<p>I think people start to ask these questions when employers will not consider graduates of most public universities for entry-level positions unless they have a personal connection to someone already at the company. This seems to be happening in some technical fields, and graduates who entered with impressive credentials and scholarships and survived numerous tough weeder courses become quite disgruntled when some employers recruit at only a select few universities and then whine and carry on that they need to outsource or issue HIB’s because our country is not graduating enough scientists and engineers.</p>
<p>I agree that Schreyer and Plan II (UTexas) and perhaps one or two others are an entirely different animal. Despite what we see on this forum, the vast majority of state university students are not going to be in the Honors College. Also, many Honors Colleges are not anywhere near the level of Scheyer and Plan II and the honors students don’t really get a whole lot of benefits. I know many PA and TX (and UGA) residents choose the Honors College over Ivies and other strong private colleges because it makes sense and the education is top notch. Plus- you get good football (and maybe basketball, too).<br>
My daughter’s top 3 were Rice, Indiana and Oberlin for a vocal performance major. She was admitted (by audition)to all with merit money (not huge amounts except from IU) from all. Rice was a perfect fit and the voice teacher and size of the voice department put it clearly in the lead. That’s where she went and it was wonderful. Her Interlochen roommate/best friend/maid of honor chose IU and had a great experience (music composition) and stayed for grad school. My daughter visited several times and knows IU would have provided a wonderful experience, too. There were issues at IU due to the size of the music program and focus on grad students but there were issues on the flip side at Rice. I would have been thrilled to have my daughter at IU (my alma mater) but we can’t say enough about the wonderful experience at Rice. State universities were not going to be a good fit for my son, although his safety was Georgia and I was already planning for football games if he wound up there. Despite an excellent academic record, he was NOT a lock for the Honors College at Georgia, which is very competitive. He did get into Indiana Honors with a direct admit into Kelley (another safety). After an unhappy first year at Penn and thoughts of transferring (Georgia denied him as a transfer, interestingly, despite Dean’s List at Penn), he adjusted and it turned out that Penn was a good fit for him. He agrees that it would be stupid to take out $200K of loans to go to Penn in the current economy (he has no loans to repay), but he feels that he had experiences and made contacts that he could not have had or made elsewhere. I think the important thing is to make the most of wherever you go. Some students are able to do this and some are not. I do not think I made the most of IU when I was there, but it was a different era. I sure developed a love for college basketball that has served me well in the business world and given me a lot of enjoyment.</p>
<p>W&M fit my son, would other schools have fit? Absolutely. All the other schools he was accepted to were great schools as were the ones who relected him. He is OOS so we are paying the full amount. which we would have anywhere he went except for the school that offered a fairly large grant, W&M was at the top of his list with an IR major, he turned down Vanderbilt because of their club crew team and no IR major, a lot of people thought he was crazy but he has to be there for 4 years and it has to work for him. I would have chosen Vanderbilt and I probably would have been wrong. Of course he’ll be a freshman this fall so we’ll wait and see.</p>
<p>BUandBC: </p>
<p>I apologize if I gave the impression that state universities didn’t have Ivy-quality students in them. I cut down what I posted from something much longer that acknowledged that explicitly, talking both about CC poster Tyler90 and my daughter’s friend, who turned down a couple Ivies to attend the public university she did, in order to keep herself from taking on more debt than she wanted to. (As it happens, she will be living the CC fantasy, since she is going to be paid to be a grad student at one of the Ivies she turned down for her undergraduate degree, which also happens to be one of the top two or three places to study what she wants to study.) And she didn’t have some fancy, door-opening, named scholarship, just lower base tuition and a moderate but meaningful merit scholarship.</p>
<p>Faculties at public flagships are very comparable to those at top privates. Of course, there are differences within each category. But Berkeley and Michigan match up fine with Harvard and Yale, and Penn State will match up with all sorts of privates. The opportunity is there for students who know how to take it. What percentage of the students that is, I’m not so sure. And I was explicitly (if controversially) putting it out there that, based on the experience of people I know, Schreyer is NOT the equivalent of going to a top private university.</p>
<p>Even in the past couple of years, students from our public high school have turned down Ivies in order to attend Schreyer. Other tippy-top students do not even bother applying to Ivies. (And a few do not even bother with Schreyer.) </p>
