<p>
[quote]
There are a lot of interesting work opportunities with HUGE economic and personal satisfaction value that are simply much more open to Ivy graduates than to graduates of state universities. For some students, pursuing some careers, it is plainly economically advantageous to attend an Ivy-caliber school.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Cite, please? This is contrary to my world experience. I can give you a raft of counter-examples of people who are both educationally and experientially wildly successful who matriculated at state universities.</p>
<p>Let me try another theory. I would say that a disproportionally large number of students in the Ivies come from upper-class priveleged existences and those life advantages would be theirs even if they didn't go to an Ivy League school. In other words, the rich and powerful stick together and take care of one another's prodigy no matter what. Children of the middle and working classes who attend an Ivy do not automatically take on the mantle of privelege.</p>
<p>I have to agree with RickTyler. Although I myself am an "ivy caliber" alum (Wellesley, Cal-Berkeley and Stanford) and have had "interesting work opportunities with huge economic and personal satisfaction value," I have had them side by side with alums of such schools as: Whittier, Marymount of Tarrytown, Michigan State, Old Dominion, Wisconsin and other schools I either never knew or don't remember.</p>
<p>
[quote]
My son does not really like the Southern US due to Heat...
[/quote]
I lived in Tempe for a few years and although it's a 'dry' heat and IMO preferable to the heat in the Southeast, it's still HOT! During the 9 months of the school year though, it's not so bad and in the winter months, it's downright great. If you're from an area with a harsh winter, you may enjoy visiting him in the winter. I actually went skiing a few times while I lived there - in Flagstaff and in the White mountains in the eastern part of the state. A bit longer of a drive can get him to southern Utah (Brianhead) for even better skiing. It's also relatively inexpensive in that area (from my skewed So Cal perspective) so finding affordable off-campus apartments is not that difficult.</p>
<p>A note on the GPA requirement for the scholarship - keeping a high GPA in engineering is usually not as easy as keeping a high GPA in other majors. I don't know how difficult a 3.25 (or 3.5??) would be in ASU-engineering but I can tell you it's not that easy in engineering at the top UCs. I suppose your equation would change if the financial package changed due to dipping below the GPA. Your S looks like he could maintain the GPA but he needs to make sure he pays attention to it since it's liable to be quite different from the HS scene. Other cc'ers with a kid in ASU engineering might have more insight. Also, you could either check their website or ask them what the average 'engineering' GPA is. Also find out what it is in his desired engineering discipline.</p>
<p>A big concern I have with schools like ASU is their 'party school" reputation because although drinking can be found on almost all campuses, it is that much more prevalent on larger campuses because of the numbers not proportions. (Univ of Minn-Twin Cities in my home state, for instance, recently had nearly 300 citations on one weekend for underage drinking. And the concern was not so much the number of incidents but the amount of alcohol that was being consumed). An honors program certainly does not shield a student from exposure to the drinking culture and nor would you want them to be shielded from the rest of the students on campus. But peer pressure and efforts to fit in at larger schools are also much greater, and even smart kids do not always make good choices. (My guess is that there are many failures even within honors programs at many large schools, and the cynical side of me wonders whether these larger schools with the most attractive packages sometimes have problems keeping their top students?) Of course, it all comes down to the individual student and fit... Certainly keep your options open for now and be sure to look beyond free rides.</p>
<p>"There are some VERY DIFFERENT students at some Ivies who wouldn't dream of attending an honors program at any state university--because of the classmates that they would miss out on having."</p>
<p>It really depends on the student. I agree with TokenAdult when he says "some." My NM child did not even want to look at schools such as ASU. However, she did seek out big scholarship schools. She was an Emory Scholar, awarded full tuition, and spent a terrific Scholars weekend at Emory with the other finalists. What was the best part of her time there? The people. </p>
<p>She met many peers there who would have gone with a NM free ride school had they not achieved Emory Scholar status. She also met many people who declined the free rides and chose an Ivy instead. She is now at an Ivy, along with six other Emory Scholars who declined their free rides. And that's only the Ivy that she attends.</p>
<p>To paraphrase, some of her thoughts were as follows: "I loved the people I met at the Emory Scholars weekend. But there will only be about sixty of them. There will be a whole lot more of them if I choose to attend the Ivy that I'm contemplating."</p>
