There are plenty of schools that admit based on a formula - get x.x GPA or xxxx on your SATs and you’re in. Why not have your kid apply to those? Or are they just not good enough?
Anyway, you waaaay overvalue a handful of very specific schools. It’s understandable because you are newer to this country and haven’t fully embraced the presence of all the great LACs out there, as well as the many great public universities (outside California). You’re still stuck in the mindset that there are only a handful of schools worth applying to. Too bad.
Who are these Holistics? Do they have a magic Sorting Hat? Please, correct me if i am wrong, but my impression is that adcoms are either life-time administrators (little exposure to academia of business world) and an army of low paid temps. Many adcoms are idealists, who want to make live better in the universe. Plus, adcoms are influenced by lobbyists - athletic coaches, music / theater, alumni relationship, office of diversity, underrepresented departments, donors, political network, financial considerations, etc. STEM faculty rarely lobby, they select “their students” for the graduate school.
“Over 10% of Stanford admits have less than 29 ACT.”
From your school’s naviance, or in general?
But either way, so?? Stanford can admit whoever they want based on who they find most interesting. It’s not as though a kid with an ACT of 29 can’t add 2 plus 2 and get 4.
Anyway, if these schools admit such unqualified people in your estimation, then you don’t want your kid having to be forced to share a classroom or dorm with all these pathetic losers.
I don’t want it. If the application would be free (and it would require only a checkpoint, no additional essays, etc.) she may apply. But I am seriously questioning the hype of Ivys, especially, Brown / Columbia / Dartmouth. Most people abroad don’t even know these names.
Berkeley / MIT/ CalTech are the first choices. They seem to be fair.
Berkeley and UCLA have higher prestige and international recognition than most LACs, mentioned in this forum. In the globalized world it would help, IMHO.
International recognition primarily reflects the prestige (and size) of a university’s graduate programs.
Should a student select an undergraduate college based on its international reputation? In my opinion, no, unless (1) the student is planning an international career, and (2) the student does not plan to go on to graduate school. In that case, the undergraduate degree would be the only one the student has, and perhaps there would be an advantage in having it come from a university with a lot of international name recognition.
But if the student is likely to stay in the United States and/or go to graduate school, I don’t see the point in ruling out an excellent university such as Columbia based on the fact that a lot of people in other countries don’t know its name.
“But I am seriously questioning the hype of Ivys, especially, Brown / Columbia / Dartmouth. Most people abroad don’t even know these names.”
Oh! I see what you’re after. You’re not looking for quality - you’re looking for what other people know. I went for quality schools / educations - and if other people know or don’t-know them, that’s simply not my problem.
Most people abroad don’t know a single thing about American colleges / universities, except they’ve “heard of” a few of them and “haven’t heard” of many others that are just as fine. They’re uninformed. I don’t know why I would care about the opinions of those who are uninformed, but hey, you do you.
Tell me - when you go buy a watch, do you buy a Rolex simply because the average person on the street thinks that’s the “best watch”? What does “what the average person overseas thinks” have anything to do with quality? Nothing.
Californiaa - I can identify 80 really good colleges/universities. Here’s all you have to do:
Go to the USNWR rankings.
Go to the research university ranking. Write down the names of the top 40 schools.
Go to the LAC ranking. Write down the names of the top 40 schools.
There! You’ve just identified 80 schools worthy of your daughter’s consideration. Of course there may be certain preferences (urban, rural, whatever) but there’s a nice starter list to explore.
Are you truly open to such exploration? In the past you basically have acted as though there are only a handful of schools worth considering. And a lot of it was predicated on “what people abroad know.” Are you ready to open your mind?
Californiaa- weren’t you the poster who was worried that your D’s top interests were in spending time with her BF and having fun? (forgive me if I’ve mixed you up with another poster who thinks that the Ivy League is “unfair” for not automatically admitting the highest GPA’s and then leaving it at that).
If so, you have bigger college admissions issues than the “unfairness” of Dartmouth- a college that nobody you care about has ever heard of.
If not- mea culpa. I’d love to know what your kid thinks about admissions though and the losers that attend Dartmouth and Brown…
<nternational recognition primarily reflects the prestige (and size) of a university’s graduate programs.
