<p>My son turned down Boston College and Johns Hopkins for Lehigh. Both BC and JHU weren't offering any $, and we don't qualify for financial aid. Lehigh is offering him $10,000 as a Deans Scholar, and accepted him at the last minute into their prestigious IBE Honors program. (Integrated Business & Engineering). It will still cost us $32,000 a year, but I think Lehigh has a great atmosphere, and I think he will enjoy the next four years of his life there.</p>
<p>I worried about JHU. I've read it is very difficult and very cut-throat, not to mention the two students who were murdered in the last year. Probably the only thing at Lehigh that would kill a kid is the steep inclines that the buildings are on. LOL!!!!</p>
<p>He also turned down $10,000 a year at The College of New Jersey. TCNJ is a great school, and I think he would have gone there if Lehigh's IBE program wasn't so intriguing.</p>
<p>Oh, and by the way, Princeton and Notre Dame turned him down. He is a fantastic fencer (he would have fenced at any of the schools). I honestly think that Princeton and ND are the loosers here. I've read that Princeton wants "kids with green hair". Well, my son is a brunette and proud of it. I wouldn't want a kid of mine to have the "green hair syndrome". Power to the normal kids!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!</p>
<p>"One of the reasons people want to shout out about the places they are rejecting is because of all this crazy prestige school stuff. It is good to stick a finger in the eye of this process. Let the next crop of kids and parents know that it's not all about the rankings!</p>
<p>Now we need to stop buying that U.S. News issue, so they will stop printing the darn thing!"</p>
<p>You guys are truly the epitome of chivalry. Keep on fighting the Prestige Corruption that threatens to tear our entire nation apart. One day, I hope to see Harvard's acceptance rate rise above 50% at which point I will point and laugh and take a sledgehammer to the US News building.</p>
<p>By checking off the "Yes, keep me on the waitlist" box and not expecting to get in by any stretch of the imagination, I have turned down NYU for BU. Besides the fact that BU gave me 33K and NYU would give me at the most a thoughtful nod in my direction.</p>
<p>Guy I know turned down Dartmouth for Washington and Lee, maybe doesnt count, WnL is an amazing school, but still something to be said for giving up the "Ivy name" that everyone thinks is such a big deal.</p>
<p>i turned down Upenn's wharton, nyu stern, carnegie mellon tepper, babson, and uc berkeley for the business school at university of maryland, the honors program and a full ride.</p>
<p>I turned down Washington and Lee, Wake Forest, and Elon Fellows program for Sewanee, there really isn<code>t any other reason other than it just felt right. This was the hardest decision of my life, and wow in four years I</code>ll be going through the same thing with law school. Yay!</p>
<p>gameguy-- You mean Schreyer? Schreyer is a truly awesome education, and at least for grad schools its just as good as those others. A friend of mine turned down Columbia and Vassar for Schreyer, for no reason besides she liked it the best.</p>
<p>Going to turn down Georgetown MSB and Barnard for NYU Stern even though I actually have to pay more for NYU...it was a tough decision though that I hope turns out well :)</p>
<p>Smith offers 5-10 half tuition merit scholarships a year, mostly to students who put on their applications that they're applying to more selective schools. The admissions office wants to 'poach' them from Ivies, and it seems to work for some people. One of my friends turned down Harvard for Smith for this reason, and I chose Smith over Emory or Medill (Northwestern's J-school, the best in the nation). I think for both of us it was the right choice.</p>
<p>thats nice. the thing that always causes me to pause from considering merit scholarships is thinking about how much harder i worked than i needed to so that i could go to a certain school. i guess i see the undergrad college name as something like a "save point" which sums up one's high school career.</p>
<p>what gets lost in picking a "lesser" school over the prestigious one is that the difference is not only prestige. oftentimes it is world-class faculty and resources. the endowments at harvard and princeton give them things that schools like duke simply cannot offer (i.e. study abroad for free).</p>
<p>At Duke, you can be paid to study abroad/do research in the summer, and there are tons of fellowships to provide for students to study abroad for free, so that is a pretty bad example, an0n...</p>