<p>tokenadult,</p>
<p>When I look up fees for the MA, tuition is definitely charged. The PhD is generally tuition waived or stipend. Are there (and where are there) colleges that have the same programs for the MA?</p>
<p>Re post 277: My D is enrolled in a Masters program at a university that is top 10 (US News) in the field. Strong, by any objective measure, but no funding whatsoever. Can you clarify, tokenadult?</p>
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From the Tulane website:
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<p>Universities generally charge for terminal master’s programs. Indeed, it’s an important profit center, because they tend not to give the same kind of financial aid that they do to undergraduates. However, if a student is accepted to a PhD program (that may involve the award of a master’s degree incident to work towards the PhD), at strong universities the student will usually be funded for tuition and a living stipend (and/or program-related job, like TA-ing) for a set number of years, including the master’s degree. Some universities, I think, do require some (maybe most) of their candidates to obtain a MA before being definitively accepted into the PhD program, and to pay for the MA, or for the first year of graduate study, etc. Fully funded PhD programs are very competitive, and sometimes students will enter MA programs to buff up their credentials for a good (funded) PhD program, too.</p>
<p>I think it’s less common for people to turn down the top ranked college once the acceptances are in, than to never apply for them in the first place because one is looking for a different college experience. For example, I think lots of kids with excellent stats choose Big Ten schools for the teams, the school spirit and all that goes with them. I also know a handful of really smart people apply only to schools with six year med programs, or nursing or undergrad business.</p>
<p>Except in your house, of course.</p>
<p>Re: post # 274-
You are welcome MS. Too often Tulane gets a bum rap. This thread <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/tulane-university/790229-tulane-ranks-high-using-sat-cr-stats.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/tulane-university/790229-tulane-ranks-high-using-sat-cr-stats.html</a>, and the ones started by Hawkette that compare the SAT cr. reading, writing and math scores <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/787488-college-comparison-xiv-student-body-depth-focus-sat-critical-reading.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/787488-college-comparison-xiv-student-body-depth-focus-sat-critical-reading.html</a> are very interesting reads, and shed a different light on how to look at these numbers and ranks.</p>
<p>“I think it’s less common for people to turn down the top ranked college once the acceptances are in, than to never apply for them in the first place because one is looking for a different college experience.”
And except when the FA awards are not as high as was hoped for or needed, or were substantially less than those offered at other slightly lower ranked colleges.</p>
<p>I already posted earlier in the thread about my house. :)</p>
<p>I thought we’d already established that people turn down higher ranked colleges for money and majors. I think it’s fine to want a more rah-rah campus - I just think for some reason that decision tends to get made earlier in the process. Not always of course.</p>
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<p>What JHS said in post #285. Students who are truly in a position to be choosy about undergraduate programs are very often in a position to get into a good Ph.D. program, and those programs don’t leave the student paying out of pocket (although they do keep the student out of the private-sector labor force at wages that aren’t lavish). This is especially true for programs in mathematics and computer science (the disciplines I know best, because of my son’s shopping interests in colleges), where graduate schools don’t dare be expensive, because there is good money to be made with an undergraduate degree in that subject from a strong undergraduate program.</p>
<p>It seems this thread has lost its way…I thought it was about why kids turned down higher ranked schools, and now we’re talking about phd programs…</p>
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<p>It appears unrelated at first glace, but here’s the relevance: Some kids turn down top undergraduate programs that they’d have to pay a lot for, in favor of lesser-known programs that are less costly or free. They are then free of debt when they embark on graduate or professional school. So, knowing that you’re going to go to grad or professional school is being cited as a reason for turning down a higher-ranked program for undergrad.</p>
<p>Yes, I see that. I guess I’d just like to see more actual reasons vs. debating the topic, but it’s a very interesting discussion in any case. Rankings can only tell you so much, and unfortunately until a student is actually living and learning at any particular school, they can’t really know if a higher ranked school is going to be the right place for them.</p>
<p>Fortunately it seems as though most kids like whatever school they choose, once they get there. The ones who get to college and find out they don’t fit seem to be a minority.</p>
<p>Amongst my own family and friends, distance from home seems to be a common reason for turning down better schools. Some kids just aren’t ready to make the big break and live far away from their existing support network, so they choose Hometown U because it’s a ten minute drive from home rather than ten hours. I’ve noticed this more among low-income and first-generation students, presumably because college seems more alien to them, and therefore they have more fear. (Many don’t, of course, but I’ve known quite a few who do.)</p>
