<p>Post #20, continued…
Here are some examples of what I mean:</p>
<p>REACH…MATCH… SAFETY of SAME TYPE …ALT SAFETY</p>
<p>Columbia…Penn…NYU… USC or Tulane</p>
<p>Williams…Colby…Lafayette… U of Miami</p>
<p>Princeton…Cornell…Rochester …Clemson</p>
<p>Dartmouth…Tufts…Bucknell/Clark…Colorado</p>
<p>Georgetown…B.C…Villanova … Florida St.</p>
<p>Duke… Vandy …Wake/Tulane … Boston U. or Wisconsin</p>
<p>Because for a lot of people, they decide what kind of college they want, then weigh the non-academic factors. For example, I want to go to a small LAC, so I will look at Williams, Amherst, Dartmouth, CMC, Bowdoin, etc. Because that is what I want from a college, I am more likely to go somewhere like that for a safety than go to Big City Institute of Mechanical Engineering</p>
<p>I know, but once you’ve gotten down to the safety level, you’ve sort of lost the academic or prestige battle, so why not shift gears and get a school that offers some features (weather, sports, skiing, etc.)you hadn’t originally given much weight to? Like if you dreamed of a Mercedes, and an Infinity would be good, instead of SETTLING for a Mazda as a last resort, maybe opt for a Jeep.</p>
<p>^ I don’t really get your point, Schmaltz. My D1 decided she really wanted a small LAC because she preferred the small classes, the intimacy, the opportunities to get to know her professors and most of her classmates. She felt she’d be lost and anonymous at a bigger school, but could thrive in a LAC environment. So most of her reaches, all her matches, and all her safeties were of that same type; the only exception was one reach, Brown, that has a reputation for being more LAC-like than most research universities, though even that felt a little big to her, and including it on her list felt like a bit of a compromise—but it never made it to the top of her list, because it didn’t have all the characteristics she was looking for. </p>
<p>As it turns out, she was accepted to her top choice LAC in the ED round. But if she had ended up only with opportunities to attend her matches or safeties, she wouldn’t have “lost the academic battle,” because even her safeties have excellent academics; they’re just not quite as selective, but they’re very good schools, and all the same characteristics that drew her to them in the first place would still be there. As for the “losing” the “prestige battle”? Well, she was never in one. There was just about zero correlation between her rank ordering of preferred schools and the relative US News rankings of those schools—though any objective reading of the US News data or other information on those schools would tell you they’re all good schools.</p>
<p>I happen to think she approached this whole question in a wise and level-headed way, but pretty much just the opposite of many of the prestige-mongers on CC.</p>
<p>I think the idea that if you don’t get into a top 25 college or university you might as well just chuck your academic ambitions and go for the weather, the sports, or the skiing is just loopy. There are hundreds of colleges and universities in this country where you can get a quality education. Education isn’t an all-or-nothing, grab-for-the-brass-ring game. And there aren’t only 25 (or 50, if you include LACs) schools where you can develop the critical thinking, writing, analytical, and research skills, the theoretical insights, and the knowledge base to succeed in this crazy, complex world. But there are gradations of excellence. And if you don’t succeed immediately in getting into a school that some financially failing online publication using dubious criteria deems to be “top 25” and therefore “prestigious,” that’s not a reason to just chuck it all and go skiing.</p>
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<p>And then you shortly realize that the Jeep is completely unsuitable for your use because you never drive off-road with it but are paying the penalty in poor on-road ride, handling, and fuel economy. When you get into your friend’s Mazda, you realize that it would have been a very good match for you, perhaps even better than the Mercedes or Infiniti because it needs fewer repairs which cost less.</p>
<p>I think there are plenty of situations in which the last-resort of a type of school wouldn’t be as good a choice as one of the top choices of another type, and I think people sometimes do this…but I’ve never heard it explained as a distinct strategy. There seems to be more than a few people on cc whose reaches are like HYP, and the matches are Tufts, Carnegie-Mellon, and Georgetown, and instead of choosing Rochester and Boston U as safeties, they pick Michigan. In other words, their first choices are elite medium-sized Northeastern privates, but when it comes down to settling for medium-sized Northeastern privates that are NOT especially elite, you might say the heck with that type, and opt for a top-of-the-heap large Midwestern public with great sports and incredible name recognition.</p>
<p>In-state public schools have a large cost advantage for residents of that state; for someone whose preferences on size, out of state location, etc. are not particularly strong, the in-state public school’s low cost may override those preferences compared to other schools of comparable selectivity.</p>
<p>"When you get into your friend’s Mazda, you realize that it would have been a very good match for you, perhaps even better than the Mercedes or Infiniti because it needs fewer repairs which cost less. "</p>
