Why the assumption underlying a number of these posts that a high-achieving student who doesn’t want to apply to any of the Ivies is downplaying/doubting their abilities, rather than making a rational choice about what suits them best?
@dfbdfb : To me she has to visit the school to get an idea of whether she would like it or not. She has made up her mind based on her own predetermined feeling about Ivies and the kind of kids who go there without actually having been to an Ivy in person or sat in on a class. She is basing it on the kids from her school who she knows will try to get into Ivies. What I think I want her to do is explore the various schools and then make up her mind based on a rational set of pros and cons rather than some idea in her head that she is not good enough to hang with the Ivy kids. I think that is all that some of the posters are also trying to say.
@Dustyfeathers : Completely agree that is one thing among the many others that I am not sure about how to handle but am hoping once we shortlist the schools that we can talk to some of them about the questions and get some answers to further reduce our list. Thank You all very much for all of your comments.
If you haven’t already done so, you might want to run the NPC numbers at some of the Ivies that have a more generous definition of “need” based aid - Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and perhaps, Yale. It may be that these schools might be more affordable than you think, and an economic rationale might be persuasive enough to your daughter to keep an open mind.
As @dfbdfb remarked, there are plenty of sound reasons to not want to attend an Ivy League school. That said, it makes sense to ensure that the rejection is not coming from erroneous or superficial bases. Also, those uppity kids at her school who aspire to Ivies might well not get in!
@TryntoFigureOut The Ivies are all different. They collect different personalities. Your daughter is seeing from the applicant’s side, the applicant pool. The admissions POV is different. They are selecting carefully students that work in their varied communities. It’s worth visiting different ones to see what may appeal to her.
That being said, because of the pressure that kids have experienced in high school, plus the inherent pressure of premed, my personal choice for my child is to find a school where the student body does not add additional pressure. Our family didn’t even consider Johns Hopkins for premed for that reason. Fair or not, the rep of JH premed is that students compete with each other rather than competing with themselves as individual to produce their best work. In the former, the environment to my mind raises the anxiety level. In the latter, the environment can be collaborative and helpful, while the individual student works to prefect his or her performance. This to me is the better model. Further I am helping her look for schools without weeder classes. Large research universities are off of our list because of this. Berkeley is one exception as it has a program to support students in these rigorous weeder environments. The program helps to ground students and to support them. Like, if they get a C in a class, this program advises them so that they may stay premed. They don’t despair. You may want to look into that program. Some people believe that weeder classes weed out the weaker students and thus produce the better physician. Others believe that by setting up some students to fail, you are losing a lot of talent. It’s not clear that compete, compete, compete against fellow students necessarily leads to a better physician. It does lead to someone who can do well on the tests. It does not mean that person has any social skills or empathy, which seems important in a physician IMO. The compete-against-fellow-students schools may eliminate many people who naturally are empathetic because they are more likely to collaborate and help–which is a disadvantage in the competitive environment.
Because of that, our family is looking at excellent LACs, like Vassar, which is known for having a collaborative approach but expects the student to strive for excellence. Vassar has a brand new amazing science center, adding to an existing one. We just toured a few weekends ago and I was impressed. I mentioned also smaller schools that are not nec on others’ lists, like gorgeous and nurturing Mills with its connection with Berkeley and Agnes Scott because of its gorgeous nurturing environment and its connection to Emory. As a heads up, Mills has gone through a bit of an upheaval in recent years because of a change in leadership. My friend’s daughter graduated from one of NYC’s top high schools. She turned down several very nice LACs on the East Coast to go to Mills this year, even knowing about the change in leadership. The new president seems solid. As I said, Mills offers a lot! To my mind this makes it an easy choice to place on a list. You may also want to look at small LACs that offer cadaver classes. I know of two. One is St. Mary’s of CA (also can cross register in the Bay Area) and the other is Earlham, which seems like the nurturing, supportive heaven of an LAC. I can’t wait to tour. Your daughter would get outrageous aid there, I strongly suspect! Althuogh it’s not on a coast . . . .If you’re willing to look at Kenyon and Oberlin, Earlham is in the same geographic area roughly.
