<p>I encouraged my younger son to look further afield, but the only place outside of the east coast he applied to was U of Chicago. Oh well.</p>
<p>I hear people on transportation costs. I was pleasantly surprised to find tickets to accepted students weekend for our oldest were only $150 - we’ve never managed to snag tickets for close to that amount since.</p>
<p>Chip on my shoulder about what? I think you misinterpreted me. My point is precisely that the smart kids in other regions of the country are eminently able to figure out how to get on planes and go far from home. It’s no harder to journey from Minnesota to Harvard Yard as it is to journey from suburban Boston to Carleton, MN (as an example).</p>
<p>But remember the whole point which started this? It was the culture that saw the Rices and U of Chicagos and other examples of very fine schools entirely appropriate for the brightest kids as being “a step down.”<br>
These weren’t kids / parents who were saying, “Oh, these other schools in other parts of the country are excellent schools; it’s just that the logistics of getting there are inconvenient / expensive for me, so I’ll stick close to home, but I’d certainly think those were fine choices otherwise for those so inclined.” These were kids / parents who were narrow in their thinking and really did think that these other places were appreciable steps down and that kids who went there deserved pity, the poor dears. That has NOTHING to do with the logistics of getting on a plane, and everything to do with a wacked-out, ridiculous culture that is worthy of criticism. And I don’t see why we can’t or shouldn’t criticize such a culture.</p>
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<p>RIGHT. That’s the whole point. That’s the complete ANTITHESIS of the “You only got into Rice / U Chicago? Poor baby, sloppy seconds” culture.</p>
<p>Her high school class had 13 Harvard-bound students? I find that extremely hard to believe.</p>
<p>As I read it, the OP was about a specific student and her feelings of disappointment when she was rejected from colleges. It was not about an entire culture of elitists. That part came later. By all means criticize, just as I take the opportunity to object.</p>
<p>Without compromising OP’s privacy, it’s physically in the general area. It’s not out of the realm of thinking that there are some faculty kids, legacies, as well as any college’s general outreach to its own backyard.</p>
<p>There are a number of high schools with over a dozen Harvard admits - I know of multiple schools in the NY area with those numbers too.</p>
<p>No one has ever said on this thread that a smart, qualified student wishing to go to a specific school isn’t entitled to feel very disappointed in not getting into that school. That is a complete straw man argument.</p>
<p>My S’s class had 10 Harvard-bound students. It would have had 11 if one had not decided to go to Stanford. There were Yale and MIT admits as well, despite the fact that S’s high school cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered in the same league as NMD’s high school. </p>
<p>Of the 11 admits, some were SCEA but more were RD. In other words, they applied elsewhere as well, but in the end, chose to attend the school close to home. The fact that 10 out of 11 students chose to go to Harvard illustrates the point I have been trying to make. Why go so far afield if you can stay closer to home? Why even look further afield if there is such a range of wonderful schools close to home? That is the difference between students from the NE and Mid-Atlantic and students from other parts of the country. Yeah, I realize that it’s a good thing to go away for college. Heck, I went further than any of you. But there were many times I thought I was mad to do so.</p>
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<p>You’ve lost me here. What have you been arguing over the last posts?</p>
<p>I’ve got a really adventurous D who had not interest in going to school near home, but I really “get” parents wanting thier kids to be closer to home. I thought that made a lot of sense when I read it as an explanation and then I kind of shrugged. D went to boarding school and then out west and isn’t really very prestige oriented, so some of this stuff kind of loses me along the way…However, I have an athlete (younger) who is consdered to be one of the top in the country and I want her to be able to pursue this, and more importantly, she would like to pursue it at the level of international play. So…it’s not really the same, but it is the same. Oddly, she is the one who would probably most like to go closer to home. These highly pressured kids have a different relationship with us, I think, as one of the few places where they can finally just let down. Just for another perspective.</p>
