<p>I've known and been impressed with several people I know who've gone there. But I really can't get a handle on the school itself.</p>
<p>What would you compare it to - socially, academically, campus life, and the dreaded "prestige" word? Need some parallels.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>To what point? What will give you a "handle"? Hearing that it's "better" or "worse" than somewhere else? That it's ranked higher than Indiana but lower than Iowa? That most people outside Ohio don't know there's a Miami anywhere other than Florida? That the campus is in the middle of nowhere but is stunning - more ivy than an Ivy League school? That some people think if you haven't got a closet of J Crew you'll be miserable? </p>
<p>If you know several people who've gone there and are impressed, why not ask them? Are you planning to apply? Visit and form your own opinion. In the end, what you think is what matters. Sorry, but this drives me nuts!</p>
<p>My D. is going to be a sophmore there. She loves it. Socially - a lot of it depends what are you looking for. She made a lot of friends and decided participate in sorority. However, she is not part of "party" crowd. Honors program is very good, she was in Honors dorms last year. I do not know about "prestige", it is not elite, it is in-state public school. Academically - it probably depends on major. D was surprised by how challenging one of her classes was. I heard that Business and Education are good. But I am not familiar with these majors. One big plus from our prospective - a lot of funds for Merit scholarships. One more thing, it is one of 8 original public Ivy's - it was some book that recognized 8 public schools and called them public Ivy's. Maybe you heard about it.</p>
<p>we have a son at Miami, a son at Brown and a daughter at Clemson. Miami is a terriffic university, especially for the cost and our son, a junior, is having a great experience. our experience has been that ignoring the JCrew-type stereotypes is helpful as there is greater political and social diversity than believed (and minority and international student percentage is rising). there are a lot of "social" students there but most seem to be very serious students. What has impressed us is the honors program, the close relationships between students and faculty and with their faculty "mentors", undergraduate research opportunities and study abroad support (our son is going to china next year). Our son is doing research this summer with a biology professor but he is a Business major. great business, education, architecture programs. gorgeous campus, nice college town and not far from cincinnati.</p>
<p>billsbillsbills: I'm a parent, not a student. Trust me, I spend my life arguing that there are no meaningful differences between any of the top 20 or so schools and that many places will get you a great education -- it's up to you. I'm not interested in looking at the rankings -- I've looked, now what. I'm not interested in knowing that most people outside Ohio might not know about it -- don't care. This type of stuff:
[quote]
That the campus is in the middle of nowhere but is stunning - more ivy than an Ivy League school? That some people think if you haven't got a closet of J Crew you'll be miserable?
[/quote]
was what I was hoping to hear -- qualitative insight.<br>
Are there schools that are similar, to help me get a handle on it? That's all. Honest. No boring debates about whether their SAT's are 10 points higher than some other school or what the folks in Korea think about it.</p>
<p>We toured two summers ago. D1 liked it a lot at first -- but did not apply. The campus is very beautiful -- the rec center is phenomenal. The dorm we saw was very clean with some beautiful architectural touches -- rooms weren't very big, however. Large range of programs. Prides itself on being a private school at a public school price -- meaning, I suppose, better advising and facilities. Really good business school. Good speech pathology. Really good architecture school. A lot of people go Greek.
It is still on D2's list (for now).
Only you can decide if it's worth the OOS tuition. Its biggest drawback for people seems to boil down to one of two things -- either the perceived nature of the student body (all J. Crew and North Face.) This did not bother my girls, though they did feel there was a lot of LaCoste and popped collars within our tour group (which by the way included a lot of people from the East and South as well as the Midwest.) Or (drawback option #2) -- its isolation, which is very real. An hour or more to Cincinnati, very rural, and the town is tiny, just a small Collegetown-like strip.</p>
<p>What kind of reputation does it have? (Note, I'm deliberately not using the word "prestige.") Comparable to what kinds of schools?</p>
<p>An Ohio resident, I can say a pert of its rep is that it can be a fine school, give a fine education, lead to a good career, and is woefully overpriced. What is meant by that is that a similar education and similar results can be found from many other schools for far less coa.
Naturally, it would take some research to see if that rep is true or not, and then to determine if it is a sound investment.</p>
<p>Not really sure. Not every state has an attractive alternative to the flagship, such as this is. So while I would say it doesn't have the reputation of a Wisconsin or Michigan, I would also say that Wisconsin, Michigan, (and Illinois for that matter) lack a school like this. It's certainly not like Illinois State, for example. Kids I know who apply there cross-apply with Illinois, Iowa, Illinois Wesleyan -- that's just the Illinois kids. Don't know about the Ohio kids.
The business school is ranked pretty high, I think. Junior year admittance, if I remember correctly, and not everyone who wants in gets in.</p>
<p>That some people think if you haven't got a closet of J Crew you'll be miserable? - Strongly desagree. However, student body is not diverse.</p>
<p>What has impressed us is the honors program - very true.</p>
<p>Also, my D. mentioned that a lot of Honors have applied to Case Western. She did too. If it gives you any idea about type of students.