Another mom on CC also advised me that there are several paths to med school. You may want to look ahead at the choices for post-bac programs for premed. There are some programs that specialize in getting the prereqs that you missed in undergrad. There are others that specialize in grade improvement. Knowing this helped set my mind at ease and further reduced my anxiety on my daughter’s behalf (I’m up for anything to lower anxiety in these kids! They work so hard!)
Re post 2, that online resource should have properly been referenced as “The Experts’ Choice: Colleges with Great Pre-med Programs.”
@Dustyfeathers : Thank You, will research the names mentioned.
@merc81 : Thank You very much, will take a look.
For Pre-Med as a full pay, it might make more sense to get into the school with the best bang for the buck undergrad and then the best medical school. Spending almost $300,000 on undergrad and then $200,000+ on medical school doesn’t sound like it fits within your budget. Accordingly Ivy schools and others without significant merit will not fit financially.
The benchmark school for your child would seem to be UT Austin. That’s an automatic admit at an affordable cost for your budget. Build a list around it that with competitive merit awards would be in the same price range and at least as good a school or better.
“Non-Ivy” colleges won’t necessarily give you lower net prices than the Ivies (or other highly selective schools) do.
About 60 colleges (including all 8 Ivies) claim to cover 100% of demonstrated financial need. Some families may be surprised at how high their incomes can go and still qualify for need-based aid from these schools.
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2015/09/14/colleges-that-report-meeting-full-financial-need
You can run Barnard’s and Wellesley’s online net price calculators to estimate n-b aid amounts.
if you definitely don’t qualify, then you may want to avoid high-priced private schools that don’t offer merit scholarships (esp. if med school is in the picture). Two other major cost-control strategies for top students are:
- applying to lower-cost in-state public schools
- applying to colleges that offer big merit scholarships for students with your student’s stats (which usually means applying to less selective schools, in some cases in locations that many students rightly or wrongly find less attractive)
Here’s a list of schools with automatic full tuition (/ full ride scholarships):
http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/
Kiplinger’s shows average award amounts, and the percentage of students who get them, from some schools that offer competitive (non-automatic) merit scholarships:
http://www.kiplinger.com/tool/college/T014-S001-kiplinger-s-best-values-in-private-colleges/
Of the ones with the most merit money, not too many are located in New England or CA. The mid-Atlantic, South, and Midwest tend to be a bit more generous with merit aid. Check out these schools:
Vanderbilt
Tulane
Davidson
UMiami
URichmond
Agnes Scott (women)
Hendrix
Grinnell
Lawrence
Case Western
College of Wooster
Centre
Lawrence
Brandeis
USC
@ClarinetDad16 : Thank You. Realistically our goal was to spend around 500K on both daughters that gives them around 250K each. We can stretch that and add another 100k each to go to 700K in total but that would significantly affect our retirement picture. I was hoping if we were able to keep the undergrad to around the 125-150K then that would allow us to fund her another 100-125 for her Med school and depending on how finances turn out we can look at how to cover the other 100. Luckily our house has been paid off for some time and I max out my retirement contributions so I may reduce the maxing on the retirement side for a couple of years but am hoping with that strategy we can get her through without her having any significant amount of debt.
@tk21769 : Thank You very much for the list. I thought Vandy did not give too much merit but will definitely take a look at it along with the others.
Many of the most selective schools give excellent need-based financial aid. If you run the NPC on the schools she likes, you will have some idea of how much you’d be expected to pay.
Rather than calling them Ivies, maybe it would be more helpful to call them “reach schools” in terms of admissions chances. For your daughter, those schools likely are:
- Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Columbia, UChicago, Duke, Penn, Caltech, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, Rice, Georgetown, Washington U, Carnegie Mellon, and about the 10-15 most selective LACs. Lower reaches might include schools like Emory, USC, and Tufts, top OOS public universities, and the next tier of LACs.
Some top students decide to apply to more reaches than matches or safeties, likely because the schools are more desirable to them and because they are so selective.
I think that if med school is her goal, she might want to avoid schools known for grade deflation. Another thing to keep in mind is that medical schools seem to care most about GPA, not so much about the prestige of the school. I think most people on this site would say that a U of Texas grad with a 3.8 GPA is going to stand a better chance of getting into med school than a Princeton, UChicago or Swarthmore (elite LAC) grad with a 3.4.
Regardless of all of this, I think the two most important things to consider when you’re evaluating schools are:
- Does she like the school? Does the school's environment/academics/social scene (etc.) fit well with what she's looking for in her undergrad experience?