<p>I’ve been arguing that a culture in which parents and kids view perfectly fine schools like Rice or U Chicago or [insert other fine school of your choice] are seen as sloppy-seconds-for-the-also-rans is a culture that’s worthy of derision and scorn. And that such attitudes seem borne out of an extreme provincialism – no less provincial than “why would you ever want to go anyplace but State Flagship U” in the midwest and south. </p>
<p>And with all this discussion about how it’s oh-so-very-hard to get on a plane and actually travel to another destination – something that other people do all the time! – just strikes me as funny, because the perceptions of Rice, U of Chicago, etc. as the sloppy seconds aren’t predicated upon how (allegedly) difficult it is to GET there, it’s predicated on an overall mindset of HYP or bust.</p>
<p>I get the northeast mindset. I really do. I’m from the northeast and I have a lot of it myself in a lot of ways, including college choices. My kids’ classmates’ parents aren’t schlepping them around to the East Coast like I am because “why would you go outside the state” or if you would, only maybe to Indiana or Wisconsin. It’s provincial midwestern thinking, too. It’s no less provincial in the NE just because the choices are more numerous, IMO.</p>
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<p>Again, some colleges are explicit that it will be one RT ticket per year. (Hopefully, they’ve adjusted for heightened cost of travel vs. 4.5 yrs. ago, & hopefully will continue to.) </p>
<p>(And correct, generally families on full FA on another coast cannot afford to attend PW. Move-in, + graduation with move-out, about covers it.)</p>
<p>Regarding the phenomenon that marite has mentioned:
Correct again. The same applies to Stanford. Unless one’s heart is set on the different locale, or on a particular elite such as MIT, the “logical choice” is more often to accept the local offer.</p>
<p>While we’re discussing cost, keep in mind a few things:</p>
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<li><p>A university’s calculation of financial “need” and my ability to pay don’t bear any obvious connection. This is largely true for any upper middle class family. And, because these calculations do not take into account the huge differences in cost of living around the country, those in high cost of living places (i.e. the coasts) often end up in a tough position. I guess the assumption is that we “choose” to live in a high cost area, ignoring the fact that the choice to do so is one of employment or not. </p></li>
<li><p>the generous financial aid policies whereby upper middle class families get a decent deal (1) postdate newmassdaughter’s school days and (2) are only offered by a small number of colleges (3? maybe 4?). Worse, these generous policies are endangered by the endowment meltdown of the past year. </p></li>
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<p>Personally, I think that debating whether tickets cost $150 or $500, whether financial aid covers one trip, two or many, whether a bus or plane is cheaper, faster, better, more comfortable, more convenient etc. all miss the point, which is that different things matter to different people.</p>
<p>In ten years this debate will be irrelevant. When I moved from New England to this town in the middle of a midwestern state, few students set their sights on Ivy. A few of the very top students went to H, Y, P if their college-professor parents were alums, but most of the best headed for Wash U St. Louis, with a few to Vanderbilt and Rice, maybe a couple to UChicago.</p>
<p>In just the last few years, that picture has started to change rather significantly. This fall three from my son’s former hs went to Harvard alone; last year saw students without alum parents going to Yale and Princeton, and so on. Since those schools are not significantly increasing the size of the undergraduate student bodies, I have to assume these local students are supplanting students from the northeast. </p>
<p>Those supplanted students who really just want to stay close to home will, presumably, start to attend some slightly “lower-ranked” schools in their home regions. Those who want to attend what they consider elite schools no matter where they are located may start to look at schools in other parts of the country. I think UChicago is one likely destination. I know Wash U has had a big increase in students from the NY/NJ area, and even Vanderbilt is starting to see larger numbers of students from the northeast.</p>
