<p>from the April 12, 2005 edition - <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0412/p01s04-legn.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0412/p01s04-legn.html</a></p>
<p>'No thanks, Harvard. I found a better fit.'
Is the pull of an Ivy school lessening - or is it just that much harder to get into one?</p>
<p>By Teresa M</p>
<p>wow. this is true. a friend of mine turned down Harvard for a spot at my large state school.</p>
<p>My pal rejected Yale so he could go to UCLA. It was all about the money.</p>
<p>I hate to be a broken record, but I turned down Penn and Columbia for UCLA. Meh. I don't regret it.</p>
<p>Last year my friend's D turned down Penn for UCLA w/Regents Scholarship. You're not alone.</p>
<p>GRRR...Regent's Scholarship. I was a finalist and all that jazz, only to find out after I accepted my admission that it was not to be. Deceptive curs, leading me to UCLA with their golden breadcrumbs!</p>
<p>Oh well, I was an Alumni Scholar and got a free ride anyway! Yeeheehee!</p>
<p>repeat1982...what state school lured your friend from Harvard?</p>
<p>nice article, but the funny part, if you get to the end of the article: SHE DID NOT GET ACCEPTED TO HARVARD!!!!!!!</p>
<p>hahaha...yea...she didnt get in</p>
<p>Since Harvard has a yield of 79%, it means that 21% of people it admits decline its offers in favor of another school. Some of the other schools are as expensive as Harvard, eg. Swarthmore or Northwestern, and some far less so, eg. Honors programs at state universities.</p>
<p>Interesting article - thanks for posting it. Isn't it possible that many top students, looking for fit and accommodating their families' financial realities, don't even apply to Ivies? I'd include the elite LACs in that category too (though the article seems to imply that Swarthmore is somehow a lesser choice than Harvard).</p>
<p>A student who doesn't want a Northeastern school because they're too close to home, needs merit aid in order to afford a private school, and has had his/her fill of winter weather in the previous 18 years won't be considering the Ivies unless the prestige factor outweighs the others. (My daughter didn't, anyway.) </p>
<p>Some people won't apply to Ivies because they genuinely don't think they'd fit there - not "because the most popular colleges and universities, in the perception of parents and students, are impossible to get in to, they tend to buy into the notion of fit in order to justify the decision they ultimately make," as one enrollment professional expert quoted in the article says.</p>
<p>Another quote from the article surprised me: "More telling may be that the number of students who applied to three or more schools declined by about 10 percent between 2002 and 2003, according to a finding by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles." I thought everyone was applying everywhere these days.</p>
<p>THere's a local student here who turned down Yale last year for Univ. of North Florida because of the golf program. Locals here said, "of course!" and northern friends said, "Is he nuts or what??"....</p>
<p>"When she opened the e-mail that would tell whether she had been accepted to Harvard, Lin Gyi was pretty certain (99.9 percent sure) that whatever it said didn't matter. Her mind was made up: She'd found a school that was a better fit. "</p>
<p>Yes, I felt the same way when I opened my letter from Harvard one April more than 30 years ago. I planned to go to Brown -- up until I read the Harvard "congratulations." At that point, I decided that Harvard really was my first choice.</p>
<p>Lin Gyi did not have that kind of option.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, when I taught at a third tier, I met a couple of students who claimed that they had chosen the third tier over H or Y. In both cases, it ended up that they had started to apply to H or Y, got lavish scholarships from the third tier, and never finished their applications to H or Y.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, yes, there are students who turn down H or Y for other colleges. I personally have not met students who did this for LACs (including highly ranked ones) or for nationally ranked universities outside of HPYSMIT. There probably are such students, however who do feel the fit is better at the colleges that they chose.</p>
<p>I have, though, met students who turned down H, Y for huge merit aid from places like Wake Forest. Money was the deciding factor, not fit.</p>
<p>I think the most interesting part of the news story has to do with students changing their application strategies to begin with. While they may (as my son did) punch a lottery ticket for Harvard, they focus their main attention on a fairly small number of alternative places. Students appear to be making fewer applications on average, if this and another story that I've seen recently are true.</p>
<p>See the story "Has the Application Wave Crested?" here:</p>
<p>The story was badly researched. Not one student cited in the story turned down a higher ranked college for a lesser known college. All fo the students quoted either hadn't heard from their top ranked colleges or hadn't applied to some top ranked colleges.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Harvard's applications this year topped 22,000, the largest number of applications in Harvard's history. Seems like the demand still exists for the colleges that are widely considered most prestigious. Without a major drop in the yield of places like HPY, the article will remain unsubstantiated. Very poor journalism. Wouldn't have gotten past me even in the college journalism course that I used to teach.</p>
<p>
[quote]
All fo the students quoted either hadn't heard from their top ranked colleges or hadn't applied to some top ranked colleges.
[/quote]
I think that was the real point of the story, despite the headline.</p>
<p>The headline is a "grabber" but quite frankly it was neutralized by the reality that the applicant was not accepted into Harvard. So going to Harvard was really not an option.</p>
<p>What would be more meaningful, in the context of this thread, are examples of applicants who turn down HYPS for other schools for reasons other than cost.</p>
<p>If that was the point of the story, it was a weak point particularly since applications have been soaring to the top ranked colleges. So what if some random students planned to apply to a top ranked college, but didn't bother? Thousands of other students did bother. It was a very poorly thought out story that in my opinion was not worthy of being published in an excellent publication like the Christian Science Monitor.</p>
<p>The time to publish such a story is after students have made their decisions about their acceptances. It's easy to say, "I would turn down Harvard" when one hasn't applied. Such words are meaningful only after one has turned down an actual Harvard acceptance.</p>
<p>
[quote]
More telling may be that the number of students who applied to three or more schools declined by about 10 percent between 2002 and 2003, according to a finding by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles.</p>
<p>Students may have become more discriminating on the front end of the admissions process, as well, suggests David Hawkins, public policy director at the National Association for College Admission Counseling in Alexandria, Va.
[/quote]
This is the point of the story, and is not contradicted by the high application rate to Harvard, and is supported by some other evidence.</p>
<p>Then the examples in the story didn't support the story's point. The point of the story apparently is that students were looking for fit when they applied to colleges. The point was not that they as a whole are applying to less well known colleges at the expense of colleges like HPY.</p>
<p>The story would have been better if colleges focused on students who did things like applied to Vandy, Rhodes, Dartmouth instead of applying to every Ivy plus Stanford MIT in some quest for prestige over fit.</p>