<p>Tinfoyl, sorry but all I proved was that it was another frustrated Dookie that failed to get into her favorite schools, HYPS, but got into Duke and initiates a vicious attack on a person that is debating against one of her dookies…</p>
<p>seen it many times on this thread</p>
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<p>My feelings… silence is golden… Smile everyone!</p>
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MIT: SAT M 720-800, SAT CR 650-760, SAT W 660-760
DUKE: SAT M 680-780, SAT CR 660-750, SAT W 660-760
MICHIGAN: SAT M 640-740, SAT CR 590-690, SAT W 600-700
PRINCETON: SAT M 700-790, SAT CR 690-790, SAT W 700-780</p>
<p>Let’s play a game. Can anyone spot the outlier here among these data sets?;)</p>
<p>^ Well, sure. But actually (to get back to the merits of the “public Ivies”) that’s a pretty significant overlap among scores of students at Michigan compared to students at some of the most selective private schools in the country. Given its size, this is one indication that many, many Michigan students were qualified for admission to those schools. And the in-state, full payers among them are paying less than half the cost, to attend a school with more highly rated departments than all but a small handful of others.</p>
<p>^Good point. As for public ivies, I’m going to swallow my pride and actually mention UMich and Berkeley (the two universities I hate…) as top public schools.
I would say these top 5: Colorado School of Mines, UC Berkeley, UMich, UVA, and…God forbid…UNC Chapel Hill.
There are many more definitely. But these come to my mind when “Public Ivies” are mentioned.</p>
<p>Now you just have to admit that Michigan and Cal are peer schools of Duke and we can all be friends. :-)</p>
<p>The thing is, if you are a top student from an upper middle class family in Michigan (CA,VA,NC,WI), there may not be much of choice here. Why should your parents deplete their retirement fund, or take out a second mortgage, to send you to Duke or to Penn when you can go to a first-rate state school for less than half the cost? The choice is as simple as that for many people. It never gets down to median SATs or ibank recruiting rates. None of these numbers make an unambiguous case that your bright, well-rounded kid will get $100K more value from those schools.</p>
<p>If your parents could afford to make that choice, then you’re lucky. Don’t imagine though that you are somehow superior for that, or for standing in the reflected light of a few truly remarkable kids who show up in higher concentrations at the top private schools. Chances are, your high school record was indistinguishable from that of a couple thousand kids enrolled at Michigan or Cal.</p>
<p>^^^Mostly agree. Even if they could afford it, there are many top students who don’t want to go to schools like Duke or Penn in any circumstance. The top large publics, notice I emphasis the word large, offer what they are looking for in a college and can’t necessarily be duplicated by smaller privates. For universities like Michigan and Berkeley, you really don’t have to sacrifice academics to attend a peer school from all but a handful of institutions. By all but a handfall I mean, of course, exactly five. We all know the acronym for those.</p>
<p>“Chances are, your high school record was indistinguishable from that of a couple thousand kids enrolled at Michigan or Cal.”</p>
<p>More like couple thousand per class. 2,000 makes up roughly 30% of Michigan’s Freshman class. The top 30% of the students at Michigan have very impressive academic credentials. We’re talking top 1% of high school class with near perfect transcripts and SAT/ACT scores 1400/31 and over.</p>
<p>Novi brings up an important point. Many students choose Michigan over other excellent universities even where there is no cost differential. Many choose Michigan because of the strength of a particular department, its very lively and spirited campus, the town of Ann Arbor, big time athletic tradition, friendly student body or great weather! hehe! Ok, maybe not the latter but everything else. The number of students at Michigan who were admitted into other excellent universities is impressive. Some choose Michigan because it is the cheaper option, but many choose it because they like it better.</p>
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<p>Actually, that’s exactly what I meant (in case that was not clear).
I had in mind the top third of an entering class of about 6K.</p>
<p>Here’s an example of your point Alexandre of a discussion recently on the Michigan board made by a current student in Ann Arbor:</p>
<p>“My roommate got into Harvard, Yale, UChicago. Girl down the hall got into Northwestern and WashU. Girl across from her Princeton. Guy above me Princeton as well. Guy two doors over Cornell. Guy across from him Georgetown. Guy in my rival hall (and old high school buddy) Georgetown and UChicago. His roommate Harvard, Yale, Stanford. And those are just the people who have told me. I guess no one told them UMich should be the backup.”</p>
<p>I am more than certain this happens at many of the top publics in this country.</p>
<p>The same thing can be said of Harvard, Princeton, Uchicago, cornell and Georgetown where people rejected Michigan lol</p>
<p>And a 1400 is average for most Ivy league schools and top privates right now</p>
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<p>Unfortunately, the plural of anecdote is not data. While a “good” number of similar accounts emerge every year, a closer look at the existing yield numbers and cross-admit data for the most selective schools has to raise some doubts about the complete veracity of such accounts. </p>
<p>Fwiw, I also know students who turned down MIT and Stanford to attend public schools in Texas. However, their circumstances were also unique. We also can remember stories on CC of students turning down Yale for Vanderbilt, UNC and Rhodes. But again, such accounts were rather special … special enough that people still talk about it on a public forum half a decade later. </p>
<p>There is no doubt that there is a kernel of truth to similar stories, but a rather large grain of salt is needed to interpret terms such as “many” and “getting in.”</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-essays/968531-catholic-father-jewish-mother-essay.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-essays/968531-catholic-father-jewish-mother-essay.html</a></p>
<p>xiggi, so you’re saying all those kids in that UMich dorm are “special”?</p>
<p>I think what xiggi means is:</p>
<p>1) These stories are common place in every college and based on anecdotal evidence. However if you run a statistical analysis on cross admits and the college they finally choose- you will find out that more people from Harvard, Princeton et al picked their schools over Mich.</p>
<p>Basically what we need are raw numbers which clearly indicate how many turn down Harvard for Mich, and further the true reasons why they did so. Its not suprising Harvard has a yield of 73% suggesting that 27% go elsewhere</p>
<p>I think the point is that at Michigan, you say “Whoaaaa! There are three kids on my floor that turned down upper Ivies!” whereas at upper Ivies, pretty much everyone probably turned down a school like Michigan or of Michigan’s caliber, and nobody really thinks it’s that big a deal.</p>
<p>Aren’t all children special? </p>
<p>I think that my point was not that obtuse. If we were to add all the stories of students turning down HYPS, we’d have two or three times the number of admits. </p>
<p>In the end, the safest of all assumptions is that almost ALL students who attend the schools debated in this thread DO attend the highest ranked school that admitted them, and that in many cases, their final choice also represents the best one out of just a few similarly ranked schools.</p>
<p>This does not mean that no outliers exist, but they are statistically insignificant. The “reports” of cross-admissions between public schools and schools such as HYPS seem to greatly inflate the possible cases.</p>