<p>Is Whenhen refer to Emory and South Ivy or is it Rice? honestly I hate these terms.</p>
<p>There are a lot of kids from everywhere at public school, you would never have thought that if you are on CC. My daughter has 2 roommates, one is from Chicago and another from NJ. Who knew?</p>
<p>Riukderry</p>
<p>As far as class size… one can see the class size distributions in common datasets. I just compared sizes at Cornell to 3 flagship state schools in the midwest. They all had close to the same distributions. For the kids that are in the honors programs at the large state universities, they will have even better opportunities for avoiding the large lectures. </p>
<p>I recenly had the chance to talk to a bunch of kids after their freshman year …
Those at the large flagships who are extremely bright kids (NMFs and equiv) said how hard the year was academically. Yes, the large flagships are very academically competitive, especially obvious in engineering and science majors. </p>
<p>Many of the state flagships are very strong in engineering. However, the discrepancy @whenhen talks about exists. You pretty much won’t find an engineering firm that says “we only recruit at MIT, Stanford, Cornell, and Princeton; we won’t recruit at UMich, UIUC, Texas, Cal, Purdue, or GTech”.</p>
<p>Also, for instance, Illinois CS students have an average 32.3 ACT (comparable to many private elites) and they go twice as fast over material in CS classes as some other schools, so you will learn a lot and will have to work hard to keep up. And Illinois CS produces more startup founders than most Ivies per capita and has stronger pipelines to the top software companies and Silicon Valley than most private elites.</p>
<p>On the other hand, one student there said that she handed in a paper she wrote in HS for a humanities class and got a better grade than she did in her HS class.</p>
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<p>This is a simple one to answer: it would probably have cost my S more to go to the University of Maine, hardly a stellar flagship, than to an Ivy or an elite LAC.</p>
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<p>Well, you have apparently already made up your mind why they applied, so why ask? FWIW, I strongly doubt that the profs at U ME are “better” than the profs at Ivies, as a group. I’m sure there are some great profs at U ME and some duds at Ivies. But in aggregate? No.</p>
<p>Applying to every Ivy does smack of trophy hunting or extreme naivite to me. Yes, each one has its own virtues that make it a worthy choice, but it is highly unlikely that a given student would find ALL of them very attractive. A more discriminating, more sophisticated family–including those who, like us, needed pretty much a full ride–might well decide to apply to several of the Ivies, but in addition will easily be able to find other excellent schools that better fit the student than the rest. (One thing I do not buy is the idea that kids should be selecting only one size of school or one environment. Lots of kids like different schools for different reasons, and are flexible.)</p>
<p>Some of the Ivies (and other very selective research universities) do have some fairly large classes, and not only at the introductory level. Example:
<a href=“Course Offerings | Office of the Registrar”>http://registrar.princeton.edu/course-offerings/</a>
Spring 2014, Economics 348 (“Great Recession”), 135 students (taught by Nobel economist Paul Krugman).</p>
<p>If “large” means 135 students (not 500+, as it can at some state flagships), and if the instructor is Paul Krugman, that’s not too bad a deal (depending on your politics maybe). If you want more consistently small classes, have a look at LACs.</p>
<p>While it is true that not all “top private schools” have consistently small classes, it is also true that all Ivies other than Cornell, and many other top private schools, have smaller average class sizes than almost all state flagships. To thoroughly assess how these averages play out in the classes you need or that most interest you, you’d have to dig into the individual course enrollment numbers. You may find that the wide variety of courses at some big state universities (often with small enrollments at the upper levels) outweighs the smaller averages at some private schools.</p>
<p>As someone whose first choice was an ivy (and ended up at my second-choice non-ivy), it was a combination of prestige, alumni network, and academic strength within my fields (econ/philosophy)–all of which said ivy (and all the ivys, really) excelled at.</p>
<p>Try comparing state schools with selective private colleges, using College Abacus or the NPCs, for various family income levels. I’ve found that, below a fairly high income level, the so-called “full need” private colleges (<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2013/09/18/colleges-that-claim-to-meet-full-financial-need-2014”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2013/09/18/colleges-that-claim-to-meet-full-financial-need-2014</a>) tend to compete pretty well on price. Below is an example.</p>