- Can you afford to send her there without either of you taking on more debt than you can handle?
Because if she only applies to schools she likes, she can’t be stuck at a school she doesn’t like; and if she/you can afford all of the schools to which she applies, she won’t suffer the heartbreak of only getting into schools your family can’t afford.
Hobart and William Smith. They have a scholarship for high achievers. And they have one called the Elizabeth Blackwell. That one is for people who’ve shown merit in the sciences.
http://www.hws.edu/admissions/merit_based.aspx
Elizabeth Blackwell – http://www.hws.edu/admissions/blackwell_scholars.aspx
The blackwell allows you to compete for a reserved seat at a NYState med school
Thank You. I am very grateful for all the responses. Cannot say too much about the folks on this site willing to give their time so that other parents and their children have the benefit of all of the knowledge.
I know it’s not on the coasts but Case Western in Cleveland is strong in both pre med and CS. IT is also known for decent merit aid so it might be worth a look along with 'Carnegie Mellon.
@dfbdfb “Why the assumption … that a high-achieving student who doesn’t want to apply to any of the Ivies is downplaying/doubting their abilities, rather than making a rational choice… ?”
Because the OP is the parent and in the original post, s/he says:
"Daughter has … 3.95 UW …top 5% in her class. Has a SAT score of 2370…
However she does not want to apply to Ivies but go one level lower. She …does not give herself credit for being smart enough"
It is also clear from the tone, that the OP does not agree with the daughter’s assessment, and thinks that top schools are at least worth investigating/considering.
@TryntoFigureOut
Another issue that you may wish to consider is the ease of movement between the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, where pre-med usually is, and Engineering, where CS is usually located. At many schools, it is not easy to move between them, or to change a decision later if she begins in Arts and Sciences, and later decided to change to Engineering or vice versa. This is especially true at many public U’s, but you have to investigate every school individually. Many schools will not even allow you to apply to be a CS major until you complete a year of school there, and then they may deny the application.
Case Western Reserve and Lehigh are two schools that are very high quality, just a level down from Ivies, and also allow students almost total flexibility to choose or change their school and choose or change their majors.
Case Western Reserve is in Cleveland. Lehigh University is in PA not too far from the coast. It is about an hour from NYC, and also about an hour from Philadelphia. Neither is a commuter school. Lehigh has one of the most beautiful campuses in the country. I have visited both.
@Much2learn: Well yeah, I realize that that’s what the OP said. What I don’t get is the general agreement with that analysis of the situation. Not every high-stats kid wants or needs an Ivy education, after all—and in any event the suggestion that a school USNWR ranks, say, #30 is meaningfully different from the Ivies is difficult to prove, to say the least.
@Much2learn : Thank You. I am building a list and this thread has been an unbelievable help to me with all the various nuances that we should consider. Lehigh is definitely one I want to try to get her to check out. We have family in both NJ and DC area so from a location perspective would work very well for us.
Similar to Wellesley and Barnard is Smith, and they have an excellent merit scholar program for budding engineers/scientists called STRIDE that involves not only $$$ but special guaranteed research opportunities with faculty. My D is similar to OP’s–high SATs and science/premed focused (she ended up a CS major at an Ivy)–and got an early indication letter from Smith, scholarship of $20,000 per year in merit aid and the research position. It was very enticing and it sounds like the OP’s D might be a prime candidate for something like that. In contrast, I don’t think Wellesley or Barnard offer merit scholarships.
Would she consider Rhodes?
- Excellent education
- A little too much Greek for my taste, but many people love the school
- Excellent prospects for grad school.
I always like to throw this into the conversation when people suggest going to a less competitive college so that it will be easier to get good grades for medical school applications:
what happens if 1) your student changes his or her mind about going to medical school, or 2) what if your student doesn’t get the perfect grades he or she expects? If that happens, how does that affect the decision to attend [quality state university] versus [elite Ivy-type college or university]?
In other words, a student may have a better chance of getting into med school from a lower ranked school, but the middle of the class at Princeton, Amherst and MIT tend to do very well in their post-college options, and this is true even when they decided to major in medieval history rather than pre-med.
For a student with the option to go to either type of place, this factor also should be part of the calculus.