood school. There was also the debate as to whether or not highly-gifted kids needed to be in highly-gifted programs or whether they’d do okay mixed in gifted programs, etc. I toured a lot of schools during those years and I noticed what a different energy there was in the gifted classrooms and in the highly-gifted classrooms. The teachers could teach differently, the interactions were at a different level, etc. I think that some similar issues come into play when we are talking about truly exceptionally intellectual students and college. Can a truly brilliant student do well at a school with a broader range of intellectual ability? Yes. Will he/she be as stimulated as he/she would be at a school filled with people more like him/her? When it comes to classroom discussion, etc. probably not. Will he/she have a different experience being surrounded by people who are much more in his/her range of abilities? Yes, I think so. For some kids, the experience of being around a lot of brilliant people is a very big part of going to a super-reach school, similar to the experience that some kids have going to CTY where they may be with their intellectual peers for the first time in their lives. A lot of college is about having discussions, not just in the classroom, but in the dining halls, etc. and the people you are having those discussions are also people you learn a lot from. I’m thinking of the poster who mentioned a girl who takes every seminar to a new level who was deferred. A kid like that should be someplace where the discussion will be at her level.</p>
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<p>Calmom has a great perspective in her many posts! You make your own opportunities in life and there is more than one path to follow for each person at any given time.</p>
<p>mimk6 - I couldn’t agree more. Our college search had more to do with finding peers for ds as well as a better education. S has suffered, and I’m not being overly dramatic, sitting through classes year after year where kids either turned to him for the answers, or the teachers had to take weeks to get through a concept that s got at first showing. It sounds braggy, but it’s really not, it’s hard to be that kid and maintain focus and excitement. CTY was such a huge blessing to him, and it showed us where he’d fit. He had so much fun feeling average and normal. His friends now are all either highly intelligent or very artistic or have a great passion for something. We wanted to give him an environment of lots of kids like him. </p>
<p>I know he would have been fine at a lot of different places, but it’s a huge relief that he got in where he did.</p>
<p>“Too many prestige-obsessed people are simply unaware of the opportunities that exist at many, many other colleges & universities.” </p>
<p>"You make your own opportunities in life and there is more than one path to follow for each person at any given time. "</p>
<p>-Based on D’s experience, strongly agree woth both. She graduated #1 from private prep. HS. Was not aspired to apply to any Ivy/Elite. Graduated Summa Cum Laude (Phi Beta Kappa) from state UG (full tuition Merit award) and had great choices of Med. Schools (including top 20’s) to attend. Currently at private Med. School at university that was her #1 choice for UG. In her Med. School class she is surrounded by Ivy/Elite grads, including few lawyers, PhD from Harvard, several Masters in Science. She is NOT intimidated coming from state UG and also being one of the youngest in her class. She feels prepared as well as others and is very proud to be selected for unique summer opportunity with only 10 spots available and many applicants who wished to participate.
Looking back and compare herself in her very competitive and extremely selective environment, she see great advantages of going to state UG. She is much more convinced now about her choice of UG than she even was before although she selected her UG very carefully after many visits, talking to current students, staying overnight. She believes that she had much greater opportunities being top student, was treated as a star during her 4 years there. Besides tons of opportunites that were easy to obtain, she had developed greater people skills dealing with kids of various intellectual level and backgrounds. The last is very important in her future profession and improved her chances going thru Med. School interviews.</p>
<p>Yes, do not underestimate opportunites that exist EVERYWHERE. Your kid has much more to do with her own future than the name of her UG. Best wishes whatever you choose!</p>
<p>MiamiDAP; your daughter’s story is inspiring- and shows that a great education is available every where around. In a way it is soothing to my ears as I have a son who is not that ‘grade’ oriented, but so much learning oriented. He enjoys learning and always spends time learning things that are not related directly to the classes he is taking. I worry a lot about the admission process for it is not that transparent from what I have understood. both my husband and I studied abroad- so not very much familier with the system here. I can not express the feeling of relief I had when I read your post. </p>
<p>At the same time- I agree some points with eyemamom and mimk6 that some kids do get inspired being average or normal!! I completely understand that feeling. </p>
<p>This is such a good thread with lot of valuable points being discussed.</p>
<p>I check this thread every few days or so, and it’s always surprising how much mental energy the bright and accomplished posters are putting into their analysis of the topics. I think we’re all oddly fascinated by the array of colleges or else we wouldn’t be here. But what is it about colleges that make them ripe for so much attention and dissection?</p>
<p>Various philosophers and psychologists claim we’ve all got a passion to live/for power/to achieve/for success/for whatever. How we measure up to everybody else is often secret, a matter of luck, a matter of where we live, a matter of who our parents are. </p>
<p>All things considered, even factoring in rich parents, social connections, and the luck to be born here or there, the opportunities faced and decisions made by high school seniors all over the world are RELATIVELY “fair,” at least compared to what we face in all other opportunities and decisions. What job we get, where we live, who we marry are not nearly as fair as what college we end up at. And that’s perhaps why we’re so fascinated by the choices and what they say about us as students or parents…it’s as close as we’ll ever come to all standing at the same starting line and making a dash for something.</p>
<p>THis thread has made a turn for the good… great! I really like all of the past few threads, they have been informatinal and inspiring, 2 of the reasons I love this forum. I think, based on what I have seen, that this crazy college obsession has really intensified in the past 10 years or so. When my oldest was a Senior in HS, he was a great student and had extremely high test scores… didn’t even cross his mind to apply anywhere but one of our state schools. We live in CA so there are 2 tiers of state schools… he went to a lower tier… although this school happened to produce a Rhodes Scholar this year. He did okay there, but when he left, he still wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. Went to an open call for video game testers at Sony, and now 5 years later he is an associate producer there, and his future is beyond bright. </p>
<p>So the point made that YOU can make your own opportunities in life is dead on. You absolutely don’t have to go to a top 20 school to do that, and sometimes it may be better not to…especially if you have to take on debt. Becasue my S had no debt after college, it left him free to take a job with almost no pay, for quite awhile. He could support himself, but barely. This is a very important point, and why we won’t let our S 12 take on debt at any college.</p>
<p>Love your measured, wise posts Calmom.</p>
<p>^I second that. She really put it out convincingly. It was as if I was reading a detective novel.</p>
<p>"Becasue my S had no debt after college, it left him free to take a job with almost no pay, for quite awhile. "</p>
<p>-Great point! Becasue my D. was on full tuition Merit scholarship at state UG, we are paying for her Med. School. Not many of her Elite schools graduate classmates are in the same situation, maybe none of them!</p>
<p>That’s all great if a kid would be happy for 4 years at a non- flagship state U like Miami Ohio. Mine would not have been. Fit still matters.</p>
<p>“I agree some points with eyemamom and mimk6 that some kids do get inspired being average or normal!!”</p>
<p>Amen to that. It changed my whole outlook on life.</p>
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<p>True, and top students should still apply to a list of colleges with different admission selectivities, but we can’t count on the “generous merit based aid” or the “preferential need-based package” (unless it is one of the advertised non-competitive full-tuition or full-ride NMF scholarships, which are only for NMF’s and only available from a handful of schools), whereas we can pretty much count on top schools with clear meet full-need policy to follow through on their packages with grants, loans, work-study and whatnots. Yes, I’m aware some meet full-need colleges do better than others, but at least you’ll get something close to work with.</p>