<p>Curm - are there academic scholarships at Yale med or FA?</p>
<p>Just need-based FA. But unlike most, there is grant aid above the “unit loan” and the parents’ and student’s “contribution”. Very generous in the med school FA world.</p>
<p>Compared to Yale UG FA? Not so much. lol That “unit loan” (that an orphaned church-mouse would still have to take out) is pretty big.</p>
<p>My niece’s college advisor at Penn told her NOT to take Orgo at her state university during the summer to get that “easy” A. Clearly, he must have thought that it made a difference where the course was taken. FWIW, she ended up as a Rhodes Scholar finalist and had several full ride offers to medical schools, including Penn Med. Those were academic scholarships.
She was accepted to all the top medical schools (including UCSF and she was not even a CA resident) and graduated from Harvard Med 2 years ago. She didn’t receive a full ride to Harvard, but she did receive significant aid, both need based and academic scholarships. Looking back I doubt she would have changed a thing in choosing an Ivy UG and Med school.</p>
<p>how can you possibly have any regrets after having records like that??</p>
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<p>There has been a lot of research done on the question of, “For an individual student, how much does it matter if a student goes to a prestigious college?” To summarize, the answer to that is “a lot less than the conventional wisdom believes.” There is also no evidence (aside from anecdotes from anonymous posters on the Internet) that a given student will have a higher GPA at a prestigious college than at a state school - again, the conventional wisdom to the contrary. </p>
<p>You’re asking the right question. The answer, in my opinion, is that picking a college based on prestige is a dumb idea. That doesn’t mean that there are not colleges that are prestigious that are worthwhile for some students. But the research clearly shows that there is no correlation between prestige and educational quality or prestige and graduate/professional program admission - and this next clause is important - for an individual, motivated student.</p>
<p>^Wasn’t planning to post on this thread, but after my name was mentioned, decided I didn’t want to disappoint all my fans.</p>
<p>^^Also, to qualify my post a bit. There is evidence that the very most prestigious colleges (roughly the top 2% on the basis of selectivity) do confer a slight advantage in high-prestige law and business school admissions, and in entrance to some medical specialties. But for regular medical school admissions, the research shows there’s no advantage.</p>
<p>Annasdad rules</p>
<p>Annasdad- thank you! I know there are many of us who value your perspective and intelligence.</p>
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<p>The research has not demonstrated any correlation between prestige (/ selectivity) and educational quality, as defined and measured by the researchers.</p>
<p>For example, some researchers find no correlation between attending a more prestigious/selective college and achieving higher lifetime earnings. Is that (higher lifetime earnings) in fact a good marker of educational quality? If not, then is some other outcome a better marker? Some researchers (like Pascarella and Terenzini) seem to have given up altogether on post-graduate outcomes as indicators of educational quality. It’s just too hard to tease out the treatment effects of college education from the selection effects of college admission. So, they focus on something else, like the level of “engagement” in the college educational experience. But what kinds of engagement are demonstrably most worth having, if you rule out post-graduate outcomes to measure the value of the engagement? Researchers associated with the NSSE surveys seem to assume that certain kinds of engagement are self-evidently valuable enough to be worth measuring (e.g. the number of 5-/10-/20-page papers required per term). What about the value of “engaging” with your Harvard prince and his security detail, or with the founder of the next Facebook over a game of cards? That stuff is hard to measure. So is the value of engaging with one of the country’s leading scholars of Shakespeare or Mayan hieroglyphs.</p>
<p>I would agree, though, that prestige (per se) isn’t worth taking on a big pile of debt. One should have better reasons for wanting to attend a more expensive school.</p>
<p>Pascarella and Terenzini are not the researchers. They are the summarizers of 30 years of research done by dozens of researchers using a variety of techniques and a number of measures of educational outcomes. None have found any correlation between prestige and any educational outcome, although many of the studies have looked for just such a result. There ARE demonstrated correlations between the characteristics measured by the NSSE (and CLA) and educational outcomes - though, curiously, all of the so-called “top” colleges either decline to participate in those programs or refuse to make their results public. </p>
<p>Wouldn’t you think that if these emperors did indeed have fine suits of clothes they would be willing to show them in public?</p>
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<p>I wouldn’t either. :)</p>
<p>Add my name to the list of Annasdad fans.</p>
<p>If you want to read more, here is the entire report: <a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/npec/pdf/kuh_team_report.pdf[/url]”>http://nces.ed.gov/npec/pdf/kuh_team_report.pdf</a></p>
<p>Even though the selectivity and prestige does not affect future earnings or success, I would still want my son to attend a Top 10 school if possible. If I was dripping with cash and he was accepted to a very prestigious school I would pay for without a second thought.</p>
<p>The only exception would be if he was gunning for med school, then the wise thing to do would be to go to a solid university or college to give him the best chance at high grades.</p>
<p>I just started reading this thread today, but I can chip in. Why go to a prestigious school? Simple: because it opens doors. Even 30 years later, I find that my school’s reputation helps to establish me. Top schools certainly have no monopoly on smart, talented people. I teach as an adjunct at several grad schools, and I can tell you that the best of the public college kids are just as good as anyone, but the selective nature of top colleges makes it easier to find good people there.</p>
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<p>It’s not just the “top” (selective, private) colleges that either haven’t participated or refuse to make their results public. Last time I checked the results that had been posted to a USA Today site, results from a wide variety of schools were not available. The few selective, private colleges that did show results (a few LACs as I recall) had rather high scores. The couple of relatively selective, prestigious, large state universities I noticed did not. </p>
<p>I would expect most of the so-called “top” schools (especially LACs and research universities with relatively small class sizes) to score well on the NSSE engagement measures. I think we can only speculate as to why the results might not be available. I’d love to see them … as well as any description of correlations between the characteristics measured by the NSSE (and CLA) and educational outcomes.</p>
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<p>The research shows that it opens a very few, selective doors - primarily on Wall Street, at very prestigious law firms, and a very few other places. For the most part, it doesn’t matter.</p>
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<p>True - but with the exception of the very few so-called “top” LACs that you mention, the complete absence of so-called “top” research universities (Ivy and their ilk) is striking. Wouldn’t you think they’d want to crow about what a good job they’re doing - if indeed, the data would show such a thing?</p>
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<p>I would think that a more likely indicator than just class size would be the dedication of the faculty to undergraduate education. I don’t think that’s the priority at the big, prestigious research universities. It’s not what gets them their grant funding, and it’s not what contributes to their prestige among their colleagues. So why would they focus on it? Especially as long as enough people believe the myth that there is an advantage to undergraduate educations from such places.</p>
<p>“Engagement” (by faculty with students) must take some combination of opportunity and motivation. Smaller class sizes create a better opportunity for engagement. However, the professor does still need to be motivated to take advantage of that opportunity (and not overly distracted by other tasks). The trouble is, it’s easy to measure class size, but hard to measure the dedication of faculty to undergraduate education. </p>
<p>I don’t know why highly motivated, capable students at expensive, selective schools would long tolerate disengaged professors and a lack of challenging content. I suppose some of these schools may have corrupt admission processes (such that many of their students aren’t really so motivated and capable) or that something happens to students after they are admitted (to make them less motivated and more tolerant of mediocrity). If that were the case, though, I don’t know why they would still do well according to any number of outcome measurements. Maybe annasdad, or the 30 years of research he cites, are referring to different kinds of outcomes.</p>