<p>@kwu:</p>
<p>Care to provide examples of definitively superior schools? I recognize that Harvard certainly isn’t perfect, but they do have strong programs in just about everything, along with an automatic resume boost and a decent chance of developing friends in “high places” just for having attended the school.</p>
<p>The latter two reasons in particular are pretty good justification for turning down schools that might otherwise be “superior” (though with any luck, University of Chicago will improve its reputation sufficiently that it’ll be worth roughly as much as the schools now in the “top top top” category [Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, and Yale, off the top of my head] for general reputation).</p>
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<p>@ TC:</p>
<p>The people who got in on a merit basis are probably a lot nicer than the people over on the forums. I know a few people who got in and/or attended (one opted for St. Andrews University in the U.K., but he’s the only one), and they’re all pretty happy people.</p>
<p>Those who got in more on the basis of having a network of alumni among their relatives, or being in the same general group as the people who do, probably are a lot closer to the stuff on the forum, though.</p>
<p>Also, keep in mind that a decent number of the forumgoers are parents of people who were admitted, and they understandably may be somewhat offended by the idea of someone with ‘only’ a 3.0 even applying to the school that their children (generally) worked so hard to get into.</p>