<p>Fortunately, with the financial aid package, we were able to make the Ivy work for our family. She is appreciative and extremely happy - happier than ever in her social and academic setting.</p>
<p>She didn't choose the Ivy because she'd wind up with a better job. I don't believe that's a factor. But it was the right "fit" for her.</p>
<p>And yes, she's still in touch with some of the folks who took a free ride. They're happy too. Know your circumstances and know your child.</p>
<p>"I respectfully disagree with Mini's post #3 in which he takes his usual position that there is not a lot of economic benefit to attending an Ivy."</p>
<p>I never said any such thing. I said there are strong EDUCATIONAL benefits to choosing a good honors program for free, and spending the extra $190k on education. </p>
<p>Even economically (which I did NOT address), the choice would be between Ivy and Honors Program plus $190k in savings or investment. The Ivy grad would begin with a very strong disadvantage at the end of four years, with evidence that it would ever be made up highly equivocal.</p>
<p>But my argument was not about where one would do economically better. What I am saying is that, in the vast majority of cases (I can come up with a couple of exceptions), Honors College plus commitment to spend $190k on educational opportunities is educationally superior.</p>
<p>"(Univ of Minn-Twin Cities in my home state, for instance, recently had nearly 300 citations on one weekend for underage drinking. And the concern was not so much the number of incidents but the amount of alcohol that was being consumed)."</p>
<p>I'm sad to tell you this, but available statistics on Ivy and Ivy-like schools suggest that binge and heavy drinking at these schools is often as high or higher than at the state schools, especially compared with schools (such as UMinn) that have a high commuter component.</p>
<p>
[quote]
But peer pressure and efforts to fit in at larger schools are also much greater
[/quote]
This seems counter-intuitive to me. Larger schools tend to have more real diversity and have more anonymity which should reduce the peer pressure to 'fit in' since it'd be harder to pidgeon-hole exactly which group to fit in with.</p>
<p>Actually, one of the reasons our S was attracted to a larger school (USoCal) is because it is so large that there is a "niche" or place for everyone. He didn't get the feeling that is the case in some of the smaller schools we looked at & were considering. For him, he's very glad he chose his school & has found a great group of peers & is very happy. For him, I don't believe peer pressure is a big factor, as he's always been very independent.</p>
<p>I would also tend to see it the way ucsd<em>ucla</em>dad and HImom see it. At a small school, kids who run against the norm seem to feel there is no-place-to-run-no-place-to-hide. It just doesn't make sense to me that a larger school would have more pressure to conform.</p>
<p>I went to a small school myself. DS has gone to a small school and two medium-sized U's. I just don't see a difference in peer pressure in the places he has attended.</p>
<p>Reviewing the thread, I see your son's current interest is focused mostly on engineering, and that he has already ruled out applying to some schools. Engineering should be a field in which it is possible to get some good information about career-relevant differences among different schools. I have heard the spiel of various MIT alumni here in my town more than once. Most of the best friends I had in high school were, by contrast, graduates of the same state flagship university I attended in the 1970s--they as engineering majors, I as a liberal arts major. IN GENERAL, someone who pursues engineering and succeeds in that pursuit will fare better economically than someone who pursues my kind of college major, whatever school the student attends. But if engineering is not a field of study with which your own immediate family is intimately familiar, it would be expedient now, while the opportunity to choose is still present, to reality-check what career paths graduates of differing undergraduate schools have and how they look back on their undergraduate experience. One thing to check would be whether students at highly ranked engineering schools lack work opportunity during their undergraduate years, whether or not the school has a formal co-op program.</p>
<p>Have you ever been to the northeast? Have you ever worked in what may broadly described as the financial sector? This is not my experience (I have lived all over the country, including Mini's and your region--where my oldest son was born--but have never worked in the financial sector), but I have on the authority of an Alabaman who did his undergraduate degree at Princeton that there are categories of "quant" jobs in hedge funds and investment banks for which almost all hiring is done at Harvard, MIT, or Princeton. That's because it takes a certain level of previous accumulated knowledge to do those jobs, and the only reliable signal in the job market that one has that accumulated knowledge is pursuing an HMP kind of undergraduate program, and succeeding in it. </p>
