<p>charlesives - I sent you a PM. Check your inbox.</p>
<p>D is at Sewanee on a merit scholarship. The money package was definitely a factor, but the school's interest in her made a big difference. At the merit weekend, she enjoyed the conversations with profs and other interviewees. She was especially impressed with a forestry professor who discussed art and anthropology with her. Like ER, she is numerically ahead of many classmates in test scores, but those are just numbers on a piece of paper. If you are seeking intellectual interaction with peers and profs, you will find it --even at a community college. If you are seeking an easy path to a degree, you will find it --even at an Ivy.</p>
<p>"If you are seeking intellectual interaction with peers and profs, you will find it --even at a community college. If you are seeking an easy path to a degree, you will find it --even at an Ivy."</p>
<p>Mamacita,
That's a very wise summary.</p>
<p>Mamcita you said: "If you are seeking an easy path to a degree, you will find it --even at an Ivy."</p>
<p>You ae lucky that this is buried so deep in this thread. Heretics can be burned at the stake.</p>
<p>Texdad:</p>
<p>I actually agree about this. It is not impossible to slack at most colleges. I am in less agreement with the first half. Yes, there will be peers and profs at any institution, but profs, like high school teachers, teach to the middle. Real outliers have difficulty finding classes at their own level.</p>
<p>My advice to students (I teach) is if a teacher is not making you work hard enough, make the teacher work harder. Yes, some teachers will teach to the middle. A student who aspires to be a scholar must take the responsibility for asking questions and taking actions that invite (force?) the teacher/instructor/professor to raise the bar.</p>
<p>Mamacita:</p>
<p>I know someone who, having studied at a top LAC then an Ivy where he was a TA for several years, had a shock when he taught a history course for one semester at a third-tier college. He was advised not to assign more than 25 pages of reading per week. He'd formerly been TA in courses that routinely assigned 150-200 pages per week. It seems to me an unbridgeable gap. It seems to me an unbridgeable gap. If you read my posts about high schools, you'll see that my S was in some classes where students read at 5th grade level. Same thing, except it involves college.</p>
<p>I don't have kids in college yet, but my experience to date is that teachers always teach to the middle and I have again and again seen the brightest miss out. Can a bright kid really find appropriate stimulation at a college where he is in the top 10%? It's hard to believe that's possible without extraordinary effort. </p>
<p>College is more about learning in a community than it is about learning from professors. If that's what people want, on line classes and text books will do. There is a harsh reality in my opinion when kids are not getting to go to the best possible places for them to meet real peers.</p>
<p>Thank you for bringing this to the forefront. I am in a situation like yours (though I haven't nearly as much money as you, but if all goes well I could end up with over $40,000 at Rutgers - and I'm instate, so that's about 2/3 the tuition) and though I would like to go to University of Wisconsin-Madison or any Ivy should I be accepted, that would be selfish on my part to put my parents through the stress of paying for that (and me too since I would have to work A TON to pay it off). So I'll probably end up going to Rutgers (or maybe BU if they give me a good chunk of change) and I will be happy no matter what. Thanks again for this great post.</p>
<p>But unfortunately, many bright middle class kids are being shut out from the top schools. We have saved and can reasonably afford $25,000 tuition, but out EFC is considerably higher so we will not be eligible for need-based aid. Most of the top schools do not provide merit based and their current tuition is over $40,000. Our choices are either a huge state school or a smaller school where our son will likely be at the upper ranges scholastically and pray that he is not bored.</p>
<p>Palermo, I think you make the case eloquently for the large state school given the situation. Are you aware that at large schools the cream rises to the top. they take honors courses, they get into grad courses as undergrads, they do research etc. Better to do that than go to an inferior small private just because you feel it must be better somehow because it is private or even just because it is small.</p>
<p>Zagat stated, "Can a bright kid really find appropriate stimulation at a college where he is in the top 10%?"</p>
