<p>There have been hundreds, if not thousands, of threads on CC like this, but I’ll make a couple of points. First, anybody who is applying to all the Ivy League schools and no other highly selective schools hasn’t thought things out carefully. However, the differences among the Ivies aren’t really all that great. Many, many students would thrive at all, or almost all of them. (My own kids declined to apply to Cornell or Dartmouth because of their locations.) If what you value most (and this is the case for my family) is going to school with the most accomplished and able fellow students as possible, then it makes sense to have a number of Ivies on the list, as well as other highly selective schools.</p>
<p>I note, in passing, that nobody on CC ever criticizes anybody for applying to the 8 most selective LACs.</p>
<p>^Hunt: I don’t think I’ve ever seen the case. As far as I know, the students on CC don’t apply to all 8 most selective LACs. They may apply to Williams, Amherst, and Pomona, but then the others are so dissimilar and so clearly, but applying to a LAC while it may include prestige does not carry the same “wow” recognition factor so an applicant’s motives aren’t the same.</p>
<p>My kids applied to multiple Ivies, and they liked all the schools they applied to, even though they were very different in certain ways. For example, they both liked (and applied to) both Brown and Columbia, even though one has very loose requirements, and the other has a core. I think fit is important, but a flexible kid with a lot of interests can find a good fit at a variety of schools.</p>
<p>My kid applied to both brown and uchicago, and loved both (they were his two top choices, and Penn was a distant third bc he didn’t think the student body was as good a fit for him). While he’s a STEM concentrator, he also loves the humanities. He felt that he’d choose to take the core classes at Chicago even if they weren’t mandatory. But Chicago still had choice within the core, whereas at Columbia everyone takes the same exact courses. That restriction didn’t appeal to him, so Columbia was not on his list.</p>
<p>As @MYOS1634 said, the LACs (even top ones) attract relatively fewer prestige-hunters than the Ivies. As a consequence, the proportion of applicants who think fit is most important will be greater in any LAC’s app pool compared to an Ivy. If a kid/parents care a lot about prestige, applying to 8 LACs is not what they will do.</p>
<p>Would anyone even be able to agree on what the 8 most selective LACs are? Berea and Alice Lloyd are among the 8 LACs with the lowest acceptance rates, but very few people would consider them prestigious.</p>
<p>Many people would go by the USNWR rankings. Which is stupid, obviously. At least the Ivies are in a group that doesn’t change.</p>
<p>As for Hunt’s point that the differences among the Ivies aren’t that great, I guess I agree and disagree. They are all old schools in the Northeast. They are all full of high-achieving students. But they each have unique attributes and campus cultures and strengths and weaknesses. I knew this even in the dark ages when I was applying to schools. So I can’t imagine now, with the information we have, that all eight schools would appeal to a student equally.</p>
<p>@sally305 Cornell and Columbia could not be more different from each other. I can’t imagine how a student could possible apply to both. You would have to have absolutely no care for anything aside from academics and not many people feel that way.</p>
<p>Another point on this: most students end up liking the college they attend, even if it wasn’t their first choice, and even if they didn’t know much about it. They often end up liking things they thought they wouldn’t like (such as the location), or finding that things they don’t like just don’t make that much difference to the overall experience. So I don’t think it’s that crazy to focus on academics in choosing a college.</p>
<p>@Hunt In my opinion, college is as much about the experience as it is about the academics. You become an expert through internships that everyone has access to. Not by sitting in a classroom with a famous professor.</p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with weighing prestige heavily… For some industries, namely investment banking and the like, the school you went to makes a very big difference.</p>
<p>@yikesyikesyikes True, but the connections you make in college through school events and internships will likely propel you further in life than just having Yale on a resume. Many banking companies do recruit from Wharton, but if a student mainly concerned about job prospects, they would look at lists of schools that job recruiters love to recruit from. And you would be surprised at how few (if any) Ivies are on the list and how many state schools are actually there. The University of Florida was number one 2011 I believe.</p>
<p>@AnnieBeats All valid points. However, it is worthy to note that the strongest alumni relationships in the banking world are found in ivies or schools with programs comparable to or better than the ivies (such as UMich Ross, Berkeley Haas, NYU Stern, etc.). Going to what people on Wall Street call “Target Schools” makes it much easier to network and land interviews to break into this very competitive industry. Is it unfortunate? Maybe. But we, the great people of confidential, cannot do anything about it. That is the nature of the securities and exchanges industry, and that is likely how it is always going to be in the forseeable future.</p>