<p>“I have 3 good friends at Berkeley at this point in time and they were all rejected outright from Duke.
I wonder if this is out of arrogance, because I fail to see how this piece of information is helpful.”</p>
<p>This is true of many colleges. I know for sure the Sternies are sneered at by others as Wharton rejects. But the truth of the matter the Prestige of the school has to be seen with respect to the strength and variety of program, the location, the opportunity, the work/life balance/ the weather, the amenities, the faculty, the diversity-- it is the whole package . One size does not fit all.</p>
<p>Oh yes, arrogance is big part of it and the prestige and the fallacy that if one gets there one acquires that prestige forgetting prestige has to be earned. Also one forgets that people who apply to all these colleges do not necessarily qualify for it, just do it for the “heck” of it or to please their parents or to "belong’ to a peer group, my D for eg. applied and did not make it and it is OK, because her reasons for applying were not hers to begin with, but she was in the competitive category, definitely not a ‘nerd’ but…</p>
<p>And I know of people who have made it to Wharton and opted for Stern, even when it was not even on their radar at the time of applying. A casual visit and it changed their perspective of a school completely.</p>
<p>There is a brilliant and hardworking student, now a junior at Stern, who didn’t receive that attractive of an aid package and bears the full, sole financial responsibility for his $60k+ tuition with awesome credentials- Profile: 4.0 high school GPA, 99th% SAT, Wharton accepted. And he tells his story on NYU thread and I quote…</p>
<p>" Coming here was kind of a fluke. This was my blind safety, in that I knew nothing about Stern other than it’s (then) 4th-place ranking. I was applying Wharton and a few others and Stern was barely a blip on my radar.</p>
<p>I’m from Pennsylvania. More specifically, the wrong part of Philadelphia. 
It’s incredibly challenging to get into UPenn at all if you’re from PA, simply because (when I applied) 32% of their student body was from PA. I was waitlisted into Wharton. </p>
<p>Of Stern, I knew nothing about it at all, so I attended the optional summer orientation they held in early June. I was immediately struck with how serious everything was, and how markedly different New York was from anything I’d ever experienced.</p>
<p>We don’t have a campus; it’s an entirely different experience. You’re essentially living the lifestyle you’ll have forevermore as an independent adult on your own, responsible for yourself within a bustling city. Not everyone can cope with that, but it’s both an incredibly liberating and maturing experience for sure. </p>
<p>In the end, that was what convinced me that I wanted whatever-that-was over Wharton, regardless of how much research, energy, and thought I’d put into UPenn. Prior to that orientation, I simply figured I’d throw the deposit money at Stern and take Wharton when they accepted me. Wharton accepted me subsequently, yet I declined."</p>
<p>The point I am making is arrogance will not get one anywhere, it is what you do with with the opportunities and whether you 'FIT" in and how you go about adapting yourself to fit in will work in the end. It can be ‘Timbukto’ for all one cares. If one cannot be humble then the whole point of education is zero.</p>
