<p>Again, I am not saying that top students shouldn't aim high. Just that they should also have some realistic schools in the mix in case - as several students here this year and in year's past discover - they are not as extraordinary as they think to an admissions committee. </p>
<p>Love that quote, by the way.</p>
<p>QUOTES FROM SUZE:</p>
<p>I'm really surprised you don't know a high school kid who thinks prestige matters given that the school you describe is certainly one of prestige in you area. If I'm to be honest, I would say that kids who are well aware of rankings in general do not want to go for the money enticements schools throw out to get you to ratchet up their averages. We are very aware of this as an option and don't think highly of schools who use it to go up a few notches. </p>
<p>SUZE</p>
<p>What has happened to your glorious young mind in that boarding school? I am worried that you are closing yourself off to so much in life. </p>
<p>Can you consider that being in an environment with a diverse group of bright and interesting young minds and souls, where not everyone is in the top 1/10 of 1% of academic statistics, can be a worthwhile endeavor in and of itself? Some of the most extraordinary learnings in my life have occurred through interactions with "ordinary folk", down to earth people with character, resilience, curiousity who may not have had certain opportunites but had other life defining ones. You aren't even applying age yet but feel compelled to travel these parent boards frequently, always defending an elitism that has out lived its usefulness in this century. ( in my opinion, at least, although perhaps a minority viewpoint on a few of these threads.)</p>
<p>Please relax. Parents on this board are struggling with wanting to do whats best for our children. For some that means sacrificing to help their child succeeed at the best fit school for them. Some feel there is benefit to that being a so-called Prestge U., others are more open minded or even cynical as to whether the so called advantages actually exist and/or are outnumbered by potential disadvantages after seeing some of the research posts. </p>
<p>There is an entire board for IVYs and dozens of theads affirming those who choose that route---even an advertisement where you pay a large sum to guarantee Ivy admission....good for them---but when the title of the thread is "Stop the Insanity"---why not do so? Can we ever have a thread for the majority of people who have little interest or desire in jumping on the prestige bandwagon and would love to get support and hear about other routes to happiness and success? Or am I being nieve to think there are any?</p>
<p>Dogs, are you asking me to confine my opinions to specific ivy threads? No one has asked you to stop your repetitive rants, on thread after thread, that say the same thing over and over.</p>
<p>I have been to many schools in my life, public and private, elite and not, in 3 countries and different parts of ours. Just call me Miss diversity. I am of mixed race and have seen the world from many angles. I have one parent who lives a quite affluent urban life and another who lives a basic middle class rural life.</p>
<p>As I've said in other threads, when I arrived at my current school, I felt like I had come home; that I'd finally found my people. This school has a much bigger financial and ethnic mix than my NYC private school. While academically more elite, it is financially less so. What we all have in common here is high intelligence, extreme motivation and the love of learning. The screening process the school does is extraordinary. I knew immediately I fit in here much more than I ever had elsewhere. Better than at the rural middle class school and better than at the wealthy urban school.</p>
<p>My true peer group is these motivated learners, not those with a similar NYC family profile or those in the rural neighborhood who more closely resembled me in terms of ethnicity. I hope to find a college with my people too.</p>
<p>Look dogs, I know how you feel and what you believe and you now have a birds eye view of what I do. With all due respect, I believe I'm as entitled as you to put forward my opinion and this and any other thread. If you just want to have your own views repeated, this kind of message board isn't the best place.</p>
<p>Suze, Respect your opinion and you are surely a very, very lucky person, indeed. Ahhhh. discourse... the best part of educational interactions!!! BTW, I never go onto the " pro-Ivy, die if you can't get in" threads but confine my comments to the threads that are originally posted as an opportunity for a divergent point of view and would love a chance for these OPs thoughts to flourish. (there are typically only about 5 of these) </p>
<p>A good school helping and rewarding top students with merit aid is no less worthy than a "rich kids school" trying to "diversifY" and using money to help that mix. It just is scary to me that 8th & 9th graders are spending hours on CC parent boards talking about the urgency of a so-called elite degree and then a few years later some of them may be the ones we saw last week on other threads describing suicidal thoughts because somehow they bought into the myth that they would be unsuccessful without one. I really don't want to be part of that set up and if it means occassionally challenging the status quo...well...</p>
