What Top schools offer as much as if not more than the Ivies?

Parents Forum
21

<p>You guys have got to move to better neighborhoods! LACs have perfectly good name recognition and status in mine. On my block, we have kids at, or recently graduated from, Wesleyan (2), Colby, Lafayette, Carleton, and Rollins, and if I expand the criterion to my dog-walking routes I get Amherst, Williams, Oberlin (2), Vassar (2), a couple more Wesleyans, Middlebury, Beloit, Kenyon, and Pitzer.</p>

22

<p>The neighbors out west aren't as clued into eastern/mid-Atlantic LACs as you'd hope.</p>

23

<p>There are many schools, as has been said, that may provide for a better, more intimate, liberal arts education. Reed College is a good example. Typically no more than 14 in classroom, very high quality instructors, great research opportunities, and a rigorous curriculum second to none. Reed undergrads typically have their pick of grad schools. I also find it interesting just how many people have heard of it.</p>

24

<p>We don't think of Carleton, Oberlin, Beloit, Kenyon, Rollins, or Pitzer as "eastern/mid-Atlantic LACs" here. But I suppose from a SoCal perspective Stanford is an eastern/mid-Atlantic LAC.</p>

25

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<p>Should have added "mid-western" into the mix. (Stanford IS one that my neighbors would know...)</p>

26

<p>I noticed Northwestern was an overlap school for a number of colleges on this list, yet is not actually on the list. When I was applying to college, Northwestern had a very good reputation. Yet here in NJ, in the last few years I have not heard of one top student from our town who applied there. Thoughts anyone?</p>

27

<p>Carleton has a fine reputation in my neighborhood. (It is my grandfather's alma mater.) But NO liberal arts college is on my radar screen for my oldest son, because he needs a college with graduate-level math courses available to undergraduate students. Carleton (and, for that matter, St. Olaf) have fine math departments, but their departments aren't geared to serve students who get into post-calculus math as ninth graders.</p>

28

<p>It definitely is different in the northeast than it is in the midwest when it comes to school name recognition! In our area, just about the only school that counts is U of MI. Ivies & Duke draw "oohs," but everything else prompts the question of "WHY?" D is going to Furman ... talk about a conversation ender. You'd think it would be a conversation starter ... but people just don't seem to value the LAC experience in these parts.</p>

29

<p>Replying to #26: Northwestern appears to be especially popular with debaters. The graduating captain of my son's debate team is headed there this fall. Although my son is in debate, he has much more of a sci-tech interest profile, and finds U of Chicago much more interesting than Northwestern for his tastes.</p>

30

<p>Not sure why Northwestern isn't better known. It's a great school!</p>

31

<p>look not only at the school but the professors for the major you've chosen. you might get a yale x2, brandeis, stanford, penn ... education at a csu price. (go titan baseball) =)</p>

32

<p>haha well the only two people I've met so far that knew a/b Wesleyan were an administrator at my previous college and a man that first mistook it for Wellesley and wondered how I'd managed to get in there (since I'm a guy). ;)</p>

33

<p>From where I sit, there's a big difference between public and private schools as far as name recognition for top colleges. The kids I know who go to private schools, where college counseling is in-depth, well focused and one-on-one, are well aware of Ivy alternatives among universities and LACs nationwide. </p>

<p>In our CA public h.s., the oohs and ahhs belong to the two top UCs and HYPSM. There is name recognition for Notre Dame and Duke (sports news coverage is the key.) But most everything else --- Chicago, NW, WashU, Tufts, Wesleyan, Kenyon, etc. and sometimes even the Ivies Penn, Brown and Cornell --- will elicit an "oh...where is that?" response. The focus of most public h.s. students here is overwhelmingly UC and Cal State oriented. Even the respected LACs here, Pomona and Occidental, will create confusion ("you mean Cal State Pomona?") or the "where is that" question. There is a sliver of top students in our public high that will be familiar with the out-of-state colleges, but there's no guarantee even there. Many great colleges will elicit blank looks or confusion.</p>

34

<p>JHS lives in a more intellectual suburb of Philadelphia than I do. My neighbor (a Princeton graduate) asked me what school the girls at Swarthmore socialize with, since it is an all-female school, my daughter's guidance counselor (with 35 years of experience) never heard of Kenyon, and the mom of one of my son's friends asked me why I felt Stanford was so far away, since Connecticut (Stamford) is not that far from Phiadelphia ;)</p>

35

<p>I live in a different kind of neighborhood in NJ, as well.</p>

<p>Most common replies to "my D is going to Wesleyan."</p>

<p>3) Which one?
2) That girls school?
and, by far the most common:
1) Blink, blink, oh? (blank stare).</p>

36

<p>Of course, when a neighbor asked me where S was going, and I said Columbia, her reply was "oh, that's a teachers college in the city, right?"</p>

<p>Well, yeah.</p>

37

<p>I went to a state college (unc-ch) and a state medical school. I am a subspecialist in the Bay Area. I have met many students in med school, internship, residency and fellowship who went to some of the ivy and best private (such as stanford) med school. I can not say that the education they received was any better than the students I have mentored from U of NH, Baylor, UCLA, or any other state school. In fact some of our worst residents have come from ivy league schools. In med school you also could not tell the difference from who went to an ivy league undergrad and who went to a state school except from their clothing.</p>

38

<p>Brand, your situation reminds me of a young man I know at Wesleyan. No one around here has any idea how great his school is ... in fact, last year the local paper stated that he would be on a sports team at OH Wesleyan ... but it doesn't matter, because he is getting a better education than he would be getting at the name-brand U he almost went to. The personal attention he is getting is much more important than having people from his hometown understand how good his college actually is.</p>

39

<p>My S is a student at Stanford. My D was accepted at Stanford, but opted for Swarthmore for all the right-for-her reasons. Last winter they took a snowboarding class together. The instructor (a student himself) asked where do they go to school. After hearing their replies, he winked to my son and said: "so, you are the smart one!" Boy, was my daughter annoyed!</p>

40

<p>haha yeah well I'm used to it now. People ask me where all I was accepted and out of the three (Wesleyan, WashU, UT McCombs) UT gets the biggest "ooohs!" and at the same time I get the biggest looks of confusion when I tell them I'm headed to Wesleyan. :) But really, it wouldn't have been any different had I ended up going to Brown/Columbia/etc. It seems the only schools that get good responses around here are UT, Rice, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and surprisingly, Baylor gets treated like gold.</p>