@dfbdfb “Not every high-stats kid wants or needs an Ivy education, after all”
I completely agree. Ivies are not right for every kid. I am not suggesting that she should want to attend an Ivy, and I understand that there are many reasons why an Ivy may not be the best fit for her.
I am just suggesting that a student with those stats should probably not reject all Ivies without even knowing what they offer because she thinks she isn’t smart enough. However, There are many valid reasons why they may not be the best fit for her, however.
“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.”
It seems to me that the differences in the quality of students and difficulty of the programs tend to be a very gradual slope as you move down the rankings, and the differences tend to be insignificant within modest ranges. Additionally, I suspect that a lot may depend on the specific program. It is unclear to me when “insignificant differences” become “meaningfully different.” I think that depends on the schools, programs, and the specific student involved.
Yeah check out MIT. A girl from my school got in with lower grades than your daughter. Being a girl really helps in tech schools with very unbalanced genders like MIT.
Studies have shown that the school that a student attends is less important factor in future success than the student his or herself. The study showed that students who were accepted into both Ivies and into non-Ivies, and who chose the non-Ivy school, did as well as the students who went to Ivies.
@Dustyfeathers : Have heard of Rhodes from many folks. Will definitely research it. @bm1999 ; Have been researching Lehigh. Have read that it has a pretty large party scene. Do you have any insights on that aspect of it. Thank You.
DH gave up MIT admission for a full ride at UIUC(PhD in Engineering) years ago, and like OP, we are ready to pay if D can be admitted to competitive schools. But to her, she wanted to find a school that she is comfortable with and she reminds us of the payback period if we spend $350k on her undergraduate education…after all, she reminds us she will be making much less after tax and she would rather go for more brand name for graduate degree!
She will be at Lehigh for summer engineering program, but I doubt she would run into party scene then
@TryntoFigureOut - pretty much all schools have a large party scene - including many highly ranked schools and ivies! At some schools it goes to the extreme, where students who don’t party feel left out, but I don’t think Lehigh falls into that category.
Texas public medical schools are relatively low cost for Texas residents. Going to college in Texas may make getting to medical school interviews more convenient. And UT Austin has excellent CS (but CS is more selective than the school overall). And low cost of UT Austin may mean plenty of leftover money to pay for most of her Texas public medical school if she gets into one.
@Mastadon, we just toured Lehigh last week and they put the Greek participation closer to 30%, which is pretty typical and consistent with many other schools we’ve researched. However, they have residential and non-residential greek options. Perhaps the 30% focuses on the residential-only but the number jumps to 40-45% when the non-residential options are included.
As a cross check I Googled “Lehigh” and “party school” and Lehigh has been rated among the top 10 party schools in the country by Princeton Review and top 50 by “brobible”…
@TryntoFigureOut I heard that too from a friend who goes there but I also heard that you don’t have to get involved with that if you don’t want to. @SincererLove I don’t know, they accepted her but declined a friend of mine who is basically a genius. He is going to Stevens instead. I don’t know the girl too well but she seems pretty capable of succeeding.
Thank You all for the comments. Will try to absorb and talk to DD. Want to thank everybody for taking time to respond , am very grateful, has given me lots of things to consider and will allow us to make a much more informed decision.
UT Austin is a strong, cost effective option, but if you are looking for other options, Tufts is an Ivy alternative that can be a good cultural fit for an independent minded non-conformist.
It is located in an suburban/urban environment two miles from Harvard, four miles from MIT, and six miles from downtown Boston. The surrounding area is the top biotech region in the world and one of the top “college towns” in the country with lots of hospitals and research labs accessible via public transportation.
Tufts is among the top undergraduate programs in both Computer Science and Biology with good pre-med advising. It is more focused on undergraduate teaching than the typical Ivy, but it is also at the leading edge of research in applying computers to medical research.
A couple of months ago, Paul Allen (founder of Microsoft) named Tufts one of two Allen Discovery Centers (Stanford is the other).
Michael Levin, who will lead the center at Tufts, majored in Computer Science as an undergrad at Tufts and has a Phd from Harvard Medical School. Last summer, Levin announced that his lab had written an Artificial Intelligence (AI) program that made a scientific discovery that had eluded human researchers for 100 years.
The Allen Discovery Center will be located in Tufts’ new Science and Engineering Center (which is scheduled to be completed next summer). Harvard and Princeton will also participate in the research.
@Mastadon : Thank You very much. Great to know. The Comp Sci gives her that option and allows her freedom in case the physician does not work out for some reason. She can use the computers and bio to get into fields that will keep her ahead of the curve. Thank You.
