<p>Gaussian said: " however, the typical student will learn a fairly significant amount more at Harvard than he would at a typical state U."</p>
<p>(I really dont want to argue specifically about Harvard, of which i know little, but substitute “prestigious, private school”)</p>
<p>My point, Gaussian, is that you don’t have to chose between fancy school and state U. There are public honors colleges, some within the main U, some standing alone. You can find a middle ground, with smart students and smaller classes, without paying an astronomical fee.</p>
<p>I think there are some great bargains out there for people who want an elite education, and public honors colleges are among the best. There’s a great free-standing one in Maryland, St. Mary’s College. But I repeat what I said above: by far the best bargain is to go to Harvard with financial aid. Any poor person who can get into Harvard would be nuts not to go there, in my opinion. (And by poor, I don’t even mean really poor.)</p>
<p>Very interesting comment. My daughter spent her entire life at private schools which are populated with a very affluent, very intelligent student body, most of whose parents were very well educated. Her schools work very hard to diversify, but they cannot compare to the diversity found in the public schools. One of the things she did not like about her initial college choice (expensive private) was that it seemed to be same song, third verse. In other words, the majority of the students came from an identical background, even if they were from other states or even other races. She decided that she wanted to go to the OOS public because there would be far greater diversity in terms of just about every category. The one thing that wasn’t all that diverse was the geographic origin of the student body. This university is bound by state law to accept over 80% of its students from in-state. There were times when she felt very “special” about her origins as she was kind of a novelty to many of the kids she met, but there have also been times where she felt the difference in some less than positive ways (especially early on as many groups of friends arrive at school as already established, closed entities due to the fact that they all went to high school together and had a lot in common in terms of culture and common experience). </p>
<p>Overall, she wouldn’t change a thing, but when kids from our state ask her about her experiences, she does feel obliged to mention that at this school, you are automatically a minority with regard to place of origin and potential cultural differences as a result. She feels the positives far outweigh the negative, but it is worth mentioning.</p>
<p>Honors colleges need to be researched to see if they ultimately meet a student’s needs.</p>
<p>Some “honors colleges” are only 1 class per semester. Another consideration is: will the honors courses limit the student’s flexibility to complete certain major/minor combinations, and/or a double-major?</p>
<p>The word “honors” seems to be thrown around a lot lately, and I think we all need to be careful and read the fine print.</p>
<p>True, “honors college” can mean different things. I am mainly talking about stand-alone schools. If its just one class, and not the total environment, there probably wouldn’t be a great benefit.</p>
<p>This is a never ending discussion to which there is no right answer. There are opinions all over the map. It seems to me that fear is an underlying element when this topic comes up. People fear that they will overspend or underspend (ie you get what you pay for). Fear that they will look foolish if they don’t make the “right” choice. Fear that certain schools are privy to some rarified essence that only exists within those walls. Fear that attending anything less than an “elite” school will somehow scar their children. Fear that some schools are full of snobs. Fear that others are full of cotton headed ninnymuggins. Fear that somehow the “wrong” decision is life changing and forever.</p>
<p>I personally believe that there are very, very few college age students in the United States who are so highly intelligent or advanced in a specialty that they would be unable to thrive if denied access to one particular class or program. So let’s all agree that for that tiny subset of geniuses the exact fit of a few colleges or departments within a few universities is essential. For the rest of us and our smart-but-not-sporting-a-200-IQ children, there is a lot of wiggle room. Some are more comfortable with small LACs, some more comfortable with big research universities. Neither is absolutely better than the other.</p>
<p>If you can afford it, send your child to whatever university he loves and is admitted to. If you need merit money or financial aid, then don’t send your child to any university whose cost of attendance makes you break out into a cold sweat. And if you find yourself needing reassurance that the cost is really worth it, it probably isn’t.</p>
<p>I’m late to the party, just stumbled on this thread. Very applicable to my S’s situation.</p>
