Need advice! Ivy league or not?

College Search & Selection
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She said she liked it when we visited but was not “feeling it” the way she felt it at some other schools. Also… she interviewed locally… and although the interview went very well, the interviewer told her at least 3-4 times that she should join Greek life. My D has no interest in Greek life and thought that after she told this to the interviewer, she should have dropped it rather than try to convince her to join. Despite this, she really liked this woman and they hit it off.

I think if my D decided to attend she would have found her niche and been happy, but her desire to attend was not as strong as it was for some other schools.

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My D turned down a full tuition scholarship (2, actually) at Vanderbilt. She said that it felt a bit socially and racially segregated – wealthy white sorority and fraternity grouped together in the dining hall, people of color and those unaffiliated with Greek life grouped together, etc. There also wasn’t much going on in terms of things to do on campus on a Tuesday or Wednesday night…everything seems to go down on the weekends. She just wasn’t feeling it. (Wash U.'s full tuition scholarships were a bit tougher to turn down, however.)

Another kid she knows (from CC and scholarship competitions), turned down MIT and U. CHicago for Vandy. She felt that Vandy would provide a social scene that would be more inviting and fun for her and be an all-around better environment for her.

It sounds like your kid has a good head on her shoulders…she needs to spend some time in classrooms and on overnights to get a better sense as to what seems like a good fit for her.

Is she interested in literature and literary analysis or creative writing or both?

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@LoveTheBard , very neat about your daughter! Good for her to do what she believes would be right for her rather than worrying about the “name” of a school. So, she is at Wash U? My daughter doesn’t want to visit it because we were in St. Louis last year and we weren’t huge fans. Our friends’ kids want to go there. I am guessing we did not look at the university which is what we should have done. Is your daughter happy there? What is she studying? She is more interested in creative writing than literature. (At least that is what I think!). I am ready for her to come home from vacation so we can have some serious conversations about school. RIght now, she is just enjoying the beach!

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“They don’t tend to favor intellectual introverts, LOL, although of course they have some. Other super schools are less focused on the outgoing, successful types,”

A lot of stereotyping there. In fact a recent survey published in Harvard Business Review debunks the extroverts do better as CEOs than introverts (recall that the ivies want future CEOs). Here’s one of the main conclusions:

"What they found surprised them. A little more than half of the CEOs who did better than expected in the minds of investors and directors were actually introverts, not the usual gregarious CEO known for glad-handing customers.

“The biggest aha, overall, is that some of the things that make CEOs attractive to the board have no bearing on their performance,” said Elena Lytkina Botelho, a partner at ghSmart and a co-founder of the project. “Like most human beings, they get seduced by charismatic, polished presenters. They simply do better in interviews.”

And one more :

"Meanwhile, only 7 percent of the best-performing CEOs – who ran companies from Fortune 10 behemoths to those with just $10 million in annual sales – had an Ivy League degree, despite the conventional wisdom that pedigree matters. “There was zero correlation between pedigree and ultimate performance,”

So don’t be seduced by the gregarious ivy-grad, pay attention to the introverted intellectual who will outperform him or her.

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No, she ended up turning down Wash U. and is going to Stanford. I said “Wash U.'s full tuition scholarships were a bit tougher to turn down, however.” But turn them down she did. And that’s just fine.

But, unlike your daughter, she was leaning towards the ivies (she wanted a bigger pond filled with brilliant kids that shared her interests and passions. She didn’t want to feel like a big fish, intellectually speaking, as she had often felt in high school).She thought she wanted to go to Yale because it was – on paper, at least – a perfect fit. The reality of New Haven, however, sent her packing (she got really depressed after she visited. Likewise, she’s not a big fan of NYC, do, despite its core which really interested her, Columbia was not on her list). I totally understand how important the aesthetics of a campus and the surrounding area can be on one’s mood – I left NYC to seek sunnier skies (literally and figuratively) in SoCal.

I would encourage your daughter to look at Wash U. – the campus is stunning, and the area surrounding it is quite beautiful – Forest Park is lovely, the Art Museum is superb, and, by all accounts, the zoo is wonderful. Their humanities programs are top-notch and the professor with whom she most interacted and who gave her really thoughtful feedback on her scholarship application seemed great. Had D not liked Stanford so much and had it not felt so right to her (she’s probably a CA girl at heart), Wash U. was at the top of her list and she probably would have chosen it over Yale, Harvard, U. Chicago or Princeton where she had been admitted as well). One of her classmates wanted to choose Swarthmore over Harvard, but his parents were putting a lot of pressure on him. Ultimately, he got off the waitlist at Princeton which, for him, was a good compromise.

