<p>New to thread, is this an attempt to get help with writing the Why___university essay?</p>
<p>@lookingforward I completely agree. Most students can’t even point out something unique that distinguishes each ivy from one another academically, so they just arbitrarily pick a few to put on their list.</p>
<p>@NewHavenCTmom Tht wasn’t my intention. But I guess it could be viewed as such. Basically, aside from prestige, most students don’t give a solid reason for choosing an ivy over another school. The reason is usually job opportunities, but that’s it. I rarely find students who actually like an Ivy League school because of specific programs within the school that are different than that of other schools.</p>
<p>I’ve known many students who desperately wanted to go to an Ivy League institution or the equivalent (many of whom ended up at Emory). This was often because they felt academically alienated at their high schools, easily earning As, finding that they were one of only a few students who bothered to do the reading, etc. I can hardly fault them for looking at places where reading is considered perfectly normal, where academics are on at least equal footing with athletics, and where participating in class is considered admirable. </p>
<p>Personally I think that choosing a school because of a particular program (save for rare ones like engineering, musical theatre, forestry, etc) is problematic given how many students change their major or opt for a major closely related to the one they’re interested in. </p>
<p>I never actually applied to any Ivy League schools, but I used to consider it sometimes because of how prestigious they are. On some level it’s just fear of the unknown—as a high school student from the middle of nowhere, how was I supposed to judge the quality of colleges I only knew about because of the Internet? For the most part, my parents only know about colleges that are insanely prestigious, giant state schools, and/or near where we live. </p>
<p>Well, the top private schools are ranked higher for some reasons. If everything else is equal, why shouldn’t a student choose the one ranked higher? The burden of argument really rests on the counter side instead.</p>
<p>I think if one is really good and can be at the top of a flagship state school, there is really no limit on the potentials. Rather the benefit o the top private schools rest on a higher floor due to smaller size, better environments/peers and connections, where one can do reasonably well even being a so so student at the school.</p>
<p>Really this is like an argument about religions that’s not going to go anywhere. One group will argue the others are elitists, while the other group thinks those are just sour grapes.</p>
<p>@Pennylane2011:</p>
<p>“High school students are young, and none of them really know much about college in general. Their self esteem isn’t well developed. They want to be admired by their peers. They care about what clothes they wear, what they look like, and they want what their friends have. What their peers say has influence, and although they might not admit it, they also care what adults think and say too.”</p>
<p>This is SO SO true (and understandable at that age).</p>
<p>In fact, I would say they don’t know much about how life or the world works in general (I was the same when I was in HS).</p>
<p>Thus the “exclusive and rare” comment above. If you’re heavily dependent on fin aid (as I was in my youth) or extremely rich, so finances do not figure in to the equation, it’s one thing, but when you’re nearing 40, signing up to pay tons more money just to be part of something “exclusive and rare” when taking a much cheaper path can get you to your goals just as easily strikes you as the height of inanity. “Exclusive and rare” & $1 will buy you a cup of coffee.</p>
<p>@pastwise: Though being merely so-so at a top school is about as hard as being a top student at an average public (the top publics are another story). Possibly harder.</p>
<p>@whenhen:</p>
<p>Good points. However, as I said in another post:
CA, TX, MI, VA, NC, IL, IN, GA, and WI all contain publics or divisions in those publics that most people consider stellar, and those states contain almost half the population of this country. Add in FL, MD, MA, MN, WA, PA, NM (& IA & NJ & OH), which contain publics that are very good in at least one field or aspect, and you’re talking about a vast majority of the country.</p>
<p>What whenhen was saying is partly one of the reasons I’m interested in the Ivies. I can get a full ride to a school near me but looking at the people who are going there from my school, I’m not particularly impressed. The generous financial aid the Ivies give is also a pretty big factor. I will say though its kind of ridiculous how people want to go to every Ivy. I like Yale because it has a lot of improv and theater opportunities(I don’t want a degree in theater), but Dartmouth is so dissimilar I’d never apply there. I think if you’re a talented, driven person you can succeed wherever you go so its not worth selling your soul to go to an Ivy(I’d rather sell it for something worthwhile and lasting, like a fast car to impress all the ladies) but if the financial aid is going to be good, there’s no harm in applying.</p>
<p>Indeed, when fin aid takes finances out of the equation, go to the best school that is a fit.</p>
<p>Though even then, I feel that some folks are blinded by the Ivy nameplate. The fact of the matter is, when you judge by outcomes, Northwestern, Duke, Rice, and UChicago (and you can make a case for Cal, UMich, and UVa as well) as well as Amherst, Williams, and Swarthmore deliver just as well as the lesser Ivies while in certain fields, other schools actually outshine the Ivies.<br>
Eaxmples:
Opportunities out of CS@Illinois & CS@CMU are better than most Ivies while at most, you can only say Cornell, Harvard, and Princeton are merely as good as Illinois & CMU in CS.