Campus is gorgeous, but it would not fit somebody who wants to be in a city. My opinion is that it is important to get good match not so much which college is better than another. My D. feels that Miami is a very good match for her. She does not know anybody who is miserable there. She likes it because it is NOT in a city, Honors is very selective (top 300), her most important class was very challenging, indicating superior academics, she made a lot of friends, people with interests close to her. She loves her sorority (they are not living together), she was able to find very interesting volunteering with a lot of training that she had to go thru, and she got a job lined up for her at school starting in a fall. All of the above was important for her, and somebody else would look for a different aspects. We are happy that she is happy and love the fact that we are paying about half of what we paid for her private HS.</p>
<p>Do you have more specific questions?</p>
<p>I know a girl who is a rising junior in ROTC. She loves the school and has found it challenging (in fact, she flunked calculus). They can also be pretty strict on busting for alcohol after some incidents and criticism a few years back. Reputation around here (a nearby state) is that it is generally not worth the cost for OSS unless there is ROTC money or other merit money.</p>
<p>Prides itself on being a private school at a public school price - ???- Miami is a public Ohio school. </p>
<p>To give you some idea, in Ohio, kids who love Ohio State, would not go to Miami. My D. applied to both, got into Honors at both with merit scholarships, got into selective programs that involed an interview at both, and choose Miami, she had no question in her mind that she belonged there. Miami is expensive for OOS and comparable to other public schools for in-state students. In-state tuition is capped, OOS is going up next year.</p>
<p>I'm sorry, MiamiDAP, I didn't phrase that clearly enough. I should have written, "Miami prides itself on providing a private school experience at a public school."</p>
<p>^This makes sense.
From Honors orientation last summer, we got an impression that most kids at event were from private schools. Honors reguirements last year were ACT=32, top 2%. They accepted only 200. A lot of valedictorians in this program. Requirements could have changed for this year, they increased Honors spots to 300.</p>
<p>My older daughter visited, and we strongly felt the "J Crew" influence. In the end, we wasted the visit and the application fee, because they did not offer any merit money, even tho my daughter had a 31 ACT and a 3.75 gpa. There were too many other schools offering merit money for us to consider one that wasn't. It is a pretty school tho.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl - In my opinion, Miami's academic reputation in Ohio is certainly better than average, but not on par with the likes of Kenyon or Oberlin. Moreover, Miami is decidedly more pre-professional than these institutions or other leading LACs, and has a sizeable undergraduate enrollment at nearly 15,000 students. </p>
<p>I'm confused with the posts that claim Miami offers a "private school experience within a public school" -- I simply don't know what is meant by "private school experience." I've considered this statement (and that Miami is a "public Ivy") to be marketing statements aimed at attracting a certain demographic of students -- affluent, suburban. Miami has a homogeneous (suburban) student body which lends to its stereotypical J-Crew image. That being said, 40 students from my son's (affluent suburban h.s.) graduating class enrolled at Miami, and the 10-15 that I have contact with appear to love it. A few I know have transferred to Ohio State.</p>
<p>I believe Miami's major benefit to be its focus on undergraduate education, something that distinguishes it from its main competitor, Ohio State, which appears to attract students seeking a more diverse student population, an urban environment and, of course, Big Ten athletics. Both schools offer great honors programs which can negate the "cultural" differences between them.</p>
<p>We live in an upper-middle class, overwhelmingly white school district in the Greater Cincinnati area. Every year our HS sends off a number of kids to Miami of Ohio. It's reputation locally is very, very good. As someone before said it is like going to a private school. My D is a rising junior at Vandy and she has friends at Miami whom she visited. She thought it was a very nice place and the people there reminded her of the people at Vandy. I understand their business school is well regarded but can't speak too much about other programs.</p>
<p>My daughter and I visited Miami last summer at the start of school and I agree that it feels like a private school - the grounds are well kept and the buildings have a uniformity that one most often finds at a private school. It was hard to imagine that it was a school of 15,000 students - it feels smaller and more intimate than that and if I remember correctly many of the classes are smaller than the large public schools. I called it little Wash U, purely from an asthetic viewpoint. </p>
<p>The design schools are also tough to get into and generally require admittance as an incoming freshman, a factor that is more like a private than a public. My daughter decided not to apply -she thought it was very pretty and liked it but felt the areas of study she was most interested in, were lacking. She also felt the jcrew vibe - I don't think it's marketing. We got a strong sense of it from walking the campus and from watching our own as well as other tour guides.</p>
<p>"(and that Miami is a "public Ivy")" -</p>
<p>Public Ivy is a term coined by Richard Moll in his 1985 book Public Ivys: A Guide to America's best public undergraduate colleges and universities to refer to universities which "provide an Ivy League collegiate experience at a public school price." Public Ivies are considered, according to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, to be capable of "successfully competing with the Ivy League schools in academic rigor... attracting superstar faculty and in competing for the best and brightest students of all races</p>
<p>The original eight Public Ivies list by Moll (1985):</p>
<p>College of William & Mary (Williamsburg, Virginia)
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of Vermont (Burlington)
University of Virginia (Charlottesville) </p>
<p>Miami University (Oxford, Ohio)
University of California
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)
University of Texas at Austin</p>
<p>I believe it unfair to give the OP the impression that Miami competes with top tier colleges (including the Ivies) for the "brightest students." Indeed, it would be a challenge to consider that it competes for such students with the other "Public Ivies." According the College Board, 35% of Miami's first year class was in the top 10% of their high school graduating class. The percentages for the remaining "Public Ivies" were as follows: Cal-Berkley (99%), Michigan (92%), UVa (87%), Wm & Mary (79%), UNC (76%), Texas (69%), and Vt. (23%). Moll's book is almost 25 years old. The current local perception is that Miami competes for students primarily with Ohio State.</p>
<p>Miami does a good job of marketing itself as a "Public Ivy" and as providing a "private school experience," which from reading the above posts apparently is more of a reference to its attractive campus than its academic competitiveness with top tier schools. </p>
<p>In my opinion, Miami's marketing attracts students from affluent suburbs who are attracted to the school's marketed "label;" thus, the J. Crew vibe that is apparent on campus, and its woeful multi-cultural enrollment of less than 10%. </p>
<p>Miami does provide a solid education, and even better in the honors programs; but, it does not compete with top tier schools academically.</p>