<p>Carleton has about 200 Jewish students which is a little over 10%. My son says that many of the students have some Jewish heritage but are not identified as religious jews.</p>
<p>I am jealous. Your daughter sounds amazing and is a young woman who has her priorities straight. You must be very proud of her. If her world outlook is in the minority at a school that is more income oriented she my not have as many choices of friends with whom she shares a common values system. So I say go with C. It sounds like it will bring out the best in her...as I said she sounds like an awesome child.</p>
<p>"She thinks she wants to major in history or political science and do some sort of public service ultimately. She is spending next year in Israel and very much identifies with being Jewish which I imagine is a factor in Yale's favor. Except for her last two years of high school in an arts boarding school (which she attended on nearly full scholarship) she attended very urban public schools and has little tolerance for sense of entitlement."</p>
<p>Yale has a very strong history department and is a very political campus. There are a lot of active political groups, they bring on speakers, they debate issues, etc. There is opportunity for service. My daughter has volunteered at a nearby school and she is in the Yale Children's Theater which perfoms for the children in the community. Yale has a very active and large Jewish community. My daugher has always been the "anti-elitist". She went to an urban public school that had a lot of serious challenges in addition to some fine magnet programs. I think part of the reason she picked Yale was because it had a more diverse feel than some of the other campuses she was considering. The private school mentality has been new and different but I think it would have been that way at any East Coast school. It's a different culture. As for large classes, etc. Yale has a program for Freshman called Directed Studies where students study the Western Canon in very small classes with professors -- it's intense and demanding but you avoid large classes. All the English classes are small in size with discussion and so forth. There are TAs in larger classes, that is true but some of the professors do seem to be interested in meeting and talking with students. The residential colleges do a great job of creating a sense of community. Oh, and New Haven is not a good place for nature. I can't speak to Carleton -- good luck on the decision.</p>
<p>As a part-time flack for Macalester I would suggest your D visit there when she visits Carleton. The Macalester environment is very compatible with her academic, career and religious interests.</p>
<p>If Princeton Review's rankings are at all valid, Carleton gets some great results!
Carleton College's
Best 357 Colleges Rankings </p>
<p>Rank List Category
#10 Best Overall Academic Experience For Undergraduates Academics
#3 Professors Bring Material to Life Academics
#16 Professors Make Themselves Accessible Academics
#19 Their Students Never Stop Studying Academics
#13 School Runs Like Butter Administration
#12 Lots of Race/Class Interaction Demographics
#4 Everyone Plays Intramural Sports Extracurriculars
#10 Best Quality of Life Quality of Life
#6 Happy Students Quality of Life </p>
<p>Yale's are quite different:
Yale University's
Best 357 Colleges Rankings </p>
<p>Rank List Category
#4 The Toughest To Get Into Academics
#7 Great College Library Administration
#6 Great College Newspaper Extracurriculars
#9 Great College Theatre Extracurriculars</p>
<p>Actually, if you add together the Princeton Review scores for Academic Quality, Quality of Life, Selectivity, and Financial Aid/Scholarships, Carleton is the number one college in the country (the top 5 are Carleton, Pomona, Smith, Amherst, and Haverford). Yale barely breaks the top 20.</p>
<p>Rankings is rankings is rankings of course, but based on both professional and student opinions, that's what PR says.</p>
<p>Mini, we know lots of kids at Yale and you must live in a nice bubble to believe that all kids who do not receive aid do so because their parents can afford nice vacations, nannies, etc. Many of them don't receive aid precisely because their parents, on middle class salaries, chose to live modestly to save for college. The fact that these families get "punished" with no aid is one thing, for you to then "punish" them again by characterizing the student body in this way is really mean.</p>
<p>You keep flogging the same statistics on social class. Go the fin aid calculators and try being a minister married to a social worker who has been living frugally since your kids were born.... trust me, you are not priviliged or living the high life, but depending on how and where your assets have grown, you may not get a penny of fin aid.</p>
<p>Sorry, neither tears nor sympathy for folks with incomes of $155k a year and up, nor for folks who, because of where they happen to live, now occupy $700k homes. That's 3X the median family income in the U.S. </p>
<p>It may be a problem, but, relatively, it sure is a nice one. </p>
<p>And this has nothing to do with the kids - the families they come from is a pure accident of birth. Folks tend to think that SAT scores are "hard data" from which they can reach conclusions; well, family income data is equally "hard".</p>
<p>I call it the way YALE sees it (not me, YALE) - 60% of the folks attending have no NEED for financial aid, which means they can AFFORD $175k over four years, and have funds left over for the next kid.</p>
<p>If you disagree with Yale's assessment, you should take it up with them.</p>
<p>I have no tears or sympathy for folks making that either.... but your point was not to generate tears, but to claim that Yale is the bastion of privilege.</p>