<p>A top 10% student certainly can find "appropriate stimulation" in any number of ways. First by selection of major. I attended Ohio State and can assure you that students in engineering, comp sci, math, and the physical sciences were chock full of the best students there. In engineering, we were given the "look to your right, look to your left. One of you will graduate" warning at it was more or less true.</p>
<p>Second, by choice of courses. The top 10% students should have enough AP credits to start out frosh year taking some soph level courses. Also these students can choose the most challenging electives.</p>
<p>Third by knowing the faculty. All professors do not teach to the middle. Some have reputations as being very tough. The 10%ers can seek these out.</p>
<p>Fourth by course load. Overloading the schedule can challenge any student and allow him to persue multiple degrees or graduate early. Some universities allow students to enroll in the graduate school as seniors.</p>
<p>Fifth, honors colleges can offer challenges to the best of students. The courses are more challenging and these programs also often have homors housing which creates a community of high achieving students.</p>
<p>Sixth, by creative selection of electives. As an engineering student I sought out creative electives and they were among my most memorable academic experiences. Those included Serbo-Croatian literature, cybernetics, Medieval/Rennaisance music, 20th century music, metallurgy of ferrous metals, and urban planning.</p>
<p>Seventh, by choosing non-academic activities to persue. Stimulation takes on many forms. One of my best experiences as an undergrad was tutoring elementary students in inner-city Columbus. Thirty+ years later I still think about my Joey!</p>
<p>Independent study and research. At many universities these opportunities are available to only the best students. So, if a top 10%er at StateU would be a top 50%er at IvyU, the chances of participating in these programs might be more likely at StateU.</p>
<p>The desire to rise above yourself. My son is a 25%er at Rensselaer. Given their penchant for numbers, their grade reports student ranking by class, college and major. After his first semester he was in the top 25% of his class, top 20% in the college(Science) and top 18% of his major(Compsci). He could strive to better these rankings, though I doubt he will.</p>
<p>So, a top 10%er can find appropriate stimulation at any colleges. It will take more thought, but it is achievable.</p>
<p>"It seems to me an unbridgeable gap. If you read my posts about high schools, you'll see that my S was in some classes where students read at 5th grade level."</p>
<p>I used to teach at the Community College of Philadelphia. It was open admissions for any high school graduate of the city (remember, only 70% graduate). My job, rather like reading the new SATs, was, in the space of 45 seconds, to evaluate the required entrance writing sample, and estimate how many years (or decades) of remedial work would be necessarily before we could pass them on to a four-year institution. (We had rather stiff exit requirements.)</p>
<p>I would read maybe 4,000 writing samples a term. The average writing level was about 7th grade; we had them go as low as 2nd grade (these were high school grads); we hoped, by the time they exited, to have them up to an 11th grade standard. It was a TERRIBLE, thankless job.</p>
<p>I also had the privilege of teaching the last course before graduation - critical writing skills. Not too many students made it that far, and many of my students in those days were older than I was. But having said that, it was easy to discover that it was not unusual to find up to a half dozen students in each of my classes (usually, it was more like 2-3) that would have met intellectual standards I had experienced at Williams or the University of Chicago, and we regularly passed some of these students on to Penn. The differences were not in intelligence, but in experience and preparation, both of which could be ameliorated, and quickly, if anyone had given a darn. These were probably 800-900 SAT scorers (I don't know that they'd ever even taken SATs), but could, with just a little help, and maybe a summer program or two, have done just fine at virtually any of the best schools in the country. (And had they been able to do so, they might have provided fine competition for the "10%ers"; in other circumstances, they might have BEEN 10%ers themselves.)</p>
<p>Statistics don't tell all.</p>
<p>Thanks mini - I couldn't have siad it better. I had a similar experience teaching in prisons - by the end, I had a half dozen kids who might have previously scored 800-1000 on SATs, but could have done well almost anywhere. And some were absolutely brilliant.</p>
<p>A couple of comments:</p>
<p>I agree that for someone who is in the top 10%, it is better to be at a large state school than at a mediocre, smaller school. There is, in fact, a greater possibility of finding a critical mass of like-minded, similarly prepared students at a larger school, and a wider range of courses at different levels of difficulty.</p>