<p>He’s been admitted to the honors college at a very large State U here. Said honors college has its own dorm at the U, guaranteed small classes, promised access to professors who only teach in the honors college. All students in the HC agree to one semester studying abroad, and they are assigned special advisers/GCs. The main school is very popular and this year we are told they had 69,000 applicants for about 7,700 freshman slots; consequently, the caliber of all admitted students has jumped in terms of GPA and test scores. </p>
<p>It’s hard for my husband and I to not want to convince our S to choose this HC opportunity. It’s very affordable for us, has a very good reputation, would allow us to buy our S a car (his is on its last legs) and still come out way ahead. S likes this school, but his first choice is a fairly pricey, small private that, after applying his merit $, would still cost us $35K per year. We’d need to take out loans.</p>
<p>We’re still waiting for a couple responses from schools to which he applied. But I can already feel it – this is going to be tough.</p>
<p>Whole post is very well said. However, special props for the use of “cotton headed ninnymuggins.” I have never heard that term, but I absolutely love it. :D</p>
<p>Quote:
Another major difference between a top Public and top private colleges are the students who attend. I am not talking about test scores. There is a different level of comfort, and overall college experience, when 80%+ of the students are in state and/or from a surrounding states, compared to the elite privates that are completely opposite. This national diversity, if the student feels comfortable, is a very beneficial. A Top Private (not elite) like George Washington, which compares very well to many top publics, has less than 1% of its students from DC. A top public can be a great bargain, but if money is not an issue, there are many debatable benefits. </p>
<p>Very interesting comment. My daughter spent her entire life at private schools which are populated with a very affluent, very intelligent student body, most of whose parents were very well educated. Her schools work very hard to diversify, but they cannot compare to the diversity found in the public schools. One of the things she did not like about her initial college choice (expensive private) was that it seemed to be same song, third verse. In other words, the majority of the students came from an identical background, even if they were from other states or even other races. She decided that she wanted to go to the OOS public because there would be far greater diversity in terms of just about every category. The one thing that wasn’t all that diverse was the geographic origin of the student body. This university is bound by state law to accept over 80% of its students from in-state. There were times when she felt very “special” about her origins as she was kind of a novelty to many of the kids she met, but there have also been times where she felt the difference in some less than positive ways (especially early on as many groups of friends arrive at school as already established, closed entities due to the fact that they all went to high school together and had a lot in common in terms of culture and common experience). </p>
<p>Overall, she wouldn’t change a thing, but when kids from our state ask her about her experiences, she does feel obliged to mention that at this school, you are automatically a minority with regard to place of origin and potential cultural differences as a result. She feels the positives far outweigh the negative, but it is worth mentioning. </p>
<p>Nrdsb4,
The fact that your daughter was OOS is what made her experience more diverse and very special. It is not always easy to fit in. The fact that she would not change a thing and was able to fit in, says a lot about her and the school she attended.</p>
<p>While it’s true that private colleges are often more geographically diverse, this is not universally the case. The University of Delaware, for example, is 63% OOS. The University of Vermont is 67% OOS. Michigan and UVA are both around 35% OOS, which given their size means there are thousands and thousands of OOS students with whom to interact.</p>
<p>Many private schools are also less income-diverse than their public counterparts. These days there’s probably less difference in outlook and experiences between a kid who grew up in an upper-middle class suburban environment around Atlanta and one who grew up in a similarly upper-middle class suburban environment around Boston, than there is between either of those two and a kid who grew up in an impoverished inner-city urban environment just a few miles away. Given the extremely low rates at which most elite privates enroll Pell grant recipients, I’d say they’re not the big winners in the diversity scorecard.</p>
