Quantifying the value of attending more selective schools

[Mom2aphysicsgeek]

@austinmshauri

There are plenty of kids at elite colleges who test well. That doesn’t make them innovative, ambitious, or the smartest people in the room. I see their grades and I talk with them every day. The “best and the brightest”? No. They’re great kids. But there’s a lot of hand holding. It’s not difficult to do reasonably well when you’re not allowed to fail.

But college can be a very different world than high school. There are open ended questions with no one right answer that test how students think, not just how well they memorize. Some really struggle with it, some do okay, and a few excel. This is no different than our state school.

Your post really resonated with me. It reminded me of a conversation my oldest son and I had with a woman at church when he was a high school sr.

She asked him if he had decided on a school and major. He told her yes and that he planned on majoring in chemE and where. She looked him in the eye and told him that he needed to plan on a different major b/c her valedictorian 36 ACT ds had been a chemE major there and couldn’t manage the work and was now a psy major.

My ds was definitely not a “36 on the ACT” student. He proceeded to graduate with honors with his chemE degree. While an UG, he was invited by profs at that U to participate on their research projects and then received great LOR from them.