Rice’s medical school admit rate is stellar. As good as Harvard’s and better than most Ivies/YPSM.
The PhD production rate at Case Western (and many LACs, a lot of whom are not well known) are as good as or better than most/some Ivies.</p>
<p>All the reasons people cite for applying to ivy schools also apply to other very selective, well-endowed schools.</p>
<p>I can tell u why we are NOT considering ivy schools despite DS being a very competitive candidate: NO MERIT SCHOLARSHIPS. Dropping a quarter of a million dollars for an undergraduate degree is not worth it.</p>
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<p>Not all “top private schools” have small classes. For example, Harvard has some very large introductory classes: <a href=“CS50, Stat 110 See Continued Increases in Enrollment | News | The Harvard Crimson”>http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/9/12/course-enrollment-numbers-CS50/</a> .</p>
<p>Yeah, the elite private research universities are still research universities. For some profs there, teaching undergrads is important. Not all, though.</p>
<p>^^First class I ever took at Penn (as a HS senior) was the Intro Bio class. 500 students. Definitely an eye opener for a young high school kid on college classes. I listened to a world renown professor on stage twice a week, but I interacted with a graduate student when I needed help. </p>
<p>Community colleges and state universities are mentioned on this site many times as rhetoric intended to suggest that they’re are affordable options and to mitigate challenges to the status quo. For many students, including me, the 60k+ school I’m attending on insane financial aid is much cheaper than even the non-flagship public schools. Further, community colleges have exceptional low graduation rates on average and have the added difficulty of planning for both the associate’s degree and the four-year degree (you want to do engineering? very few community colleges will save any time off of earning that degree at a four-year school). If you have the social, cultural, and financial capital, you can more or less do whatever you want. But if you’re low-income and first-generation, a community college is often a terrible environment that will only serve as an impediment.</p>
<p>I didn’t apply to any Ivies when I was in high school, though I did apply to a lot of Ivy-equivalents. Another significant factor among many students is that their children of immigrants who both don’t understand the system here and come from countries wherein the university you attend determines your life a lot more than it does here in the U.S.</p>
<p>What I’ve also come to realize, however, is that, for the most part, people are not rich and successful because they went to an elite college; they went to an elite college because their parents and rich and successful.</p>
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<p>If small classes are the goal, LACs should be at the top of the consideration set for a lot of kids. Unfortunately, for naive students seeking the “wow” response from their friends when they say what they are going, few LACs deliver–even the most highly regarded ones. They’re just too small and unknown to the masses.</p>
<p>What I really don’t understand are the kids that obviously do not have the academic background to be accepted. Beyond admission, I cannot fathom how they think they will survive academically in classrooms full of kids so far beyond their level of achievement.</p>
<p>How on earth do kids with 450 math scores think they will fit in on a campus where more than 60% of all admitted students, not just STEM kids, have taken a minimum of cal BC and over 90% at least AB?
<a href=“The Harvard Crimson | Class of 2017”>http://features.thecrimson.com/2013/frosh-survey/academics.html</a></p>
<p>I guess ignorance is bliss…don’t want to see or hear reality. X_X </p>
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<p>Non-PhD-granting universities and community colleges also often have relatively small class size frosh/soph courses, but such schools are rarely mentioned on these forums by advocates of small classes.</p>
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<p>Only a relatively few (usually very highly selective) private schools are generous with financial aid, so only a small percentage of low income students have those options. Of course, the net cost of community colleges and state universities varies by state (e.g. low income students tend to get a much better deal in CA than in PA).</p>
<p>Indeed, a lot of the LACs have really impressive post-grad results (no doubt in part due to the individualized attention). High PhD production rates, high rate of grads winning prestigious nationally competitive awards (like a Rhodes, Fulbright, or Marshall scholarship), and high placement in elite professional schools. </p>
<p>Just as an example, Macalester (not usually seen as being among the very best LACs) beats Vandy and WashU in all 3 of those categories despite having a 75th percentile SAT that is 100 points lower than those 2 schools.</p>
<p>As a point of comparison, a 100 point SAT gap at the 75th percentile is the difference between Cornell/JHU & Miami/Villanova/Illinois Wesleyan.</p>