<p>It is only partly about the money. Some believe that they will have more opportunities to get involved in hands-on research at Schreyer in their fields of interest and can always take graduate courses if they are bored with honors classes.</p>
<p>Ditto for the honors college at UPitt.</p>
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<p>At least as to Berkeley, that statement is ridiculous (and certainly not “unarguable”). I doubt that even 10% of California students who apply to Berkeley – probably less than 5% – ever apply to Ivy’s and very few apply to any private colleges. </p>
<p>The UC system has an early application deadline, and a one-form-fits-all, check of the box approach. It’s got reach/match/safety built right in – you just fill off the form, check off, say, Berkeley, UCLA, Irvine, Santa Barbara… submit online, and you are done. Maybe some students put in an app to a couple of CSU’s as backups or safeties. </p>
<p>But very few have the Ivy-itis that typifies CC. Most students attending Berkeley are Californian’s for whom Berkeley was the top choice… and most employers in their right mind would never make such an assumption, to the extent that it makes any difference at all. (And in the fields my kids work in, it doesn’t.)</p>
<p>Employers generally don’t care how a student got <em>into</em> a university --they care what they student looks like coming <em>out</em>. They don’t ask for high school GPA, or high school EC’s – and most don’t ask for SAT scores. The university major and GPA (or status at graduation, such as honors awarded) speaks for itself.</p>
<p>“And I was explicitly (if controversially) putting it out there that, based on the experience of people I know, Schreyer is NOT the equivalent of going to a top private university.”</p>
<p>Which top privates? So subjective. No it’s likely not the same but that doesn’t necessarily mean better or worse. In any case, I don’t think it’s possible to evaluate based on anecdotes and a few students. And I 'd also say each year, Schreyer gets even tougher on admissions, with more emphasis on qualitative factors and less on standard scores. I’m not even sure my son would get in under these newer standards…who knows. Anyway, I have been impressed with most of the students I’ve met…not all…but most. Some amazing kids doing amazing things. Do you know private school kids who walk out with masters degrees after four years? The one kid I know took graduate engineering courses for two full years. I think that’s pretty cool. And there were quite a few of them at the medals ceremony along with kids who completed impressive independent research…some with patents. This is a terrific community of very bright students…with extra support from a top research institution (of course, I will admit, I’m biased :))</p>
<p>"monydad - what is the source of your class size data? "</p>
<p>I don’t know, I didn’t write it down. I found them all someplace or other on the 'net and put them in my spreadsheet. All I’m looking at now is the spreadsheet. I certainly didn’t make any numbers up, but accuracy is certainly not guaranteed.</p>
<p>calmom- You are missing the point. The employers don’t NEED to ask for high school GPAs or ECs because that is all a given based on the stature of the undergraduate school. It has done a lot of the work for them. Of course they need to have done decently AT that school, interview well, etc.<br>
Improper use of the possessive is a pet peeve of mine. Do they not teach that at the California schools?</p>
<p>I can attest to the opinion of post #206. I am the parent of a son who could have gone pretty much anywhere (class rank #1, GPA 4.0 uw and 4.8 w, 34 ACT, 3 subject tests - 700, 770, and 780, 13 AP classes, National AP Scholar, NHS, CSF, Mu Alpha Theta and a nationally ranked tennis player). He was not interested in the Ivy League or Stanford. Berkeley was his first choice and that is where he is going in the fall.</p>
<p>“If we know that so-and-so is a student at Berkeley, or Michigan, or UVa, we know that he’s pretty good at standardized tests and high school homework . . . and that in all likelihood Harvard and Stanford turned him down.”</p>
<p>Huh? There are plenty of students at those stellar publics – and at not so stellar publics – who could have gotten into places like Harvard, but chose not to apply. Saying this as a Harvard grad who has seen some excellent students not apply to Harvard, but happily go to one of my state’s public universities, which aren’t as highly ranked as Berkeley or Mich.</p>
<p>Not everyone wants an Ivy education. There can be excellent reasons for students to choose to go elsewhere.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t doubt that about Berkeley. I think California can be removed from the statistical sampling.</p>
<p>here in VA, at DD’s elite public HS 90 out of 440 grads go to UVA</p>
<p>They include A. Kids who applied to ivies and did not get in
B. Kids who got into ivies, and the money didnt work, and went to UVA for financial reasons
C. Kids who just like UVA, want to be closer to home, don’t want the pressure of an Ivy, etc, etc</p>
<p>I am not sure the relative numbers. I am pretty sure C is not real high, though its never zero. And I think B has been higher the last few years.</p>
