<p>Wow! Can I call anti-Midwestern bias?? Where are all the posters who advocate state u’s and other inexpensive choices over expensive Ivies?<br>
Why do I feel this discussion would be going very differently if this were Brown vs. a northeastern LAC?
And Marite, you are one of the most gracious, intelligent, and giving people on this board, but I have never heard such coast-centrism as in your statement: Go to Brown, because the proximity to Logan airport will give you world-class speakers. There are airports out here, you know, some with direct flights to many places.</p>
<p>Poor Garland, who got so close to having beautiful grandchildren. </p>
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<p>Love it! Isn’t it funny how it is the times when nothing goes right that we recall most fondly or that become a favorite story?</p>
<p>Well, they don’t call the Midwest flyover country for nothing, you know.
My S could not care less about world-class speakers. However, someone who is interested in IR, as the OP’s D supposedly is, might consider that as a factor in choosing colleges. As I said, I like St Olaf; I think it’s a good school. But there’s more to learning than great profs and even terrific students.
Have you ever been to Northfield? I have.</p>
<p>Fwiw, my D was a math major at an LAC but went away to a math program abroad (Budapest) run by St. Olaf’s and thought it was a terrific experience, though this says more about the program that St. Olaf runs than the students of St. Olaf per se. And at least it’s a large LAC; a small LAC coupled with Northfield would leave many climbing the walls…or using an ice pick to dig through them…in rather short order.</p>
<p>However, I think in the scheme of things, it’s a much bigger pond at Brown. I’m not particularly Ivy-centric in my biases (after all, D went to an LAC that I was ecstatic about) but I think there is something to the East Coast proximity to all sorts of resources that St. Olaf/Northfield simply can’t compete with.</p>
<p>I live in the back of beyond where we catch salmon with our bare hands and brown bears roam the sidewalks, & I am not going to compare rural minnesota to urban east coast.</p>
<p>However- your kid is applying to college- presumably you had the financial talk and everyone is on board with approx cost & expenses.
Which colleges to apply to should be done with open eyes all around.</p>
<p>But.
Once the acceptances are received- given the above, the choice of where to matriculate should rest 90 % on the shoulders of the one attending.</p>
<p>Otherwise- why give them the go ahead to apply, if you didn’t really mean it.
Or did you think they wouldn’t be accepted so you didn’t have any thing to lose?</p>
<p>Thank you for the many thoughtful responses. My daughter is also reading them.</p>
<p>Some of you have said something to the effect that Brown is better because that is her choice. I want to be clear that she hasn’t decided yet. A few days ago she said she was changing her mind almost hourly. More recently she has been leaning more consistently toward Brown. St. Olaf is still a contender. Maybe that is largely out of consideration for finances, ours as well as hers. But it might also be math. Or music? Food? Comfortable isn’t all bad. At the end of the day she might reasonably choose St. Olaf without any arm-twisting. Then St. Olaf would be the better choice. She would have a different experience, but she would not be short-changed.</p>
<p>Bluebayou-- Brown does not necessarily cut the EFC in half when a second child starts college. I checked that last night. “When families have more than one child in college at the same time, parents are not expected to double or triple their contribution. Instead, the contribution is adjusted to reflect the number enrolled in college. The contribution for each child may not be divided evenly, especially when a child attends an institution where the costs are significantly less than Brown.”</p>
<p>I was dismayed when my daughter added Brown to her application list, but I now see that it could be a very good choice for her.</p>
<p>My impression, based completely on sketchy anecdotal evidence, is that students at St. Olaf are much more attractive than those at Brown, Harvard, or practically anywhere else. It stands to reason that, if some of them wind up marrying each other, their kids will be very good looking, and rate much higher than Ivy League legacies.</p>
<p>I didn’t mean to come off harsh- I have seen allowing kids to try something because you secretly dont think you will have to pay the piper, not turn out as you think from my own experience.
However- knowing a little about st olaf made me turn to the student newspaper to get more info- it made me think.