Should a student select an undergraduate college based on its international reputation? In my opinion, no, unless (1) the student is planning an international career, and (2) the student does not plan to go on to graduate school. >
If a student plans career in STEM, his/her graduate schools Prof. may be an Indian/ Chinese/ Eastern European. These people may not be very familiar with LACs, even the most famous ones (Harvey Madd has great reputation, but many women's colleges are virtually unknown). Student's resume may be dismissed when he/she is applying to grad school in STEM. Seriously, I had a Chinese colleague, who rejected resume from Rice, because he thought that Rice is an agricultural institute :). If you read the tread on "smile and nod", you will realize that name recognition is important.
In business / law / medicine fields, undergrad name is somehow important.
You are absolutely right. I have a happy, healthy teenager. (I don’t worry about her interests in texting and BF, i think it is age-appropriate). She is a straight A student in a magnet school, but she doesn’t have Nobel price, haven’t saved the world, or addressed the United Nations.
If admission would be merit-based, my D has a good chance. Unfortunately, I pull her admission chances down - i am educated, married, neither in prison, nor on drugs … If my D is not admitted - it is my guilt. My child is doing everything right - grades, tests, APs, EC. It is my fault that I am neither VIP nor low SES.
^ Oh please… your daughter has a great life because you have led a decent life and will likely do so in the future because of that, regardless of what school she attends. Supposing your premise is true, don’t you think that a solid foundation in life is worth more than 4 years at any particular school? Do you really envy the kid that grew up in poverty, dealt with drugs/abuse, etc. just because they got into Harvard? Is Harvard really worth that? And yeah, we’d all like to be rich and famous, but that’s just a fact of life that not everyone is.
@californiaaa, I can relate in more ways than one (geographically). I too have a healthy and mostly happy soon to be teenager. She too has not had any struggles in her life yet (other than stressing about being too tall, but that will pass, too, as boys will catch up), and frankly I’d like to keep it so. She may not get into a single elite school (and my husband is very anti-Ivy so she may not even apply there), and maybe that may prevent her from getting into elite graduate school (then again, it may not), and it might even land her a less-paying job or less-stellar career. But she’ll be a happy young woman with a happy childhood and hopefully won’t ever need therapy - so what’s there to feel guilty about?
, and maybe that may prevent her from getting into elite graduate school (then again, it may not), and it might even land her a less-paying job or less-stellar career.
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So, furry doggy graduated from one of the top 4 graduate programs* in his field - is that “elite” enough?
Hmmmm… what did that buy the nice doggy - let’s see - stuck in (entry) middle management for couple of decades with corresponding pay maxed out at that lowly grade. And the future does not look bright either.
On the other hand, furry doggy has a wonderful spouse and two nice kids - indeed, what is there to regret or feel guilty about?
;
But seriously @californiaaa, have some perspective. Have you patrolled the railroad crossing in the middle of the nights because teenagers in your community think it is not worth going on living? Count your blessing that you have a wonderful, well-adjust kid. There are literally hundred of schools in this country that will provide a solid education for kids who are willing to learn.
“Seriously, I had a Chinese colleague, who rejected resume from Rice, because he thought that Rice is an agricultural institute . If you read the tread on “smile and nod”, you will realize that name recognition is important.”
Yes, I think planning your education around stupid people is really the way to go. Good strategy there.
My D is not in grad school, but somehow I’m not very worried that the Wellesley name is going to hurt her if she ever chooses that path, despite it being a “women’s college” and not well known and all.
You seen to think that your personal knowledge/recognition of various schools is universal - that if YOU haven’t heard of a school, by golly, no one else ever has. Why is that? This is a big country and yet you have the standard Ivies /!-Stanford / MIT / Caltech / Berkeley / UCLA and everything else is second rate mentality. Why are you so hesitant to learning and considering more? You have a very California-centric and immigrant view of the college landscape. That’s fine, but why come to a board like this if you are not willing to learn about new things? That’s the whole freaking point.
Did you ever look up those 80 colleges I mentioned just to familiarize yourself with the names as a starting point?
(One got in, one didn’t and we weren’t particularly surprised by either result.)