<p>The OP was open-endedly asking for advice, and several of us have responded. The kind of job I mention here as an example of the value of an "Ivy" (and not second-tier Ivy at that) education is not a kind of job that has ever appealed to me, and may not appeal to anyone I know personally. (For example, I have no idea whether any of my children would like such a job.) But it is an example of the reason why some families pay money out of pocket to go to an HMP-caliber school, even when more enticing financial aid offers are available. The man I know who went that route is about half a generation younger than I am, but he has already retired from the hedge fund he worked for, having paid back to this parents every dime they every spent for his education and having founded a nonprofit organization to help young people around the world through online educational programs and in his community through extracurricular activities. I think his career path is pretty cool. It is not available to the graduates of most state universities, to the best of my knowledge.</p>
<p>I really didn't mean to change the direction of this thread. My real point was just to stress the importance of fit vs free-ride. With respect to drinking, yes binge drinking is an issue everywhere, but what I was trying to say is that it is more visible at larger schools, not that there are higher percentages. Therefore I would be more concerned about it at larger schools that had a "party school" reputation to begin with (more tempation?). As to diversity, if you mean ethnic diversity(?) I think state schools are only as diverse as their geographic location. ASU for instance is close to 70% white and simlarly mostly instate students, while many state schools in the upper midwest are higher than that and also mostly instate. Yes, they do offer something for everyone and on paper everyone should be able to find their niche. But in reality, how many students actually get involved in ECs at larger schools, especially if they commute or are working their way through school? For many of them it is hard to find your niche, to fit in with ANY group on a campus that is so huge, has classes that are really huge etc. In my opinion students that are on the fringes socially and without strong connections to their school community may be more at risk to drink as a way to fit in (perhaps also more likely to drop out of school but I am sure I'll be corrected if that is not the case?) and I feel that this is more likely to occur at large schools.</p>
<p>I did try to look at some of these issues in connection with the UofMinn (I believe UofMinn and ASU are two of the largest campuses in the country--and twice as big as USoCal) because it was my son's top choice and I was very concerned about whether it would be a good fit due to size; I found one study on their website on retention rates that indicated that over half the students who dropped out had lived in dorms freshman year (as opposed to commuting) and about 80% who dropped out had no or little involvement in ECs (btw, nearly 80% of freshmen at the Univ of Minn do live on campus, it's not quite the commuter school it was when I attended).</p>
<p>My S attended a large public hs, top student, had many friends and was involved in many social activities--but few close friends and in a sense was very much on the fringes socially despite all the groups he belonged to. We've been through the drinking issues and I strongly believe in his case at least that there was a great deal of peer pressure to drink in order to fit in to some of these groups. Just mentioning to explain where I'm coming from, but again, really in the context of importance of fit, and very much based on personal experience only. Obviously NMFs and most of the high achieving top CC'ers on this board are a whole different story...</p>
<p>Again, sorry to get people off track, time to get back to the OP and HIS issues.</p>
<p>Engineering ins not at all like the financial sector. Nobody will care from where drizzit's kid gets an engineering degree. Being able to immediately jump into the job with excellent command of AutoCad or one of the popular programs is essential. Internships & co-ops with great recommendation letters are impressive. Many of the state Us have fantastic industrial partnerships that most private schools can't match. While I'm not familiar with ASU's program, I would recommend that drizzit consider the offer and realize that this is not a "pedigree" field at all.</p>
<p>I am a NM student who is going through all of this. I threw the ASU stuff into the trash when I got it. My mom begged me to look at it. I did... And I was amazed. BHC seems great, as does the Honors Business program and the certificate in Philosophy, Politics, and Law. The campus seems really nice from the pictures I have seen. I am now seriously considering it. I'm going to visit when I take my west-coast college visit trip this winter (USC, maybe a UC or two). </p>
<p>NM is tricky. I live about 20 minutes away from UCF and they're giving me a situation where I can basically make 10-15 grand a year in cash on top of tuition, room and board. It's too close for me though. I want to go somewhere else for undergrad, then come back to Rollins for my MBA. </p>
<p>And to the concerned parents about the alcohol at big state U's... Is it really that bad? I mean, would you rather your child get caught up in alcohol or in the illegal drugs white-collar kids tend to use (Cocaine...). I know at Brown that a student survey showed that coke use was more prevalent than alcohol. </p>
