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She ended up at Yale Med after having a great time at Rhodes.</p>
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He also ended up at a top 10 medical school (if it’s the same student I’m thinking of).</p>
<p>There was also a poster who turned down Yale for Vandy, completed a BS/MS within four years, and went to work for Google.</p>
<p>I understand my opinion here is usually in the minority for CC. However, I am of the school that if you are happy, you will be productive and fulfilled. An ivy league degree is no certain ticket to happiness. If you felt good about the school you selected, then trust yourself and make it the best experience it can be. Milk your college years for all you can and enjoy every last minute of them. Continue to go with your instincts, prize happiness and fulfillment over status and prestige, and you will be a success. Be true to who and what you are.</p>
<p>^I’d guess Rice as well. Rice is the university from the USNWR 15 to 20 that stands out as providing a truly unique environment and is very generous with scholarship money.</p>
<p>The same can’t be said for Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. It’s all prestige and hype. Many students who pick HYP don’t even know what they’re doing. They’re happy with the fact that HYP are generally excellent all-round universities; however, there are obviously a number of universities better than HYP as well. Rice would be one of the contenders.</p>
<p>I heard someone who got into Harvard from my local school may be going to UT Austin.</p>
<p>Wow I know someone who made the exact same decision (suspiciously similar story in fact). Don’t second guess yourself. HYP is amazing, but Rice, ND, and Vandy are too, especially if whichever one it was was meant to be the right place for you.</p>
<p>Sorry to hijack the thread, but just curious-
what makes Rice’s environment so unique?</p>
<p>It is small, accepts under a 1000 students, renowned for research, has a well established residential college system ala Yale, offers one of the best undergraduate education covering engineering, arts, sciences, music etc., plays NCAA division I sports, middle of a major city, in the middle of two medical schools and one of the finest medical centers in the world,</p>
<p>Averby - with all due respect, you are a hs senior. How are you possibly qualified to judge compared to adults with years of RL experience?</p>
<p>It depends on your next step. If you go into business or policy, HYP (and other Ivies) can be a huge asset. If you’re planning on going to law or medical school it will matter much less.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure the OP is headed for Vanderbilt. My son just graduated from there; four years ago he took the full tuition scholarship, along with the NM stipend. Unlike the OP, he would have been full-pay anywhere (at that time), and unlike the OP he was actively looking for a merit scholarship to a good school. So, the situations are not identical. Also, unlike the OP, he was not really looking at Vanderbilt as a top choice at the time he submitted applications. The generous offer made him take a couple of close looks, and he changed his mind after seeing the campus, the location, talking with profs and administrators about opportunities, meeting other prospective students, and so on.</p>
<p>The result: great research opportunities throughout his undergraduate years, both during the summers and during the school year, at good pay; several peer-reviewed publications, along with presentation of some of the work at national conferences; permission to accelerate course work so he finished with a master’s degree at the same time as a double major in math and computer science; a very high-paying job lined up before his senior year even began; a record that will serve him well if he decides to go for a PhD in a year or two. And, a great time for four years, many friends, a lot of fun and zero regrets about his choice.</p>
<p>Congratulations, midwesterner. You did well, and you chose well.</p>
<p>I’m thinking we are talking Vanderbilt too, not Rice. Choosing Vanderbilt over Yale is fine. If you like Vandy better you’ll do great there. It’s not a mistake.</p>
<p>The recent Vandy grad that I know personally has an amazing job and has had incredible opportunities coming out of there. If you personally prefer Vandy over HYP, I would see absolutely no reason not to go there. I have long maintained that if (hypothetically) my kids got into every single Top 20 university out there and had to pick (and money being no object), they should do so based on their personal preferences and fit. There are so many incredible opportunities at all these schools, more than any one person can take advantage of. It’s rather like books in the library - one school may have 10,000,000 volumes and another may “only” have 9,500,000 but so what? It’s more than you are ever going to read anyway and more than enough for your purposes. </p>
<p>This Ivy League mania is really only the province of people who are either new to this country and haven’t quite gotten it, or of high school seniors who seriously think that world opportunities hinge on a handful of few schools and that others are noticeably or meaningfully inferior. Don’t worry about it. Go and enjoy.</p>
<p>Ahh, buyer’s remorse! I’ve had a terminal case of it my entire life. You’re going to do great wherever you go. Think of it like a multiple choice test – you’ve made a well-considered, thoughtful choice based on good data. In my experience, going back and changing your answer is very rarely a good idea.</p>
<p>The OP didn’t give enough information to determine which school it was, so just choosing your favorite from the possibilities and talking about how good it is just seems odd. Given “non-ivy” and “between 15 and 20,” there are four possibilities: Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, and Emory. As I have said, Notre Dame doesn’t give full tuition merit scholarships, so that leaves Rice, Vanderbilt, or Emory. All are excellent schools and it makes sense to follow your heart to whatever school you want.</p>
<p>Honestly, to me it sounds like you had a win-win choice either way but I think you definitely made the right one. It would have been silly to pick HYP just for the name when there’s a very closely ranked school that is giving you loads of money and where you feel at home.</p>
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<p>You have GOT to be kidding. There are plenty of things to recommend each of those campuses. Yes, we all get that there are unsophisticated prestige-driven parts of the country where the first cut is “is it an Ivy” and from there you determine how much you like something based on a USNWR. For most normal people with reasonable thinking abilities, however, they just decide if they like a school or not. There’s absolutely no reason why someone might not personally prefer one of those schools over an Ivy. It’s all individual preference. What makes every Ivy all that special or preferred over another comparable school? Like anyone else, I have my personal favorites that I would go to and those that I didn’t care for. Why wouldn’t it be exactly the same for any other elite school – either you like it or you don’t? What, do you think songbirds flutter around your head and the sun always shines at an Ivy League school? They are just … places. That’s all. From an overall look and feel standpoint, I personally would choose Vanderbilt over Yale any day of the week. Other people’s mileage may vary, and that’s great too. Your personal taste / preference for Rice isn’t everybody’s.</p>
<p>I like how some of the posts are just guessing at the OP’s schools instead of actually offering advice or congratulations. Is it Rice, Notre Dame??? Who Cares??? I applaud you OP for going with your heart. That’s what matters. Not some prestige label that the adolescents on this board are obsessed with (they are in for a rude awakening when they enter the real world looking for a job or have to go to grad school. The amount of entitlement posters on this board <em>believe</em> come with a HYPS college is astoundingly stupid). You will do awesome at a college you are happy at. The differences between the schools in the top 20 is truly marginal. Have a blast.</p>
<p>^^^There is a grand total of two, maybe three, posts on this thread that question the OP’s decision. Everyone else has been supportive. As for “guessing”, there is a very limited set of schools that appear in the USNews Top 20 that offer full tuition scholarships, so not much guessing is involved.</p>
<p>Compared to most threads that deal with this topic, remarkably few posts are of the ridiculous Ivy-worship variety. I guess the high school students haven’t gotten out of school yet.</p>
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<p>Yes, HYP have unremarkable, run-of-the-mill college environments, are stingy with FA, and their students are clueless. You nailed it.</p>
<p>isn’t it a bit too late for op to change mind?</p>
<p>in gerneral, research shows what matter sis what school(s) you get in, not what school you graduate from.</p>
<p>but, as one poster indicated, the college major and intended career choice could play a key role. if business, for example, the school label matters a lot more than medical.</p>
<p>make the best of your situation - it’s the best when you made the decision, so don’t second guess it.</p>
<p>update the post upon graduation and let us all know how wonderful it has been and you have NO regrets!</p>
<p>enjoy.</p>