There are no right or wrong answers. Only what works for your daughter. My daughter decided that many of the LACs she looked at were too limiting in the areas she wanted to study (art history, Medieval/Renaissance/Classical studies, etc.), but that probably wouldn’t be the case for an English/creative writing major. If your daughter likes bigger schools, there are lots of options (the UCs were to big for my D, but she really liked UVA and their writing program is superb; my niece was an English major at UVA and loved it. She’s now starting a PhD program at UT Austin). Duke, Emory, Tulane, UT Austin, USC, UCLA – the list goes on.

The ivy league – at the end of the day – is just an athletic conference with a lot of prestige tacked onto it. Your daughter may or may not jibe with any/all of the ivies (Has she thought about Brown?? That might be a nice choice for her).

Your daughter is poised to have a lot of choices…and she’ll no doubt figure it out – they all do. Eventually. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.

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Wow, @LoveTheBard , I’ve seen you around these boards before but didn’t know your daughter had gotten acceptances to so many fantastic schools! That must have been a tough decision-making process for her.

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@LoveTheBard - I am surprised that your daughter felt Vanderbilt is social and racially segregated. My DS (nor we) noticed any of that during our visit. Everyone was very friendly and openly welcomed DS. We are also ethnic minority and so is the girl you mention (who declined MIT for Vandy). None of the minority students we talked expressed any reservations. More and more Asian students are joining Vanderbilt and last week it was ranked #1 for Happiest students (http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/education/2017/07/31/vanderbilt-university-has-happiest-students-according-national-ranking/525850001/).

My DS chose Vandy over an Ivy league since he was awarded Cornelius Vanderbilt scholarship and was also able to find very interesting research opportunity.

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@JenJenJenJen - Let’s just say that April was an interesting month, especially since my D had not visited ANY of the schools she applied to outside southern CA and Texas (Rice – another great school with a lovely campus, @drjmom, that might be interesting for your daughter). My D was pleasantly surprised by an embarrassment of riches with respect to admissions and scholarship competitions and awards that made for a stressful – but ultimately pretty wonderful – spring. I was glad that I got to tag along for some of it and saw parts of the country I had never seen and probably never would have seen (like Nashville).

Speaking of which, @drjmom – what was it about St. Louis that was so off-putting? I stayed in the Forest Park area, so I didn’t see much of downtown, and I managed to get to see a high school buddy which was great, but I liked what I saw of St. Louis. Nashville and New Haven, on the other hand…not so much.

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WOW @LoveTheBard that is INCREDIBLE! All those scholarships and awards!

Were any of them due to her being “differently abled?” I remember you saying your D uses a wheelchair part of the time. Standford is a really large campus and has some hilly parts, too, will she have someone making sure she can get to her classes on time?

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A few others have come back to this point… It should be her decision and it sounds like she is telling you as nicely as possible that she isn’t interested in applying to or attending Ivy League schools. Why apply to schools she isn’t interested in only to go through being turned down OR getting in and feeling pressured to go to a school she doesn’t even want to apply to. Additionally, the Ivy League apps have multiple essays that tend to be very specific so they can’t just be reused. I can’t imagine spending the huge amount of time required to do a good job on these apps in an already stressful year. I have heard of many families that ask their child to choose the schools they want and then also apply to 1 additional parent choice school. Perhaps that would make both of you feel better about the process?

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@drjmom - Question: Were you or anyone else thinking or suggesting that your daughter ought to apply to Ivies before she got the SAT results?

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@calmom , absolutely

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@LoveTheBard , we stayed in Forest Park. Not really sure what we didn’t like but just remember that we were ready to go home. The City Museum was great as were caves we toured. Interestingly, we LOVE Nashville:).

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Is she a URM (under-represented minority)? (You posted above that she is minority, but I don’t think you gave more specifics).