<p>When you say "we" don't feel highly about schools that recruit top students to "ratchet up their ranking"---who is "we"? Does "we" feel the same way toward schools that give priority to wealthy alumin kids w/ lower stats to ratchet up their endowments? Just consider that although you are attending what you described as "the best school, in the best town with the best students and staff" not everone has that opportunity and since you are a very mature and curious person you may at another point in time feel less superior towards those who aren't in that category and compassionately realize their experiences are no less worthy. If indeed there is an elite with this abundance of opportunities and success waiting at their beck and call because of the name of their school then I would think they would have no need to defend themselves since there is no need to do so with all that power. Heck, why not let the "little people" have a few threads to confirm their values. I realize when someone sees themselves at the top of the world they may not realize that the rest of the world sees something completely different. Prestige is about your "standing in anothers mind". I am not sure why other's opinions is such a driving force for so many and I do question whether anyone who forms opinion based on where you went to school is worth it.</p>
<p>Oh also---sorry Suze, in my earlier post that you responded to I was really just making general comments in the latter part, specifically the last paragraph, about the boards and my opinions--not directed at you. Sorry for not clarifying. And if anyone else thought I was personalizing---sorry--not this time.</p>
<p>We are doing a college project in school right now. We are supposed to research colleges we are interested in attending.</p>
<p>I chose UCSD and UT Austin because they are in cities that I like, and I thought they would be good places for me to go. I actually found a lot of negative things I didn't know about those schools, but this is not the point.</p>
<p>There were two types of colleges people chose. Due to the whole Texas pride complex, many people chose in state schools like A&M or one of the UTs. However, take a wild guess what the rest of the class chose. There were several Yales, some Notre Dames, Dukes, Harvards, Princetons.</p>
<p>One kid who is in the bottom quartile, still taking all PreAPs and failing a couple of them, picked Harvard.</p>
<p>I also heard the kid a long time before this talking about how he had to go to Massachusetts over spring break, and "Oh my god it's gonna be so boring." Well, where is Harvard?</p>
<p>I think people really need to start doing their own research and if an Ivy League is where they want to be, fine. But there are many colleges for cheaper prices, where students would get more attention and stand out better, that are completely overlooked.</p>
<p>As my Business teacher mentioned, Austin College has one of the top medical schools around and a very good graduate school.</p>
<p>How many of you math/science intellectuals have heard of Austin College or sought out anything besides MIT?</p>
<p>Sorry you've goten beaten up here, Dogs, I hear what you are trying to say. When I told my GC this week that I was choosing BU Honors over several other schools with higher stats he was cool with it but when he heard I turned down Cornell he was perplexed. I asked him two questions:</p>
<p>Have you been to Boston?</p>
<p>Have you seen Ithaca?</p>
<p>Even if I'm in the top 10% at BU that still means there are 3,000 of my statistical peers. In my group one friend will attend PENN, several going to State Honors schools, a few to other decent but not known schools, and another friend with a learning disability will go to trade school. I love them all and would have missed getting to know the last dude if I attended the private school my parents once considered. He is the most genuine of all of them and I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up most successful of all of us especailly when it comes to marriage life.</p>
<p>Please forgive my ignorance, but what is the "Tufts syndrome"?</p>
<p>"Tufts Syndrome" is the alleged practice of some schools to reject highly qualified candidates, in the interest of lowering the schools' admit rate, and raising its yield.</p>
<p>From Wikipedia (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_Admissions%5B/url%5D):%5Bindent%5D%22Yield">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_Admissions):"Yield</a> protection often occurs with the strongest applicants at schools that are yield conscious. Yield refers to the amount of students who matriculate after acceptance to a college. If the yield rate is too low, some may view the school as undesirable by a select amount of applicants. Yield conscious schools who wish to inflate their yield or otherwise protect their yield from lowering employ such methods as waitlists and guaranteed transfer options to promising applicants who may appear to have numerous other college choices....The term 'Tufts Syndrome' is sometimes used on college admissions message boards to refer to such practices of forced yield-protection, as schools like Tufts are perceived to waitlist and reject overqualified candidates for fear that they will choose other schools over themselves."</p>
<p>Thank you. I'm a mom of a junior who is just being introduced to all this stuff. It's a bit distasteful.</p>
<p>Dogs, I think you'll find that I described my school as on a "picture perfect campus" in a "picture perfect" town, not as "best". When it comes to ivy admissions, most here are aware that we would have had a way better chance applying from our home public schools. In fact, most will tell you they gave up a shot at HYPS by coming here and that the trade off was well worth it.</p>
