@LOUKYDAD, if you are OK with paying something close to in-state tuition (don’t need a full tuition scholarship), you could look in to CWRU and Rochester as mentioned above.
Otherwise, Tulane, UMiami, and I believe SMU also offer full-tuition scholarships that are probably in-between the 2 levels of RU’s that you listed above in terms of difficulty of landing one of those big merit scholarships.
So does Wake, but they may be closer to the Emory/Vandy-level of difficulty to get.
Also, Rice has some big scholarships (probably not full-tuition) that are definitely at or above that level of difficulty in getting.
You may also get big merit money from MiamiU and while a public, they may be more desirable than UK or UL to a business major.
There are idealized schools. It’s just that people that go to state schools just for the fun are ones complaining. Location distinguishes the school and it’s a characteristic of the school, which attracts so many students.
Some people idealize a very small number of college characteristics, such as “prestige” or the strength of a particular major. They may rank one or two criteria so far ahead of everything else that they are very flexible in practice on other criteria (size, location, etc.). My son is a case in point. His two criteria: (a) location in a major league city (major league sports!), and (b) a college where it’s encouraged to be a thinker. He ended up at UChicago. Although he applied to and was admitted to a few LAC’s (including Reed, my alma mater), UChicago had everything he wanted in academics and location.
My daughter’s criteria were also simple: (a) location in a “real city,” preferably in the East; and (b) stand alone art school. She ended up at RISD. She deemed Providence a “real city” (marginally) but just as important, it was within reach of New York. (Boston was closer but she seldom visited there.)
The college search for both kids involved putting together small lists of colleges (6 or 7 each) that met the kids’ key criteria but varied in the selectivity of admissions. This was not nearly as demanding a process for them or us as it appears to be for many students and parents. Our son didn’t want to make any pre-application visits; he was too busy (debate team). The first time he saw the Chicago campus was on “admitted students day.” He did an overnight, and the next morning declared simply, “This will do.” Our daughter did make some visits, basically on one long trip to the east, starting in Pittsburgh (CMU), then New York, Providence, and Boston, with a few other stops (Oberlin, Colby, Bennington, Ithaca College) b/c she brought along a friend who was also looking at colleges. (We saw 10 colleges in 11 days.)
Costs were not important to the search. We had saved enough money, including funds given by the grandparents. So we did not focus on cost as a factor in the search. Arguably my son would have attended our state’s flagship public school if he hadn’t liked Chicago. After all, Big Ten universities also have “major league sports.”
The seeming simplicity of the process of making college lists and selections didn’t mean we weren’t tearing our hair out getting them to finish their applications, to take all the tests (they didn’t “prep” for them), and (in my daughter’s case) to finish a portfolio.
My son is a freshman at Hendrix College, a small LAC, and I think he would enthusiastically agree it meets all of A-F. So do most of the schools in their conference - Rhodes, Centre, Austin, Sewanee, Berry. (Assuming you qualify for merit aid.)
@lindyk8 Just an aside, but the “UCSB shooter” was never a student at UCSB. He did attend a few classes at SBCC, but dropped out well before last spring. He just lived in the area near UCSB. So, he was not disillusioned by UCSB not living up to his dream school expectations. Sorry, sore point here. Back to your regularly scheduled discussion…
My daughter goes to a flagship and has had no problems with her large lecture classes of 200+. The courses (both history so far) have the big lecture 2 classes a week and a discussion class with 25-35 once a week. She said a lot of kids skip the discussion. Too bad for them, she picked up a lot of points in the discussion group.
In law school sections are 75-85 first year students depending on the school. It’s mostly lecture, but many of the teachers called on students and no one felt left out. There is always one student who thinks his/her opinion is important, and since we (class) spent 12 hours a week with these same people, we were all sick of ours. Prof asked a question, her hand shot up. She asked questions that had been covered or would be covered if she was just patient. On Friday nights, we started a pool on how long it would take her to ask a question (there was often free beer/wine available before class). Whoever had the first 5 minute square always won (so we changed to 30 second squares). Oh, we were sick of her. One night the prof asked for a volunteer for something and her hand shot up. The prof said “we’re tired of hearing from you” and he only had her 4 hours a week! She had gone to Reed College. She was used to giving her opinion all the time, being in small classes, talking talking talking.
I’ve never thought smaller was better. I like more views, more options. Most of my classes in college had 30-40 students. I never felt I couldn’t talk or ask a question, but after my experience with Miss Reed, I was glad I’d gone to a big flagship.