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She is half Polish and half Bengali

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@drjmom – Just goes to show, there are no right or wrong answers to finding “fit.” To a certain extent, expectations come into play; I expected to dislike St. Louis and was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked it. As for Nashville, I expected it to be – and experienced it as – an interesting cultural experience. I visited in the middle of a songwriters festival and felt like I jumped on the “Jesus train;” virtually all of the singers and songwriters were singing about being saved…(except one, Ashley Campbell, who sang beautifully and poignantly about her Dad’s struggles with Alzheimers, her failed love affairs, and her propensity for hanging out in bars.)

@JenJenJenJen - I think it was a number of things. D’s a very strong writer and she let her personality, her quirkiness and her passions shine through in her Common App; she was able to tie her interests into her supplemental essays and relate them well to individual schools, and she took some risks that allowed her sense of humor and her cheekiness to come through loud and clear. Yes, she talked about having to re-invent herself and find new creative outlets in response to her health challenges, but she didn’t make that the focus of her essay. She also had stellar recs (e.g., “best student in ca. 25 years of teaching” and “she’d be an asset to any school lucky enough to have her attend.”), and her URM status (she’s latina) and diversity leadership experience probably didn’t hurt. Nor did attending TASP.

Please excuse the brief hijack –

@JenJenJenJen I didn’t find Stanford to be hilly (at least not compared to UCLA!!). Is it? The parts I saw were fairly flat, but the campus is HUGE. I think the Office of Accessible Education has a golf cart service and she’ll probably get some sort of motorized trike or mobility scooter. For short distances and when she doesn’t need to stand much, she walks with a cane; she uses the wheelchair for longer distances, travel, etc. The rest she’ll figure out as she goes. But Stanford’s OAE seemed to have its act together in that respect – way more than Yale did.

Now, back to regularly schedule programming…

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OK, I had asked because I was wondering if her minority status could be an admissions advantage. Her ethnicity is an interesting mix, but I don’t think that it would impact admissions one way or another.

So still in the same spot: your daugher doesn’t want to attend an Ivy, and would probably not get into one even if she tried. (No problem with your daughter – just that these are schools that are turning away 95% of applicants – it’s a reach for everyone and there is nothing that seem to make it any less of a reach for your DD).

She’s ok with Vandy, and her test scores might give her something of a boost for admissions there as they like high-scoring applicants, but Vandy still turns away 90% of applicants, so still a reach.

As a parent, you need to help your daughter develop a strong core list of match schools, not reaches. Yes, she should apply to a a couple of reaches, but your energies and hers should not be focused on schools where her own odds of being admitted are less than 50%. You wouldn’t make financial investment decisions that way – the focus really needs to be on colleges that will meet her needs – including the need for appopriate intellectual challenge – where she will probably be admitted.

You don’t want a bunch of rejections and waitlists in the spring. Or a kid who is feeling morose because she has been rejected from all of her top choices and feels stuck attending a seemingly inferior safety… because the college list was too reach heavy.

Even if your daughter ends up applying to an Ivy after all … you still need to develop that core list. It’s August. You need to figure out the core list of schools where it is more likely than not that she will be admitted within the next couple of months, so you can track relevant application deadlines and be aware of early opportunities for scholarship apps. There are some schools that essentially have priority deadlines for merit scholarships -sometimes tied to a non-binding EA process. So if you stick around CC, instead of “Ivy League or Not?” – you really need a “Suggestions for good match schools?” tread. :slight_smile:

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@calmom , I don’t think CC is the place for my daughter to get expert advice. While the suggestions are much appreciated, we will rely on a professional college counselor. Trust me, I have navigated CC; not just my post. It is interesting to read what parents have to say, but at the end of the day, our daughter will rely on her own thoughts and possibly those of her college counselor, to find her right fit. I spoke to a friend of mine today whose son is at Yale. His son’s scores were lower than my daughter’s as was his GPA (and he is not a minority!). My friend said his son did a great job on his essay which was warmly received by many universities. So, my guess is if his son asked for “chance me” on CC, people would have undoubtedly discouraged him. And, look… He is at Yale:)

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@drjmom, yes, no need to listen to CC posters, but the odds of a non-hooked applicant getting into HYPS is still less than 2% - and no a great essay won’t make the odds more than 3%.

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@Chembiodad , I guess since we weren’t in the room making the acceptance decision, neither of us know precisely how the admissions’ counselors made their decision for my friend’s son. But, they did and he is happy there. How did you get your stats regarding essay? I am guessing he was a good fit for Yale as was our other friend’s daughter. Both are doing great! She was second in class. I have no clue what her SAT or ACT scores were.