<p>My point is that no where is a safe-haven from these things...</p>
<p>My D's version of the Mini equation was a lot of merit at an inexpensive OOS public Honors program, vs. transfering to a top LAC (more the level of where Mini's D goes) at full price. When she was making the decision, we made it clear that we could not pay for any travel, special programs, internship opportunities, etc. since the price differential was so great if she transfered. We would be able to do so if she stayed.</p>
<p>After one year, the lack of academically inclined peers, plus the lack of any kind of social life outside of the pervasive drinking/partying atmosphere, plus general student apathy about the larger world and ideas for themselves, made her gladly give up the other opportunities.</p>
<p>Mini--you write eloquently about how the prevailing party school atmosphere can be much more overwhelming at some schools than others; why argue here that it actually doesn't matter?</p>
<p>I don't care, and never have, about what the economic advantages in the future that one school might have over another; I'm solely concerned about the actual academic experience. Some kids will thrive in this kind of program, and I'm guessing that they're goal-directed ones who will jump on the tangible opportunities. When my D transfered, many other Honors students also did. The one that she felt was the brightest she'd met was staying, only because he was directly admitted into the med program. Otherwise, he told her, he'd be out too.</p>
<p>I'm really not trying to be contrary here. I had a similar experience myself. Feeling like you're the only one who did the reading, or who cares about the ideas not just acing the test, is not fun. Like an above poster suggested, check out this program carefully, check out other schools, apply to a range of selectivity, then look at the financial offers and your impressions of different types of schools before your family makes a decision.</p>
<p>This brings back such memories. We had REALLY hoped our S would opt for a full-ride, so we'd have the funds to give him those wonderful extras & he & his NMF friends & peers all discussed the matter & duly applied to a range of schools to have options. Ultimately, the kids all chose schools which did not give them the best out-of-pocket deal but where they felt they'd find the best "fit."<br>
When you read about some of the kids who were miserable & returned after just a short while (week, month, term), it seems to reinforce how important it is for the student & family to feel good about the choice. For our S, he has experience being a "big fish in a small pond" and really much rather be where he is with a lot of kids he can call intellectual peers.
I agree that some kids will thrive wherever they are put. We found that for our S, his ability to thrive has its limits, which he found when he was in our public school system for grades K-8. He also had this experience when he was at a local U, taking a statistics summer course at age 16. He found it less challenging than his 6th grade math class!
It is nice for kids & families to have a number of good choices & carefully weigh them to figure out what will work best. I am hoping that at the school my S has matriculated he has found peers & mentors who share some of his passions & can spark him to be all he can be! (OK, I agree it would be nice if he could do this himself, but having a community of learners is a nice thing too.)</p>
<p>"ith respect to drinking, yes binge drinking is an issue everywhere, but what I was trying to say is that it is more visible at larger schools, not that there are higher percentages."</p>
<p>Binge drinking is NOT an issue everywhere, and is far from the same everywhere, and it is insulting to schools that have made a major effort to impact it to even suggest that they are. </p>
<p>"Mini--you write eloquently about how the prevailing party school atmosphere can be much more overwhelming at some schools than others; why argue here that it actually doesn't matter?"</p>
<p>It definitely DOES matter. And the overwhelming binge and heavy drinking at Ivy or Ivy-type schools like Dartmouth or my alma mater are far more all-campus encompassing than at virtually all state universities in urban settings.</p>
<p>Dartmouth and Williams are probably the extrreme party ends of the Ivy and selective LAC spectrums. At the schools my kid have attended in those spectrums, the party atmosphere is definitely not the prevailing campus culture. My D went to a state school first--she experienced the difference. It was a new experience for her to have other options on Thurs-Sat night than hanging out with the fundamentalist born-agains who were the only others not drinking, until the rest of the dorm came back, whereupon she was on hold-their-hair-back-while-they-vomit duty.</p>
<p>Before you all "take the money and run" at ASU, you should really check out the school and check out other forum comments about ASU. There are a number of kids who regreted taking ASU over better schools. In addition, if you have to maintain a 3.5 GPA to keep the scholarship (and I don't know if this is factually true), this is VERY hard to do. Do you really want to be stuck at ASU and probably lose the scholarship?</p>
<p>To me, I would take a school that gives you some good money but would be happy to go to even if you lose the scholarship. </p>