<p>What I meant was that if you preferred the Mercedes or Infinity because they were prestigious foreign sedans, and you have to settle for a non-prestigious foreign sedan, you’ve lost the prestige battle, so perhaps the Jeep’s superiority in the snow (which originally wasn’t a major concern) might compensate for the loss of prestige.</p>
<p>“In-state public schools have a large cost advantage for residents of that state; for someone whose preferences on size, out of state location, etc. are not particularly strong, the in-state public school’s low cost may override those preferences compared to other schools of comparable selectivity.”</p>
<p>That’s exactly what I’m talking about…when you “settle” for an in-state public over your preferred more-elite and smaller private schools, you are saying that a non-academic factor (i.e., lower cost) compensates for the lack of your first-choice type of school’s features. All I’m saying is that it might be useful to add non-academic factors OTHER than cost (like name recognition; weather;bigtime sports; & proximity to a good city, skiing, or beaches) to the list of things that might compensate for not getting into your first-choice type of school.</p>
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<p>An interesting proposition. I’d say no, unless you really don’t value academics all that much. Like maybe less than beaches or skiing. Cost is different from beaches or skiing. Cost is an enabler. It determines which choices are realistically available to you. But once you’ve got cost covered, I’d go for academics every time; it just seems to me the point of a college education is to find the best place to learn, not the best place to ski. But your value system may differ.</p>
<p>I think you’re focusing too much on skiing…that’s just one example. Picking a nice city for cultural and entertainment advantages is another option. Like suppose your first choice was an elite small rural LAC, and the main reason was you liked to be in a tightly knit group of really smart students. And your reach and match schools (Williams, Middlebury, Colgate, etc) did indeed offer that. </p>
<p>But by the time you get down to small rural LACs that are a lock to get into, they no longer have wall-to-wall really smart students. There are SOME really smart ones, but they are outnumbered by prep school slackers, folks mainly there to play varsity sports, and party animals with decent SATs who got mediocre grades in high school. There are also some folks who aren’t all that bright but they tried really hard and got good grades in high school. </p>
<p>Bottom line is that the students don’t provide the critical mass of brainpower that was the main reason to go to that type of school in the first place. So you opt for, say, Boston University instead…and the excitement of the big city, the museums, the Red Sox, the proximity to other colleges, the bigtime college hockey, concerts, the increased research possibilities, and the wider variety of majors are preferable to the 2nd-rate LAC that was your other safety.</p>
<p>The vast majority of students locally, love their college; even when it was the safety. Pretty much it seems they’re happy where they are planted. “Fit” or “Right” college seems to be smoke & mirrors.<br>
A “smart” choice might be based on selecting a school based on major, but: “It may help if parents understand that most college students, some studies suggest a figure as high as 80%, change their major at least once. The average may be as high as changing majors three times during the college years” …… so, picking a school based on major, is probably a worse choice than picking based on weather.</p>
<p>“Fit” to me, mean greater than 75% 4 yr graduation rate (5 yr for engineers) and academic peers where your SAT is in the college’s middle to upper SAT range. A college residential system helps and a Frat/sorority doesn’t.</p>
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<p>I didn’t say “changing the world”. I said likely to be improving the world in some way. An engineer working on a water purification system is improving the world in some way. So is a person working on components that may lead to a battery operated car. An MIT grad who starts a company and hires people is improving the world in some way (MIT grads have founded over 25,000 companies employing over 3 million people). An MIT grad who becomes a doctor, teacher, or professor is improving the world in some way. There are many everyday normal jobs that, bit by bit, help make the world a better place.</p>
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</p>
<pre><code>McDonnell Douglas
Campbell Soup
3COM
Bose
Analog Devices
MathWorks
Gillette
Texas Instruments
Akamai
International Data Group (IDG)
Teradyne
Raytheon
Genentech
Harmonix
</code></pre>
<p>Were all founded by MIT alumni. So were more than 25,800 other companies employing 3.2 million people. If the active companies founded by MIT graduates formed an independent nation, their revenues would make that nation at least the 17th-largest economy in the world.</p>
<p>Did you say that people from Carnegie Mellon end up with decent jobs while MIT grads change the world? Where I’m working right now there are kids from MIT, Cal Tech, Carnegie Mellon, UCSD, Texas A & M, San Diego State…all doing the same thing! You guys really glorify top schools.</p>