<a href=“http://www.manitoumessenger.com/opinions/a-word-from-our-editors-1.1731026[/url]”>http://www.manitoumessenger.com/opinions/a-word-from-our-editors-1.1731026</a></p>
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<p>These are words that bear repeating. I have a friend who scored–before recentering–an 800 on all available math SATs AND the business boards, went to MIT, worked as an actuary, went to the U of C B-school, transferred to the Math PhD program, went back to NYC and worked for Merrill Lynch and other major investment houses on highly mathematical products such as derivatives…you get the picture. We are talking a person who is immensely talented in math. He did not end up with a PhD in Math. He went down a number of avenues towards a thesis before deciding that they weren’t going to pan out.</p>
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<p>Isn’t that the town that smells like Malt-O-Meal all the time?</p>
<p>Actually, I have no direct experience with St. Olaf, but since I travel to Minnesota on business regularly I know several St. Olaf alums. With one exception, they all seem bright and well-educated. And one of them is among the very smartest people I know. She went on to a top-5 law school and reads Virgil in Latin for relaxation (not kidding!). Also in St. Olaf’s favor is that I like their Christmas show on PBS every year, and as I recall they have produced an impressive number of Rhodes scholars in recent years.</p>
<p>I don’t know much about Brown one way or the other. Sorry.</p>
<p>“Well, they don’t call the Midwest flyover country for nothing, you know.”</p>
<p>Memo to folks who live on both coasts: there actually is life between the Atlantic and Pacific. </p>
<p>I’ve spent a fair amount of time in college towns in “flyover country.” I’m sure that they are towns that some here would not deign to grace with their presence. However, I must say that the people in places like, oh, say, Lincoln, Nebraska, were some of the kindest, gentlest, most generous people whom I have ever met. I suspect that they would take such dismissive attitudes toward them with their usual good grace.</p>
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<p>I’d say it’s the other way around. Proximity to Harvard is one reason why Logan airport, on any given day, is awash with well-known figures.</p>
<p>Hi,</p>
<p>Thank you for the many thoughtful posts. I just called home to my wife, Mom58 and my D. to see if a decision yet. Not yet. I was informed that it is bad form for the husband to pick a name that can be identified with the wife and also to post on the same forum. I’m on the east coast and won’t get home until Friday after the decision is made.</p>
<p>Anyway, my daughter is reading this forum. I appreciate thoughtful comments. If she chooses St. Olaf I will support her decision 100%. If she chooses Brown, then I’ll give my complete support to her decision to attend Brown. The academic opportunities between them are too close to call IMHO in the areas that matter to her (currently math and music, but who knows down the road?). 20 years from now, it won’t matter which school she attended. What matters is her effort while at college, not where she goes. Brown IS a slightly sexier choice. There is no “best” choice here. It is a hard choice because both schools are such good fits. It comes down to personal choice (my daughter’s, not mine).</p>
<p>I can’t recall if your DW has mentioned career interests. Many math majors are interested in business. If that may be her choice I would argue that Brown is indeed a better choice in terms of access to top jobs. It’s very easy to say school doesn’t matter, but I see many places where it does.</p>
<p>^I have to agree with hmom5 about a person interested in business/investment banking. More firms more likely to recruit at Brown than at St. Olaf. It would be an easier route to get exposure to the firms.</p>
<p>Whoa! Such a heavy dose of East Coast/Ivy bias here, and such a knee-jerk, condescending attitude towards the rest of the country! </p>
<p>Look, I’m the product of both a top public for undergrad and two top Ivies for grad school. i’ve taught at an Ivy, as well as two leading publics. I know the Ivies, and I respect them In that context, I love Brown. I wish my D would apply to Brown. She might, or might not. But I don’t think Brown is academic nirvana. It’s a very good school with a very strong but not-quite-world class faculty that’s heavily devoted to undergrad education, and a member of an athletic conference that, by virtue of its membership, gives it a huge leg up in cache. I’ve got nothing against Ivies in general, apart from their being in my judgment on the whole a bit overrated relative to their non-Ivy competitors; I mean they’re good and all, far better than most and a little better, as a group, than almost any others, but it’s a peculiarity of our mass market system that many people will pay almost any price for the best, or what they perceive to be the best, even if in objective terms the value added of whatever marginal benefits the best provides over the second-best doesn’t justify the cost differential. So while I generally think the Ivies are terrific, I don’t assume, as a knee-jerk matter, that they’re better than non-Ivies; not for all candidates, and not necessarily for the price differential, if there is one. It’s a case-by-case call, depending on the individual student’s needs and interests as well as finances.</p>
<p>In the OP’s case, the principal identified interests are math and music. Granted, these could change. But working from that baseline, I’d say there’s argument for St. Olaf. First, as to music: by near-universal consensus, St. Olaf has a terrific program. Brown? Well, maybe not so much. It’s hard to find recent data, but the 1995 NRC graduate program rankings, basically a measure of faculty quality, put Brown at #44 nationally among research universities, sandwiched in between Catholic U and Michigan State. Concededly, I know diddly about music, but unless someone can tell me otherwise, that doesn’t sound like an exceptionally distinguished program. So on music, I’d give St. Olaf the edge, based on reputation and having heard their world-famous choir, truly impressive.</p>
<p>As for math: well, there’s an argument to be made for Brown. I know St. Olaf has a very good national reputation in math. But Brown appears to be really quite good. The 1995 NRC survey put its math department at #15. The newly released 2010 US News survey of graduate programs puts it a little higher, at #14. There are problems in translating graduate program rankings into undergrad ranking, but the grad rankings mainly reflect faculty strength. These numbers suggests a very strong math department with stellar faculty. How that works out for undergrads is, of course, a little unclear; but we’re talking here about one of the top math faculties in the nation. i’d give Brown the edge in math.</p>
<p>So I guess for me it would come down to which is more important, music (St. Olaf) or math (Brown)? What other fields are lurking out there if these fields don’t pan out? And if, on balance, there is a clear difference between the two schools, how much is that difference worth to the OP and her D? That’s something I can’t answer.</p>
<p>^^ Yes to Brown for math, no to Brown for music. However, Brown students have access to Rhode Island School of Design classes a few blocks down the hill. RISD might offer music – anyone remember The Talking Heads? – but I don’t know.</p>
<p>I was influenced by what may have been a throwaway line rather than a serious statement that the OP’s D might be interested in adding IR to math and music. In that case, Brown makes far more sense than St Olaf. St Olaf does have a wonderful music program. But unless the D wants to pursue music seriously, the music resources at Brown are plentiful. The math department at Brown is up there with the very best. My S had a great talk with Prof. Thomas Banchoff, the year that Banchoff received a national teaching award.</p>
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<p>Minnesota has airports? Oh.</p>
<p>From Northfield to airport, a 45 minutes drive.
From Providence to airport, 10 minutes.</p>