"Name" schools

<p>Am I the only parent here who finds a mindset here that only schools with recognizable names are worth considering? My son is an excellent student (top 1% of his private school class, APs, Honors, Nat'l Merit Finalist), involved in a wide variety of music activities, and an Eagle Scout - but I'm thinking that the best match for him is not necessarily the school with the best "tier" ranking, and that seems an almost heretical statement to be making here...</p>

<p>That thinking is found much more among the applicants on CC than the parents.</p>

<p>No, you are definitely not alone. A couple of the schools we are considering would probably not even be recognized here but are very good schools where we live. Going to a big name, out-of-state , "tier 1 " has never been a priority for D. She figured out for herself over time what met her "needs and wants" and was able to find them relatively close to home and in small atmospheres - both important considerations to her.</p>

<p>Just goes to show - make the choice that works for your child and your family. Each family should. While there are many on this board looking at the big names (and that is fine if it's what you choose) I think many of us quitely sit back with other schools in mind, but many of the same issues to deal with - financial stuff, acceptances etc.</p>

<p>have you been following the "college ranking revolt" thread?</p>

<p>Your "heresy" is well believed by many. Like you said: the "best" match for him is the BEST MATCH FOR HIM. Case closed. </p>

<p>Tell him not to worry about the perceived "prestige" -- that most of life is subtle and shaded and not to worry about first impressions. He sounds like he'll chase after whatever the college he attends will have to offer him. </p>

<p>Wow. Feel happy you've gotten your S to that point. Best of luck to you and him.</p>

<p>I attended one of the biggest "name" schools and if my Ds want to go there great! If not, great! (I could even stomach their attending my biggest rival school!) As long as they have great work ethic, great character, that's all my wife and I want for them -- I believe they'll be happy, contributing members of society with that.</p>

<p>Well, if the name of the college is of primary importance to you and your child, by all means go this route. You can quickly eliminate 99% colleges and make your decisionmaking a whole lot easier.</p>

<p>No, you're not alone, and there are even <em>gasp</em> kids who manage to avoid the prestige mania. Just last week, as we were prepping for a spring break college tour and reviewing some of the schools on her evolving list, my D, explaining why she was lukewarm/on the fence about some others (higher ranked/higher prestige), "I just don't want the NAME to get in the way." She said she'd rather focus on the right fit for undergrad and go for the more prestigious grad program. She's not anti-prestige, but somehow she's come independently to the decision that she doesn't want to be seduced by the name and lose focus on the main objective--to find the right college for HER. I'm proud of her.</p>

<p>For the majority of people that don't have the stats for the name schools (my kids included), it's no problem! I am very glad that we do not live in an area where the expectation is to go to an ivy league college, but our High School is still a good one and the majority of the kids go on to college and become Dr's, lawyers, teachers, etc.. It's mostly here in cyberspace that I find people with slightly whacked priorites. My kids are both at no-name colleges and doing just fine.</p>

<p>I'm secure enough to encourage my son to look beyond the brand names but insecure enough to cringe when other people make insensitive comments. On CC, it's mostly the students who are Ivy-obsessed. In "real life", I hear it more from parents. Try not to listen.</p>

<p>Different students have different priorities.</p>

<p>For some, the name is important.</p>

<p>For others, it's finding a good program in a specialty field.</p>

<p>For others, it's finding a good merit scholarship so that you can avoid going into debt as an undergraduate (especially important for kids who hope to go to medical, law, or veterinary school later).</p>

<p>For others, it may be a matter of location. Or size. Or the school's particular "personality." </p>

<p>There is no one best way to do this.</p>

<p>0711parent....you are right--CC seems to be dominated by people who only would consider "name" brands. H and I both graduated from no-name state NON-flagship U's in the midwest, and we did quite well for ourselves. Being parents of obviously brilliant children ( :) ), of course we want only the best for our kids. But, it does come down to what works best for your own kid. We're done with all the college acceptances, just waiting on word on a couple of key merit $$ before D makes her decision. (meaning, no waiting for Ivies here---YAY). It's easy to get wrapped up in the competitive college mania here on CC. There are LOTS of great schools that don't require the cut-throat competition to get in, that will serve our children wonderfully. Good luck.</p>

<p>I am going to be stoned for saying this, so go ahead but let me put up my shield. Prestige is not an accident. Not all, but most kids and their parents want pretty similar things from a college education: Good teachers, good facilities, other smart and interesting students, a valuable credential, at the right distance from home. Most people live on the coasts. The result is that most people want to go to the schools that seem best in these respects because, to them, that is "fit." The result is high prestige and selectivity at the schools that seem "best" in these respects. It's sort of natural and not perverse at all.</p>