<p>As for GW, the fact that so few of its students come from DC is possibly as much a badge of shame as of merit. To me it suggests the school is doing little to serve the DC community (and particularly, those coming from said impoverished urban environments). And before I give it points for geographic diversity, I’d want to know how many of its students come from suburban Virginia and Maryland or other communities within a couple of hours’ drive. I’ll bet it’s a pretty substantial fraction. That’s only a little more preposterous than saying Michigan is geographically diverse because 99% of its students don’t come from Ann Arbor.</p>
<p>That’s somewhat of a change as someone who attended a NYC math/science public magnet in the early-mid '90s where our top kids tend to go off to HYPSMC…with MIT/Caltech/Stanford being tops for aspiring Engineering/CS majors and HYPS for everyone else. Then again…with the exception of MIT/Caltech…there was also great respect accorded to kids who went to UChicago, CMU(STEM majors), Swarthmore, Reed and other schools known for their extremely grueling rigorous academic workloads. </p>
<p>Back then, Binghamton was about as hard to get into as schools in the Barnard/Columbia College/Cornell range and harder than NYU or Columbia SEAS*. On the other hand, Geneseo back then was widely considered a dump for slacker non-academic kids in the bottom 1/3 of the class who didn’t really want to study. </p>
<p>In short, there was some overlap back in my high school days between top-level kids** who went to the top SUNY flagships(Binghamton(Social Sciences/Humanities), Stonybrook(Pre-med/STEM) ) and kids who made it into elite universities/LACs. </p>
<p>However, there was still a noticeable difference…especially if we’re talking about the Stonybrook admits from the middle-bottom of our graduating class. Plus, once you got away from those top flagships…there was a widespread perception that the SUNYs were quite average-mediocre and one of the worst places to enroll an above-average or above student. This was a reason why when one of our high school GCs tried to talk up Bing by equating it to UC Berkeley to the top students in my group…the response was overwhelmingly eyerolls and barely stifled contemptuous chuckles. </p>
<p>Judging by what I’ve heard about Bing/other state schools and the fact so many Bing/state school high school classmates ended up transferring up to schools like Columbia…the academic level was indeed at least a notch below those of the elite private universities/colleges or top publics like UC Berkeley. </p>
<ul>
<li>Back then, many HS classmates with strong quant skills who didn’t have the stats to get into Columbia College used their admission to Columbia SEAS as an easier backdoor route to Columbia College. This practice was probably so widespread that Columbia University eventually put an end to that practice.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>** Back in the day when Ivies/elite universities didn’t offer extremely generous FA like they do now. If they were applying today…they’d probably all go to the private elites because of the much better FA/scholarships available to them. In fact…a parent of a good friend recently told me how she was amazed at how the FA/scholarship offer for her younger daughter from a respectable private university was such that it was a great bargain compared to her state university on the price alone…much less the stark differences in academic quality(Clark University v.s. University of Maine/UNH).</p>
<p>Cobras – yes, those schools are a great deal for kids who are qualified to receive financial aid, but if you are full-pay, and subsidizing everyone else, you have to ask if you can afford it. The question isn’t if an expensive college is better than Binghamton, it is is it $150,000 better. Those kids doing eye rolls probably had access to financial aid.</p>
<p>Although Geneseo might not have been considered a top school in your day, now it has the kids with the top stats in the SUNY system.</p>
<p>However, not all public schools are that socioeconomically diverse; Virginia and North Carolina, despite offering decent financial aid to out of state students, have rather low Pell Grant student percentages. Somehow, UCLA and Berkeley have relatively high Pell Grant student percentages.</p>
<p>This is just a thought, but are there more low-income Asian Americans in California than on the East Coast? That could account for much of the difference.</p>
<p>Some of the kids in that group were from families that were going to be struggling as full-pay students as many CC posters here. However, the values of their parents were such that for their families…paying for the most academically rigorous/challenging college their kid(s) could handle was the top priority compared to everything else. </p>
<p>Especially when their perceptions were that placing their above-average/tippy-top performing kids in a SUNY/local state schools would be a waste of their time/talents…even in honors programs. Something which was borne out by the high numbers of high school classmates who ended up transferring from our state/city systems to more academically challenging elite private universities/colleges.</p>