<p>I guess it’s just hard for some people to understand - but there are some students (REALLY intelligent, talented, motivated, accomplished students) who have ABSOLUTELY NO INTEREST in attending Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, etc. </p>
<p>At my son’s graduation (top notch public HS in a top district), the top 10 graduates (of 600 students) had amazing stats and ECs (I know because they announced them all!). Of those 10…7 are going to Rice, 1 to MIT, 1 to UT (Austin), and 1 to West Point. </p>
<p>A friend of my son’s (he was in the top 10%) was accepted to Harvard, but turned it down to attend Univ of Pittsburgh. He is getting a nice financial package from Pitt, but money is not really an issue for him. He is going because he likes the school and because several members of his family have gone there.</p>
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<p>I don’t think that JHS himself is saying that he believes this but that people might assume that. Personally, that seems like something that exists only in CC-World. The whole “reach, match, safety” thing isn’t always interpreted the same way everywhere in the United States.</p>
<p>The point is… it’s a rather odd assumption to make.</p>
<p>JHS - I agree completely with your point about the signaling effect of the most elite universities – they serve as a “smart stamp” on your forehead.</p>
<p>However, there are plenty of very smart kids who just don’t have any particular desire to attend HYP et al. They want to go to Michigan, or UVa, or Vanderbilt, or WashU, or whatever school, and those schools are their first choices, not their consolation prizes for when the Ivies reject them.</p>
<p>I would also add that the slam-dunk admissions for many state flagships is no longer a given. In my day, going to U of Illinois required nothing other than a minimum GPA / ACT score and your parents’ checkbook. No one “sweated” getting into there at all. Nowadays, it is an accomplishment for a Chicagoland kid to get into U of Illinois. There are valedictorians, straight A students, student leaders, all the kids with the “right” credentials who get turned down from U of Illinois all the time. It’s not a safety school and it’s not the slam-dunk. These days, it seems to have more of a signaling effect than it used to. I’m not arguing that it’s the signaling equivalent of a top 20 school, but it certainly doesn’t signal “graduated from high school and was moderately decent” anymore.</p>
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<p>It’s not that odd for CC. How often do you see people here talking about, “reaches”, “matches”, and “safety”? How often do you see people on here talking about the Ivy League as the be-all, end-all of college admissions and other great colleges (UVa, Berkeley, etc) as being the colleges that you just settle for if you don’t get in or can’t afford the Ivy League colleges? How often do you see people talking about “near Ivies”, “upper Ivies”, “lower Ivies”, etc, essentially ranking colleges by how they stack up to “HYP”? I notice that a lot on this forum and I can’t blame JHS for commenting on something that he must have observed. </p>
<p>Now, that’s not to say that this attitude is common everywhere, but it’s definitely pervasive on CC.</p>
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<p>Two very different statements. The second is certainly right. The first is certainly wrong. There are not “plenty” of students at any public, stellar or not, who “could have gotten into places like Harvard”. There are plenty of students at plenty of publics who would have been perfectly competitive applicants to Harvard, Yale, or wherever, but as we all well know being a perfectly competitive applicant, plus an application fee (or fee waiver), generally entitles one to a kindly-phrased rejection letter. It’s silly to assert that there is any kind of large population out there who would be admitted to Harvard instead of the applicants who were actually admitted (of whom, as far as I can figure, fewer than 50 per year turn Harvard down for a public institution).</p>
<p>Many public institutions have a handful of kids who might – might! – have been accepted at a place like Harvard if they had applied, and a much smaller number who actually turned down an actual acceptance at one or more of those schools to attend the public. Of course such students exist, but that’s not the majority of kids at any public, even in an honors program.</p>
<p>Again, my argument is not that there is anything wrong with students at public universities. Only that the mere fact of their attendance/completion there does not signal as much as attendance/completion at an elite private does. (To which I also say, “So what?”)</p>
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<p>To me, that’s the big thing. I went to hs in a state which has only a moderate state flagship (not one often discussed on CC) and saw several very-bright kids go there and completely flame out and wind up back home going to comm college … because they just couldn’t find their tribe. That’s not to say there weren’t smart, serious kids, but you had to look pretty hard. Seeing that happen made me grateful for my own relatively elite education, because whatever I can say about it, it was ok and even cool to be smart and driven.</p>