<p>Personally, I see advantages to decreasing the regionalism at all schools, elite and otherwise. But speaking as a parent, I fully understand when parents and offspring alike prefer to keep the distance smaller. Both H and I are very pleased son is able to drive back for breaks (7 hours or so each way), and we are keeping our fingers crossed that our hs senior daughter does not decide on the school that is a thousand miles and several plane rides away–remote, bad weather for winter travel, the whole mess.</p>
<p>Speaking of the ‘simplicity’ of air travel: my son has friends at Williams and Brown. Last Christmas both met with incredible difficulty getting back here at break. Both spent at least one night in an airport (one spent two) and lost their luggage.</p>
<p>At any rate, I predict the situation is self-correcting (assuming you think it needs to be corrected), if the schools themselves make good on their advertised desire to increase regional diversity.</p>
<p>Yes. It may be more LOGICAL to accept the cheaper-within-driving-distance school to the far-away-requires-flying-school. </p>
<p>But that’s not the cultural issue under discussion. The cultural issue under discussion was why there was a certain culture in which only HYPSM were seen as worthy and all else was sloppy seconds. That’s DIFFERENT from a point of view that there are lots of equally great schools in all different locations, but some are easier to get to than others. It seems that the thread has drifted to a discussion or justification of why it’s more logical to go to the close-by schools (the hassle of the plane, the expense of the ticket, etc.). But the further-away schools were seen as sloppy seconds in the first place, and not just because they required a plane to get there. That’s what I’m questioning. Why, in this day and age, supposedly intelligent, sophisticated people are treating HYPSM as the only game in town and a school like U of Chicago as the sloppy second.</p>
<p>No, Pzzagirl, I ‘get’ what you are saying. And it IS there…beneath the surface…have you been over to the cornell and columbia ED threads? There are some pretty destroyed kids there. I hope they will all get past this and find the best place for themselves soon.</p>
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<p>No. I strongly disagree. You miss the earlier discussion point – which insidiously suggested (some posters did) that enrolled student bodies reflect the orientations/priorities of those students. They do not – not exclusively anyway. They reflect a combination of 3 things:</p>
<p>–who applied
–who was offered admission
–who chose to accept the offer</p>
<h1>1 will be a response to the communicated culture of the school combined with the student’s realistic self-assessment of whether he/she has the academic material & preparation to make it there, as well as the logistical/practical matters (FA, travel, etc.)</h1>
<h1>2 will be only partially within his/her control – just as it was for your own D. So regardless of her worth & potential at age 17, she had the misfortune to be applying in a highly competitive environment, submitting early SAT scores against classmates probably scoring better (for that reason). So it doesn’t mean (some posters suggested) that your D is “more intellectual” because she was accepted to & matriculated to Chicago. Would she have accepted at H, if offered? Maybe. (Or probably) If she had, would that have made her by definition “less intellectual,” less “pure” of a student? I would hope that you would have felt angry at any parents being so judgmental of your D, had that different outcome happened.</h1>
<h1>3 will be a further evolution of #2. If offered, will the student be able to accept, depending on promises or projections of FA, vs. the final FA package? And further, what competing offers are there, with details in those comparisons tipping the balance?</h1>
<p>Nope, PG. No one is arguing that Chicago is “sloppy seconds.” It is less desirable in the same way that a truly fabulous restaurant many miles away from my home is less desirable than one closer to it. It depends on location. Additionally, for suburban kids at the time, the issue of safety was one reason why Chicago might not be seen as desirable as HYP. The increased safety in its neighborhood surely has something to do with its increased desirability.</p>
<p>But I will grant this. in 2004, the rate of admission at Chicago was in the 30s or 40s (not a fair gauge, by all means, as there is a high degree of self-selection among applicants that is not present at many other schools). The rate of admission at HYP was hovering around 10%. For many high achieving students, it was a yardstick of self-worth, regardless of where they attended school. It was more a reflection on them rather than on the schools themselves. </p>
<p>I do think that NMD’s post was intended to reassure those students who are being crushed by rejection, not to cast aspersion on any school, including the one to which his D applied and where she thrived.</p>