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<p>Completely agree with mathmom. A thread about higher-ranked or more ostensibly prestigious schools that kids deliberately didn’t apply to would be interesting, though I doubt it could really get off the ground - it’s too likely to get mired in “what makes you think he/she would have gotten in anyway” sorts of posts.</p>
<p>Unless I took it to the Cafe, of course. Maybe the haiku thread.</p>
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<p>I see that, of course, but I also see the opposite. From my own son: “I might be really interested in Swarthmore or Haverford if they weren’t, you know, in Swarthmore or Haverford. Where are the colleges like that in other cities?” And daughter: “Objectively, Penn has everything I want, except going someplace else.”</p>
<p>JHS, your daughter’s comment made me laugh.</p>
<p>Remember that money saved on undergrad college tuition can always be put in the bank as a nice nest egg. The cash doesn’t have an expiration date - if it isn’t spend on grad programs, it just gives a bit of financial stability and independence.</p>
<p>Reading through this thread, I got the impression that some turned down higher ranked schools for reasons that, objectively speaking, should have been apparent in the college selection phase. I’m not talking about discovering disagreeables in their visits after applying, I’m talking about objective facts that should have been obvious before applying, e.g., school is too big, too far from home, etc.</p>
<p>Perhaps this phenomenon can be explained by one or more of the following.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Students (and their families) did not spend enough time in the selection phase. This could be because of procrastination or a lack of focus/priority on this part of the college process.</p></li>
<li><p>Personal and family situations changed after they filed the apps, e.g., a family member became ill and the student need to stay closer to home. </p></li>
<li><p>Students’ preferences were crystallized later when the possibility of spending four years on that school became dangerously close to reality.</p></li>
<li><p>They may have wondered about it before, but could not in earnest find anything concrete to dislike, but when decision time came, the desire to justify the chosen school forced immediate distancing of the rejected ones.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Case 4 is interesting because in this case the student could have easily chosen a different school and found a reason for rejecting the current school.</p>
<p>
My kids’ preference lists did not track rankings. For example, my daughter preferred NYU over the higher ranked schools that accepted her – I’m pretty sure she would have gone to NYU had they offered adequate financial aid. </p>
<p>My son’s top choice LAC (turned down because of lack of financial aid) was not even 1st tier, far lower in the rankings than the other LAC’s that accepted him. The highest ranked LAC he applied to – top 5 – was one that he had almost no interest in attending, just wanted to see if he could get it. Another LAC which accepted him-- and where he knew he was almost certain to be accepted – was about +25 spots up the ranking list from the college he ended up attending – but he never had any real interest in attending. He applied basically because he liked the mail they sent, and he thought it might help with negotiating financial aid with other colleges if they gave him a good package. </p>
<p>Because of finances, both my kids had to include apps to the UC system as a fallback, financial safety – and as we live in the SF Bay area it was pretty much given that they would apply to Berkeley. Both were accepted, but I would have strongly encouraged my son to attend Santa Cruz instead, and my daughter definitely would have chosen either Santa Cruz or Santa Barbara over Berkeley. </p>
<p>I think if the college search is focusing on “fit” then it very often is the case that the best “fit” is not at the top of the rankings. Kids tend to have a better sense of themselves and the colleges in the spring than during the autumn months when they apply – many kids don’t really have a serious visit, such as an overnight, until April. They also start looking a lot more at specifics at the time they are making final decisions. </p>
<p>If instead of looking at US News rankings you were to look at the Princeton Review categories based on social or political environment – (the “party school” type rankings) – then my kids’ preferences start to make a lot more sense. For example – my daughter wanted a large school, urban environment. So of course all of her preferred schools were located in the middle of large cities. My son’s preferred LAC’s could easily be found on the Princeton Review’s “Dodgeball Targets” and “Reefer Madness” lists – the one big exception was the top-5 school that he never wanted to attend (and which ended up waitlisting him). It’s possible that had he been admitted, he could have ended up there – but I think there would have happened only with a huge financial aid draw as well. </p>
<p>I’m actually surprised given the big focus on “fit” throughout CC that people would be at all surprised when a kid turns down a higher ranked prestige college for the place that simply feels like a better fit for them. High-achieving kids are subject to a lot of pressure from peers and teachers to apply to prestige schools – my daughter had a high school teacher who insisted she ought to apply to Harvard and was sure to be accepted (he wanted to write her recommendation!), and my son had a teacher who constantly reminded us that my son was “Ivy material”. So I can see it as being quite common for kids to send off apps to the prestige schools early in the process – then later on start focusing attention on less reachy or match schools that are more suited to their personality and interests.</p>