<p>We with the kids going to "no name" schools tend not to be as obvious on the boards, partly because these schools, while they suit our kids better than the super selective schools, are easier to get into and so we don't have as much angst about the admissions process when applying to these schools. So less reason to obsess about admissions, more reason to hang out in Sinner's Alley . . .</p>

<p>My oldest attends a (gasp!) state school, and is an older student. Someone the other night asked about him, and asked if that was a <em>sensitive</em> subject. No, it's not. He hit some bumps in the road, but has settled down. He is doing well in school, and as an older student, he is almost independent of us financially (we still pay for car insurance). It's great!</p>

<p>Contrast that to the big money drain of kid #2, attending a name school (not an Ivy, though, but just as expensive) OUCH. He is questioning now whether he made the right choice. I think he did-- he would have regretted it had he not gone to the school he is attending, but still, he is now seeing that there would have been some advantages to attending another school that is not prestigious but has a better program in music (which he has now become much more interested in, to his surprise, but not mine). </p>

<p>Kid #3 is in the process of choosing a school. She is likely to choose a no name school as well, and didn't even apply to several name schools she was considering at first, because they seemed not to suit her non-competitive personality. I suspect her final choice will save us lots of $$ over attending a name school, and she'll be happier too. (Having said that, now watch her pick the most expensive, most prestigious school on her list -- hope I don't have to eat my words . . .)</p>

<p>Curious, your point is well taken, but very few schools actually have universal name recognition. UPenn gets mixed up with Penn State, Dartmouth College gets mixed up with UMass -Dartmouth, and the University of Chicago gets mixed up with the University of Illinois -Chicago. A lot of name recognition also comes from sports teams. Many more people know Duke than Williams, but that doesn't mean Duke has better teachers or facilities.</p>

<p>I read discussions here about schools I didn't know existed, and many times I see the names of these schools on top tier listings. It doesn’t make them good or bad, just far away in our circumstances. It seems that things are a bit different here out west and that private schools and LACs are not even an option in many cases. My son hopes to major in architecture, and he would have to go to California to find the nearest program that is not at a large state university.</p>

<p>My son is quite happy at one the large universities here, and wouldn’t trade it at this point to go anywhere else. I think the kids are way more adaptable than we realize, and you just have to go with what works for them and your family.</p>

<p>Corranged,</p>

<p>Agreed. But unless your interested in impressing people at cocktail parties name recognition really only matters for jobs and graduate school and those folks are less easily confused.</p>

<p>Tuition dad-considering that your son is majoring in Architecture, I think he may have discovered a "dirty secret" of large public univeristies. The reason I mention this is because Ohio State and am in on it too.</p>

<p>Large public universities consist of hundreds of academic department and some, like in architecture and engineering can be quite small and offer an atmosphere the same as many much smaller colleges. My civil engineering department was quite small with 34 students(no I did not drop a digit-it was 34) in my graduating class. The atmosphere was very intimate, all the teaching profs knew us, I knew everyone in my class reasonably well, we socialized with the faculty out of class occasionally and had a very active ASCE student chapter.</p>

<p>I am sure there are some architecture departments embedded in a large public university which offer the same atmosphere and I assume that it is for your son.</p>

<p>Psst-dont let too many other people in on this!</p>

<p>I learned long ago not to buy cheap tools. If necessary, spend a bit more for a known brand and you can be sure that the tool will work well and will last. That same principle seem to work well for many other types of purchases.</p>

<p>This presumes that the tool-buyer knows how to make best use of those name-brand tools and isn't just buying them to hang impressively on the pegboard in the garage, rusting or seizing up. Not everyone who can afford to select and purchase the name-brand tools has the inner resources or motivation to make best use of them.</p>

<p>(How's that for carrying an analogy farther than it perhaps ought to go? ;) )</p>

<p>I do not encounter, out in the world, a group of people who are more informed and less enamored of brand-name colleges than here on the CC Parents Forum. Of course, Harvard and Swarthmore have plenty of fans here -- myself included -- but if you went to my kids' public high school you would find GCs, faculty, and administrators engaged in a daily full-court-press campaign to promote brand-name schools to kids who are viable candidates, vs. their in-state public options (at a school where somewhere between 80-90% of the kids go to in-state public colleges). And if you went to the private school they used to attend you would find less than 10% of the graduates (and none of the top students) going to public universities. So everything is relative.</p>

<p>The other thing I never see in the brick-and-mortar world is the legions of kids on CC who have incredibly specific career plans in 10th grade.</p>

<p>In my upper middle class neighborhood, about 90% of the kids go to college and almost all of them go to State U's. I suspect the middle class squeeze is a major factor. Few families qualify for much or any need-based FA and the costs of the name brand institutions are not affordable. None of the GCs, or high school faculty or administrators promote private colleges. Nor are they very happy with the larger number of applications and paperwork for kids who do apply to the private, name colleges.</p>