<p>I would turn down Harvard for MIT and USMA</p>
<p>Lol as if this will ever happen to me, but it boils down to aid packages at the end of the day.
I need a generous package, so supposing that the schools that I have applied to gave the same aid, only ones I would turn Harvard down for are:
- Columbia
- UChicago
- Penn/Yale</p>
<p>those are all of the US schools that I applied to, and there’s a reason why I listed all of them: I genuinely love each school for different reasons and would be happy to receive an offer of admission at any of them, let alone more than one of them.
I visited 4/5 of them. I loved each atmosphere and don’t really get that bad vibe from Harvard (my tour guide and information session students were so cheerful and spoke so highly of their Harvard experiences).</p>
<p>If i ever had to make this choice (though chose not to apply to harvard despite constantly being told to), I would pick Brown, Yale, Columbia, University of Chicago, and (maybe) Tufts over it. I think it all depends on what type of college experience you want in terms of undergraduate focus, competition level, lifestyle, etc.
I would love to attend Harvard for grad school though.</p>
<p>This thread gets funnier and funnier. Hard to pick my fav post, though the one about Harvard as safety school was pretty choice.</p>
<p>Dream on, kiddies…</p>
<p>I would turn down Harvard for any school on my list because Harvard doesn’t even have what I want to study.</p>
<p>Sent from my ADR6300 using CC</p>
<p>My top schools where I want to apply to are Oxford and the Sorbonne. My safety’s Harvard.</p>
<p>None. I would go to Harvard.</p>
<p>…wait for it… South Harmon Institute of Technology …boom …still … again</p>
<p>“My safety’s Harvard”… how??</p>
<ol>
<li>Davidson</li>
<li>Oxford</li>
<li>Pomona</li>
<li>Claremont-McKenna</li>
<li>Yale</li>
</ol>
<p>If I were an engineering type, MIT and Caltech.</p>
<p>@starcraft it’s a quote from Wes Anderson’s “Rushmore”. Feigned pretension.</p>
<p>I don’t understand the people who are saying that they would turn down Harvard for, say, Davidson or Pomona (to pick the most recent example). I totally get why either of those might be someone’s first choice (whether that was accomplished through ED, a genie, or whatever). “Turn down,” to me, however, implies “rejected an offer of admission.”</p>
<p>Having the chance to turn down Harvard for a school with a 20% acceptance rate implies that you also wanted to or did apply to Harvard, which is a decision I find confusing. Pomona, Harvard, and Davidson all offer fantastic educations, but if you get into Harvard (your #6 choice, let’s presume), you are pretty darn sure to get into Davidson (your #1). So why would you bother applying to Harvard if your clear first choice accepts 4-5x the percentage of applicants Harvard does? It seems like a waste of money and effort.</p>
<p>I understand where exultationsy is coming from. I mean: if your top choices are significantly easier to get into than Harvard why bother applying in the first place? I understand chance as a factor if the schools above it are as competitive, but with 5 schools above it-- some with about 5x the acceptance rate (Davidson)-- the probability of being accepted to Harvard but not those institutions (which are all splendid schools) would be nearly impossible? Applying ‘because it’s Harvard’ doesn’t really work if you are very confident you wouldn’t attend.</p>
<p>I think this thread has evolved from “What schools would you turn down Harvard for?” to “What school would you most like going to?”. There is a logical jump from I prefer College X to Harvard to I would turn down Harvard for College X. </p>
<p>Personally the only schools I would attend over Harvard (Princeton and Stanford) have nearly the same acceptance rates, and logically out of the three only being accepted to H is a possibility due to sheer chance (not that I would be complaining at all if this happened =D).</p>
<p>Got rejected from my top choice, so probably none.</p>
<p>Before though, I would have chosen MIT over Harvard in a heartbeat.</p>
<p>exultationsy,</p>
<p>A school with a 20% acceptance rate has an 80% rejection rate. Pomona’s acceptance rate is around 15%. Davidson - about 25%.</p>
<p>If you’re a pool of individuals, the fact that Pomona has nearly 3 times the acceptance rate as Harvard is meaningful. If you’re a single person, it isn’t quite as meaningful. To a degree, many of these schools are lotteries. You could apply to Pomona and Harvard and get accepted to Harvard but not Pomona.</p>
<p>That doesn’t make Harvard your “safety” school. Neither one is a “safety” school. But both are good schools, and I think most folks aiming at top colleges and universities will apply to more than just a few top schools, in the hopes of getting accepted to at least one. Harvard may be one of those, even if it isn’t the top choice.</p>
<p>Notjoe:</p>
<p>Plugging in the numbers (assuming person has identical chances of being accepted to each school) reveals that the chances of a person being rejected by their top 5 choices (assuming Claremont McKenna, Oxford, Yale, Davidson, Pomona) is about 41% (plugging in acceptance rates). The chances of said person getting into Harvard, their sixth choice, is say in the realm of 4% RD. For all 6 events to occur is a 1.66% chance. So it seems plausible what you are saying about Harvard as a 6th choice statistically being relevant. </p>
<p>However, the fundamental assumption that one makes in these calculations is that the applicant has an equal chance at each school (equivalent to acceptance rate). Yet for a qualified applicant to Harvard, a school like Davidson may very well be a ‘match’ school. If instead Davidson becomes a 50/50 shot, Claremont McKenna and Pomona become a 40/60 shot, and Yale, Oxford, and Harvard remain the same, the chance of Harvard being the only school drops to .5% or a 1/200 shot. At that point it’s the applicants choice on whether it makes financial sense to apply. To me, probably not, but to another applicant, who knows?</p>
<p>Und3rC0ver,</p>
<p>I understand your point, but what makes a school a “match” is pretty much up to the admissions committee. You can only do so much by matching up your test scores and grades and things. In my son’s case, one school for which he should have easily “matched” waitlisted him, instead.</p>
<p>As well, I know in my son’s case, he didn’t say to himself, “Hmm… how much does applying to Harvard add to my likelihood of getting in to a top school, any top school?” Rather, we narrowed down to a list of schools that met certain criteria. He applied to all of them. Adding a school or two, or three or four, adds only a few hundred dollars, at most, to the process. For something - four years of college - that would run a quarter million dollars, before consideration of any financial aid or merit scholarships, it seemed a worthwhile thing to do.</p>
<p>Finally, I think many of these folks may be laying out lists under the assumption of “all things being equal,” especially financial things. But many may have applied realizing that all things might not be so equal, especially financial things. For us, only our state’s flagship school offered my son a better financial package than Harvard. “All things being equal,” Harvard might come in 6th for some folks. But if Harvard’s financial aid offer is substantially better, then the ordering of choices might change a bit.</p>
<p>notjoe, this was exactly my parents’ thought process when I was applying to schools. For me, adding more schools meant a little more cushion in case of rejections, but for them, the $1000 or so (total) in application fees was a simple investment. After all, if one school offered me $1000 more in financial aid than another, the extra money spent would pay itself back right there. My dad remarked the other day while he was doing our taxes that he wished I’d applied to Stanford (apparently our income falls just below their cutoff for free tuition).</p>
<p>In the end, my decision will be based on finaid. Brown’s my top choice, meaning I would choose it over Harvard. But in the unlikely event that I’m accepted to both, I’ll almost surely end up at Harvard, given the fact that they have such a generous policy.</p>
<p>I’d choose Rice over Harvard.</p>