<p>yeahhhh, i'll have to agree with bball on this one.</p>
<p>the thing is, turning down any of these schools for a much lower ranked school means where you go, most likely, you will be at the top top top of the students- the professors will love you and want you to do research, give you opportunities, you'll get great grades and recs which will help you get into grad school or get a job. obviously i'm not talking about turning down HYPS for duke, but harvard or yale for babson, like someone said.</p>
<p>What is so surprisingly about turning down Wayne State for Michigan when finances are considered? What if that student had ~15K/year in loans @ michigan but free Wayne State tuition? If they work hard, a high GPA will come naturally @ WSU and for example if you're going to law school, a 3.9 from WSU and a 170+ is getting you into a top school.</p>
<p>I know a guy who turned down Cornell (an Ivy) for U of Mich. all his buddies were going there, it was closer, cheaper, bunch of reasons</p>
<p>Michigan is an amazing school...</p>
<p>
[quote]
What is so surprisingly about turning down Wayne State for Michigan when finances are considered? What if that student had ~15K/year in loans @ michigan but free Wayne State tuition? If they work hard, a high GPA will come naturally @ WSU and for example if you're going to law school, a 3.9 from WSU and a 170+ is getting you into a top school.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The presumption is that money is not a consideration. Obviously if somebody were to give me a million dollars to go to a community college instead of Harvard, I would happily go to that community college. I chose to answer the question in the sense that, if costs are the same, which school would you rather go to, Wayne State or Michigan. I think it's safe to say that most people would choose Michigan.</p>
<p>Besides, the money factor can be played both ways. After all, the top private schools are often times extremely aggressive with financial aid, far more so than many lower-ranked schools. For example, take my brother. He got into a number of no-name schools. He also got into Caltech, on a so-called President's Scholarship, meaning that not only was tuition waived, but he also got a full stipend. In other words, his choices were to go either pay to go to a no-name school, or go to Caltech and actually GET PAID. Which choice do you think he made? </p>
<p>Nor is he the only one that I know. I distinctly remember talking to 2 guys (both California state residents) who got into both Berkeley and<br>
Harvard, and found out that Harvard was actually CHEAPER once financial aid was factored in. Basically, because they came from relatively poor families, Harvard offered them full rides + stipends in the form of grants, whereas Berkeley wanted them to take out some loans. Obviously they both chose Harvard. In fact, I will always remember one of them acidly joking that he had always dreamed of going to Berkeley but he couldn't afford it, so he had 'no choice' but to go to Harvard.</p>
<p>The point is, we shouldn't be talking about money considerations money works both ways. Some people actually find out that a more prestigious, higher ranked school is actually CHEAPER because of the quirks of financial aid, scholarships, and so forth.</p>
<p>Financial aid is a beautiful thing :-)
When private schools refuse to match aid offers, well then that sucks :-/</p>
<p>no offense, but harvard has the highest concentration of type A perfectionist students. i personally can't stand those so def not going there. k thanks byeeeeeee</p>
<p>Haha, apparently you missed the memo on some of the people who go to Harvard.</p>
<p>definitely...there are obviously some very awesome people who go there. i just think there are more perfectionists there than anywhere else.</p>
<p>Hey, being with perfectionists is a lot better than hanging out with a bunch of lazy slackers who just aren't interested in accomplishing anything. I know there were a LOT of slackers in my high school who didn't want to be there and were not interested in education in the least. Some of them almost seemed to be competing on who could learn the least and do the least. In other words, for some students, it was actually considered "cool" to be lazy and stupid.</p>
<p>At my high school, a minority student turned down Yale for a Cal State because of a football scholarship.</p>
<p>Fandango, that cuts both ways too. I know a guy who turned down a bunch of no-name state schools to go to Stanford on a full ride. Of course, the reason why he got a full ride was because Stanford offered him a wrestling scholarship, whereas those no-name state schools did not because they didn't even have wrestling teams.</p>
<p>This guy was a legend at Berkeley:</p>
<p>Basically he turned down Stanford and Harvard to go to Berkeley. I'm not sure why, but I think he got more financial aid at Berkeley.</p>
<p>See that shows that if you have the drive, you don't need to go to an Ivy to get a great education and to succeed. You just need the drive and work ethic and it'll get you places, then again if you have no social skills and a ****ty personality then that won't help.
College rankings are horribly overrated...
Har har har!</p>
<p>Well, it's not like Berkeley is some no-name school.
Turning down Harvard for Berkeley is not THAT big of a step down. </p>
<p>Nobody is saying that anybody NEEDS an Ivy-caliber education. In fact, some people succeed with no education at all. But the point is, it helps. After all, some people drop out of high school and still manage to succeed. But that doesn't mean that dropping out of high school is a good idea.</p>
<p>Turned down Duke for Washington and Lee.</p>
<p>Money made it a no brainer.</p>
<p>But I'm still an a-hole Duke fan.</p>
<p>Took Cornell over Harvard...</p>
<p>But I'm an engineer so :P</p>
<p>Yeah, I agree. Good decision on your part. Cornell engineering is spectacular.</p>
<p>Yeah, but what if you end up not becoming an engineer, either because you switch majors, or you do complete the engineering major but then decide not to work as an engineer? Even at MIT, a significant percentage of the graduating engineering students take non-engineering jobs (usually in banking or consulting).</p>