<p>I have to agree with Pizzagirl, and admit to my ambivalence about newmassdad’s OP. On the one hand, it’s a great story about a great student, and we all love the message that rejection by Harvard, Yale, or Brown (or even Dartmouth) doesn’t brand you for life or limit your ability to accomplish incredibly cool things. On the other hand, my kids went 0-5 on their hyperselective dream schools, too, and while they were also disappointed they never had the same sense of being put down and dismissed that newmassdad communicated. They thought they were winners, too, because they DID get to choose among other great, world-class educational opportunities. They knew where they stood intellectually among their peers, and the fact that some would be going to Harvard, Yale, or Stanford, and others would be going to Chicago, or Berkeley, or Penn, or Michigan, or even Pitt didn’t change how anyone felt about anyone else. All the kids knew that there weren’t enough places at HYPS for everyone who could appreciate those colleges and who had put in the work and had the capacity to “deserve” a spot there, and all of them knew that they could only take advantage of a few concrete opportunities apiece, and that what would matter in their lives was what they did with those opportunities, not the color of their hoodies.</p>
<p>If newmassdad’s daughter’s high school really had as different a feel from that as his post implied, then it does deserve censure. And if he or she bought into that culture to the extent his post implied, then they deserve some criticism for that, too.</p>
<p>Also, it almost goes without saying that one has to reject the other double-edge of newmassdad’s post: What if his daughter hadn’t gotten the Rhodes, or the Goldwater? What if she had “only” gotten a Marshall, or some lesser fellowship? Would that have confirmed that she wasn’t good enough? I sure hope not! I am happy to admire her mind-blowing success, but not to accept an implied standard under which (a) if you have “settled” for something less than HYP, you don’t get to feel successful unless you get top-rank international honors, and (b) rejection by HYP requires some sort of sensational vindication to restore balance and honor to the world.</p>
<p>Columbia was my daughter’s dreamiest dream school, in part because she has always loved New York so much. She didn’t get in, and she went to Chicago. Five years later, she’s living in New York, supporting herself, doing work that’s really hard and really engaging. She knows a lot more about both Columbia and Chicago than she did when she was in high school, and she isn’t the least bit unhappy with the hand she got dealt. She is more grounded in New York for having spent time in a really cool city that wasn’t New York. She didn’t have newmassdaughter’s undiluted academic triumph at Chicago; she had some bumps and bruises. But she learned from them, and is more than satisfied with what she learned and what she has to offer the world. That’s plenty success enough.</p>
<p>And, looking at her high school class, five years on the clear star is a kid who didn’t even apply to HYP, because he thought (probably accurately) that he wasn’t quite competitive next to his classmates who were accepted there. The HYP kids have done fine, no worries there, but he (a Vagelos Scholar at Penn) has clearly eclipsed them. For the moment. Who knows what’s next?</p>
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<p>Well, marite, THAT’S THE VERY CULTURE WE’RE CRITIQUING. A culture of pseudo-elite pretentious snobs who look down their noses at a fine school like U of Chicago (and my point is NOT about U of Chicago specifically, just think of it as a marker for “fine school that is not HYPSM”) because it doesn’t have a certain admissions rate? And bright young ladies like NMD’s D are supposed to care about the opinions of such people? Whatever for?</p>
<p>I still don’t get the mindset of – but the peer culture in my area is such and such, so I’ve got to weigh my own acceptances / rejections in light of what everyone else around here thinks. </p>
<p>Sitting here in the midwest, I sure as heck don’t pay one bit of attention to all the hicks around here who “just don’t understand” why anyone would ever leave the state for school, when after all, you’ve got NIU, EIU, WIU and SIU to choose from. Their opinions are meaningless to me and my kids’ search process. <em>I</em> know what’s what, even though they don’t. So why, if I were transported to suburban Boston, would I pay one bit of attention to pseudo-pretentious snobs who think that schools beyond HYPSM are sloppy seconds due to the admit rates? Their opinions would be just as easy to ignore.</p>
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<p>YES. Thank you, JHS.</p>