<p>In my city, a transit worker married to a nurse, or a high school chemistry teacher married to a sanitation worker makes that. I don't care how much or little they make... the point is that it would be hard to call these families "privileged" in the way you intended with your Nanny comment.</p>
<p>Mini,
I know that your D is extremely happy at Smith :)</p>
<p>Just wondering, however, did she apply to any of the Ivies? Or, was she ED at Smith?</p>
<p>You mentioned that your D has a strong Jewish identity & will be in Israel next year. My has a friend accepted EA to Yale who will also be studying in Israel next year. His family has limited funds & he has continually received scholarships to attend the same relgious high school my s attends. ( I feel uncomfortable talking about someone else's economics in such a public place)
If Jewish community is important you should definitely compare & contrast the Yale & Carleton communities on Hillel.org & contact the Hillel directors of both schools. As an aside, Yale Jewish Acapella choir performed @ our synagogue in LA & tehy were delightful. We hosted a student in home who seemed to embody midwestern values- helpful, wholesome, not all edgey or
"entitled"</p>
<p>"60% of the folks attending have no NEED for financial aid, which means they can AFFORD $175k over four years, and have funds left over for the next kid."</p>
<p>Mini, that's erroneous. The financial aid people at all these schools make it clear that they are calculating whether a family can pay the fees over FOURTEEN years for the number of kids they have. That's exactly why so many parents new to this process get freaked out by the EFC.</p>
<p>To sascha, why not go after Swarthmore, tell them she got into Yale but has her heart set on Swat, etc.? I would think they would pay attention.</p>
<p>"In my city, a transit worker married to a nurse, or a high school chemistry teacher married to a sanitation worker makes that. I don't care how much or little they make... the point is that it would be hard to call these families "privileged" in the way you intended with your Nanny comment.</p>
<p>Well, that's nice. It puts them in the top 5% of the U.S. population, and the top 0.01% of the world population. But of course they are not privileged! Mind you, the $155k was the MINIMUM, the actual median is well into the $200k range, and that means that HALF of those (or 30% of the Yale families) earn more than that (many much, much more). Look - that's what gives Yale its prestige, and if I ran the place, I'd do the same thing (though I'd charge more for those who could afford more.)</p>
<p>I'll stand by what I said. If you've got a problem with who Yale admits, take it up with them.</p>
<p>Mini, you may not realize that where I live, the nannies are earning $600 a week plus room and board.</p>
<p>Years ago I attended a small boarding school in NE and applied to a range of colleges. My first choice, by far, was Williams, which had just gone coed. What I liked best about it was that it felt "just like my boarding school only bigger, and coed!" I was devastated that I was wait listed, so much so that my mother had to keep flashing my MIT and Yale acceptances in front of my face.</p>
<p>I chose MIT, which could not have been more different than my boarding school. For a while I was sure they had made a mistake, I didn't think I could handle the size, the work load, the intensity. I was wrong, by the end of first year I was solidly performing in the average range in everything. I had met gobs of people who never would have shown up at Williams, and a few who might have..I was challenged to think in new and different ways.</p>
<p>Nothing was easy, nothing was comfortable (for a while)...nothing could have been better for me. College isn't only about finding a place where everyone looks like you, thinks like you. College is about who you want to become...</p>
<p>Your daughter has wonderful choices Sascha...but ask her who she wants to be in 4 years...and try to figure out which school will bring her there. It just sounds to me that there is a bit too much "boarding school replication" going on- and it resonated with me...</p>
<p>"Mini, you may not realize that where I live, the nannies are earning $600 a week plus room and board."</p>
<p>I know. I'm thinking of quitting my job, and becoming one! (Maybe just for the room, you know, in one of those average $1.2 million dollar two-room rat-infested walk-ups in Manhattan.) Likely the only way I'll ever be able to move back to New York is to be a nannie for a NYC garbagewoman and her husband the nurse, who paid for the Yale education for junior by remortgaging the apartment, had it go up in value $170k in a single year, and got the Yale education for free!</p>
<p>Sorry to offend. My adopted mother in India is now paying folks $7 a month plus food to help them build their own homes, and people are falling all over each other trying to get it. (<a href="http://www.lafti.net%5B/url%5D">www.lafti.net</a>)</p>
<p>Much of the time I feel just about the richest man alive!</p>
<p>Great post Robyrm, my daughter's decision is made, but I think I want her to read your post anyway.</p>
<p>The thing is that kids who come from families where dad is a sanitation worker and mom is a nurse and they worked hard to own a home and send their kids to college are not the kids who would be a problem for someone who is wary of kids with a sense of entitlement. Those kinds of kids don't have a sense of entitilement because they have learned that you have to work for what you have. I think that's the point -- that just because Yale has a percentage of kids who don't get aid doesn't mean that each of those kids has some sense of entitlement. A lot of the time those kids are quite down to earth and very appreciative of the opportunity they are being given.</p>
<p>Wonderful posts, robrym and mimk6.</p>