@ynotgo and @merc81, I’m aware he was not an actual student but was going to SBCC but the analogy stands. He is called the UCSB shooter because he killed UCSB students, most notably targeting a UCSB sorority. His manifesto noted he planned to go to UCSB and he felt that Isla Vista was going to change his entire life the minute he set foot in the college town lifestyle. He went to the UCSB frat party and tried to hang out with UCSB students. His rants consistently noted that the environment was not what he thought it would be and he got enraged. Of course, this is an extreme example and probably should not have been used as an example of standard disillusionment.
As a student there, I’m sure you hate his designated title - and I’m sorry, I should have stated it differently. It’s merely about expectations gone awry.
:-S
One more irony in all that: today there was an article about his liking Nazi stuff. My daughter mentioned it to me - You know the guy who…?" I said, “Oh yeah, that guy…” Neither of us could remember his name.
In the old days everyone always remembered these people’s names, but times have changed. The shooter wanted infamy, that he would always be famous. But except for a few people, his name isn’t remembered. So, in terms of his very big scheme, he lost. He’s still a nobody.
Yup, I would like to forget him and his name, and I won’t say the name because he wanted fame. You don’t forget when it’s close to home. There was a big photo of him on the front page of a section of the LA Times this morning. I couldn’t read the nearby article about ongoing problems with LAUSD, because I didn’t want to look at that photo.
@lindyk8: My post was only intended to acknowledge the nontrivial nature of @Ynotgo’s clarification, which I think allowed the discussion to proceed. Your broader points are appreciated.
Exactly @ynotgo, that’s why I didn’t say his name after I saw the article on huffpost. At least they didn’t put his picture on that article. The best way the media should handle it is not give name recognition or photo. Anyway, the article didn’t seem to say much that wasn’t already known. I say he’s gonna be totally forgotten in a few years, save for the specific grief brought upon the poor families in question.
At a LAC like Reed, she wouldn’t have been the only one offering opinions. There would have been give and take among many participants. Ideally, anyway.
Granted, this particular person may have been an idiot. One function of a good discussion class is to manage the bloviators early in the process. I think this is more likely to happen (but not guaranteed) at schools that put smart, socially adept students in small classes with experienced professors. Of course, another way it can happen is by offering huge classes with no discussion at all. In my opinion, exposure to both good and not-so-good discussion usually is better than no discussion (although in some cases a lecture may make pedagogical sense.)
I suspect the Reedie excelled not only in her talkativeness but also in having read the material prior to class. Just bloviating, expressing opinions, isn’t what talking in class is all about at Reed. As a prof (not at Reed), I’ve always appreciated it when a few of my students take over the discussion. But it rarely happens. Remember, the Socratic method requires the teacher to draw information and ideas out of the students, not to stuff it into them.
This pretty much describes D in her high school classes. She doesn’t think her opinion is more important or insightful than other students’ She just wants some response to the teacher’s question! If no one else raised their hand, she will raise hers. Chances are, the other students aren’t participating.
She has also discovered that the “bad” AP physics teacher behaves like an Oracle. He doesn’t offer any information but if the students ask the right question, he will respond with the relevant knowledge. This is the one class where the other students appreciate D’s persistent questionimg… The sad thing is even though the other students are aware of the teacher’s behavior, they still don’t ask questions. They let my child do it for them
Miss Reed dropped out of law school because it wasn’t challenging enough for her. We did not miss her and the legal profession has survived her change of career.
She was prepared for class, but so were the rest of us She asked a question every single Friday night within the first 2 minutes of class starting. Two minutes? Don’t you think the prof might have covered it if she’d just have waited? It was night school, and most students were older, worked at professional jobs all day as engineers and city officials and journalists and actually had an opinion that was valuable about how things worked in real life. She was a recent college grad with zero life experience. I think she would have done a little better in life if she’d just listened a little more and talked a little less.
@twoinone, I get that she was annoying, your conclusion that you were glad you had gone to a flagship rather than an LAC based upon one hyper-talkative student who happened to have attended Reed seems like a leap not primarily based in logic or data. Enough holes in that conclusion that you could drive a tank through it. I’d hate to be as law student arguing that in front of a professor.Was Reed the cause of her behavior?. That is, do all Reedies (Reeds?) behave that way? Or was it selection bias? Did Reed attract/admit folks with a social tin ear who don’t realize they are talking too much?. Or are you arguing that some combination of nurture and nature leads Reed students generally to behave that way?
Or perhaps it was idiosyncratic? One kid who while bright and hard-working didn’t get social cues who could also have gone somewhere else?. There are some pretty pompous and overly talkative kids from Yale.
@merc81, as a professor I had to deal with pompous, overly talkative kids and move the discussion to others. There are lots of ways to do it without insulting a kid in public, which is probably not a criminal offense, but pretty poor instructional technique even if, which seems likely given @twoinanddone’s vivid memories from long ago, the kid was really annoying.