<p>This leads me to comments by originaloog. In the sciences the situation is different than in the humanities and social sciences. Again, size is an issue. In the anecdote I recounted, the course was the only one of its kind offered and it fulfilled a distribution requirement. The 25 (as opposed to 200) pages of readings were expected to reflect the reading level of the students; such a short assignment made the class discussions far less rich than a more demanding and longer assignment. There was no "higher level of difficulty" available. Presumably, a motivated student could have done extra readings on his/her own, but then, the same student could ask for a syllabus, do the readings and save the cost of tuition. Pursuing independent study is a possibility if there is an instructor willing to guide the student, a plausible, but also risky strategy in my opinion. </p>
<p>Voronwe: I'm not in the least surprised that some kids in prison turned out to be brilliant.</p>
<p>Mini: >>The differences were not in intelligence, but in experience and preparation, both of which could be ameliorated, and quickly, if anyone had given a darn. >> I was told by a dean at a community college that a large number of his students are bright but have emotional issues that got in the way of academic success: lack of maturity, psychological or family problems. At another community college, the students are earnest but not bright. A com sci prof was asked the meaning of "input." it wasn't a question he'd encountered before at RPI, CMU and MIT.</p>
<p>"At another community college, the students are earnest but not bright. A com sci prof was asked the meaning of "input." </p>
<p>Funny! I would have said that about some of my undergraduate colleagues (who, nonetheless, would have had very high SAT scores.) "Input" - do you mean the noun or the verb?</p>
<p>I doubt there are many students at Harvard who know what "geeking", "Albino poo", or "tooters" are. Critical to know if you work in my field.</p>
<p>Vocabulary is just that - vocabulary. You learn it as you use it. (you wanna hear my Tamil?)</p>
<p>Mini, these students were in a comp sci class; they were not immigrants. From what I recall of the anecdote, input was used as a noun.</p>
<p>What is albino poo, tooters, etc... I confess that my Ph.D. and several languages have not equipped me to understand these terms. :)</p>
<p>Okay, so here's a confession. When I was awarded my stellar fellowship to Oxford ("in the manner of the Rhodes Scholarships", the award said), having not been an immigrant and having been an English major for four years at what is now often regarded as the best LAC in the U.S.), I didn't know how to pronounce the name of the college I was to be attending! (Someone, thankfully, took me aside, and corrected my malapropism.) If you hadn't been around folks who use "input" as a noun (or verb - UGH!), chances are you wouldn't know what it means either.</p>
<p>You really don't know what "geeking" is? Or "albino poo" or "tooters"? Guess you'll have to check with other folks with Ph.Ds and see if they know. Until then, you might want to avoid using them in everyday conversations, as you wouldn't want folks to get the wrong idea. ;)</p>
<p>The point, Mini, is that input is a word that is used all the time; even I, technologically challenged that I am, have heard it. But none of the polyglot Ph.D.s that I mix with on a daily basis have ever used the term albino poo in my hearing. They use words like hermeneutics and semiotics and even abjection (ugh) which I do not expect to hear in everyday use. But input is a word that is very commonly used--at least since I came to the US. As my friend said, he never had that question posed to him at RPI, CMU or MIT. Were the students at the cc he was teaching smart? Possibly. Prepared? Not at all.</p>
<p>Yes, I know that many English names are not pronounced the way they appear on the page. My own introduction to peculiar English pronounciation was Cholmondeley.</p>
<p>I will be one of those people who will most likely be attending a state honors college for study in the sciences/engineering. From my point of view, it makes sense to limit debt as much as possible. My parents are very hesitant to spend an exoberant amount of money on an undergraduate education. I am intending on graduate school (MBA or JD) and I will need to be able to pay for that.</p>
<p>My state school is not an unknown tier 3 school. It is a national top 50 university.
I already have a scholarship there. Even though my SAT is 150 pts above the 75% of the school, I feel that I'll be able to find others like me in the honors program and be able to enjoy myself for four years.</p>