<p>Assumptions
Maryland resident
$120,000 family income (split evenly between married parents); $5K in untaxed income
$100,000 in financial assets; $25K in cash/checking
$50K in home equity (house purchased in the year 2000 for $300K )
$12K paid in federal income taxes
2 children, 1 age 14, 1 age 16 (HS junior), 4 exemptions
GPA=4.0, SAT M+CR=1450
Fall 2015 admission</p>
<p>Estimated Net Costs of Attendance
$23,623 Columbia ($40,821 total aid)
$23,556 Amherst College ($40,850 total aid)
$20,837 University of Maryland College Park ($2.5K total aid, in-state)
$19,448 Yale ($41,852 total aid)
$19,300 Princeton ($39,965 total aid)</p>
<p>Why would I like to see my kid get into an Ivy? Stellar financial aid. Definitely true at some other schools too, but the list of schools that generous is not very long.</p>
<p>@OHMomof2 :</p>
<p>Fairly long, actually. A lot of the Ivy-equivalents and top LACs are need-blind and meet full need. More than you would send off apps to, in any case.</p>
<p>So, I’ll have to admit I don’t know much about the individual Ivys. My S17’s list probably will include MIT, CalTech, Stanford, Harvey Mudd, several UCs, and CalPoly SLO. He is probably only going to be interested in majors like astrophysics, physics, computer science, and possibly some types of engineering. My impression of the Ivy’s has mainly been that they are more preppy than nerdy, and nerdy is probably where he would find a better fit. Are there some of the Ivys that fit that type of kid? Access to undergraduate research will be a priority for him. So, would we be right to ignore the Ivys, or are some still worth considering? (Financial aid will not be available to us but full pay is possible if the stock market cooperates.)</p>
<p>tk, is that a made-up example? Not to digress, but I find it pretty sad that someone who paid $300K for a house 14 years ago only has $50K equity. Either they put very little down and property values haven’t increased much or they put down $20% and they have lost equity. Their income level seems pretty low for that amount of house too, although I know lending practices were looser back then…</p>
<p>(Sorry to digress.)</p>
<p>Ynotgo, why even consider Ivies if you already have identified numerous reputable schools that fit your son and offer the best programs in his field of interest? There’s no rule that says you need to apply to any of them just because you have a smart kid.</p>
<p>In my opinion, most of the kids applying to the Ivies have a misconstrued vision of what it is like to be in an Ivy League school. They essentially describe all the aspects of an LAC, but then say that they want to go to Harvard. It doesn’t add up for me. </p>
<p>I agree @AnnieBeats. frustrates me to see people not know what they are in for, and just saying it because the name and reputation are good.</p>
<p>To each his/her own.</p>
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<p>Yes, it is a hypothetical example. However, if I change the amount owed on the house to $0, specify the house was purchased for $170K in 2000, and keep everything else the same, I still get the same net prices as above. </p>
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<p>There are probably plenty of examples where an honors HS course at an elite HS covers more difficult material than a regular introductory course at a college, since the HS students in the honors HS course at an elite HS are probably better at the subject than the college students who are not advanced enough to take the course in HS (so the expectations in the college course may be lower than in the honors HS course at an elite HS).</p>
<p>However, one would question this particular student’s judgement in course selection in college and that some people consider using the same paper for multiple classes without permission to be academic dishonesty.</p>
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<p>That brought back memories! Did the same thing at an Ivy and had the same result (better grade), so it isn’t unique to state schools.</p>
<p>@purpletitan: "Fairly long, actually. A lot of the Ivy-equivalents and top LACs are need-blind and meet full need. More than you would send off apps to, in any case. "</p>
<p>ALl of the Ivies are on this list: <a href=“Loading...”>http://www.thecollegiateblog.org/2012/09/02/schools-that-meet-100-of-demonstrated-need-without-loans/</a> - as are, as I said, some other schools, mainly very selective LACs.I suppose “not long” is relative but I’d say the 20 or so listed there represent less than 1% of American colleges.</p>
<p>sally305, some people believe it best to have as little equity in a house as possible.</p>