<p>I'm not sure what you mean by worthy. By "we" I am expressing conventional wisdom at my school. "We" believe schools are serving themselves, not students, by awarding money based on grades and scores rather than financial need. We are an extremely liberal student body who believe that equality will be served better through need based aid. Don't be fooled, these school pay high scorers to ratchet up their numbers for US News so that they will attract qualified full payers!! Then they can stop awarding merit aid!!! This is not some benevolent philosophy.</p>
<p>As for legacy admits, this was much debated when Bush came out against it. I think consensus is that it's a financial necessity and in the end provides for those in need.</p>
<p>I honestly don't take what you have said personally and all of us here understand that the general perception out there is that the Andover's are still bastions of WASP wealth. It is the number one topic our head of school speaks on. </p>
<p>The interesting thing about my school is that it probably debunks any feelings of superiority rather than creating them. Everyone is very talented. Trust me, there's no one who didn't get into any of their colleges because they thought they were unique. The first week here you fully understand that anything you can do someone can do better!</p>
<p>Texasmathwhiz, Austin College doesn't have a medical school or graduate school. It does have a program with Tech Med School where it is possible to get an early admit and skip the MCATs. Usually a "college" does not have grad programs or professional schools. There are exceptions.
S and his roommate have chosen to devote their college search work to finding the LEAST selective schools. They have honed in on Jarvis in Texas. I'm glad you are doing more meaningful research.......</p>
<p>Is there a reason for seeking out the least selective schools or are you saying they are such poor students they need to do this?</p>
<p>Check out the Book, "Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line"--I can't remember the author but he had some unflattering remarks about UVA. He called it a "holding company university" where undergraduate education was starved at the expense of the professional schools.</p>
<p>But part of what drives this craziness is the free application. If I were an admissions director, I would only waive the fee for those who visited the campus first, giving the student a business card or some token to mail in instead of a check.</p>
<p>No-the boys are excellent students. They were being wise-guys by showing their excellent college researching skills by finding the least selective......</p>
<p>MomofWildChild, I must have meant that they had an excellent premed program, and prepared students for medical school very well.</p>
<p>I'm way too informal on the internet as usua.</p>
<p>That would be correct. :)</p>
<p>Wonderful thread. Excuse me for jumping in on Page 7, but I haven't seen any comments on the effects of college cost. This issue transcends prestige institutions, because there are PLENTY of non-Ivy's with ridiculously low acceptance rates. What would the application pattern look like if every college and university was easily affordable for all. First, every student could apply ED to their preferred school. Better yet, every student could be REQUIRED to apply ED to their preferred school. Only the rejected/deferred would need to compete in the RD pool. At minimum it would have reduced this year's RD application pool at Emory, WashU, W&M by one application each because my D got into her first choice college with an acceptable financial package. Our family's financial situation (or equivalently, COAs approaching $45K/year) precluded ED for us.</p>
<p>The money issue can be examined from the other side also. What would acceptance rates be at UCB, a school I love, if COA were $45K/year? A bunch of really smart middle class kids would be excluded for sure. And that introduces my third point: Middle class kids who want to attend a private college or university are practically FORCED into 8+ applications just to be confident of one or two acceptable financial packages.</p>
<p>I'm not advocating that colleges should be more expensive (or less). And I'm not saying that HYPS don't get excessive numbers of applications based strictly on their prestige status. But look at WashU - 21,000 applications for 1,500 slots. Now WashU is a wonderful place, but it's inconceivable that this admissions pattern is due to prestige factors. (Try to imagine hearing this from your GC: "You're clearly one of the finest students in the country. You should apply to WashU.")</p>
<p>Again, congratulations to all posters who have made this a most interesting thread.</p>
<p>Wondering if some of you experienced folks would offer some suggestions
to us "newbies". M is a soph at competitive public HS in CT. All honors & AP
courses. No SATs as yet. Also a competitive swimmer with sectional & YNational cuts, state finals etc...wants to continue in college. DI or DIII depending on program. Thus far intrest lies in the sciences, specifically bio
(cell, micro). We think it interesting that she considers combining this with business and found only one interesting program at a school she is not interested in. Would like to find a good match in NE, MidAtlan states.
Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.</p>