<p>Personally, I would turn down Harvard for 6 or 7 year medical programs which give you BA/MD in 6 or 7 years, which is really cool. You situation with your parents is pretty unfortunate because USC is decent. Apply to the ones your parents want and get a couple others that you’re sure you’ll get in to. By the way, Amherst is an amazing college (now #2 liberal arts college.) You mentioned Upenn for PennState; PennState has an honors program which is basically as prestigious as UPenn. I probably still woul stick with UPenn although it is wrong to choose a college based on prestige.</p>
<p>Haha, I can’t get away with not applying- my parents do have to pay the application fees and fees to send those schools my SAT scores and whatnot. I was originally going to fill my essay with grammatical errors and throw in a last paragraph about how I only want to go there because “it’s in the ivy league, that’s like the MAJOR league, and that makes it like famous!” And then for Stanford write about how it was in the movie Orange County and how funny Jack Black is, and about how I want to be a gambling major like in 21 for my MIT app, and tell Harvard that I’m actually applying for a janitorial position so that I can be a math genius, like in Good Will Hunting, and for Yale I was going to type in all caps about how upset I was that they did not admit Blair Waldorf from Gossip Girl, and for Princeton I was going to ask if it really was where the princes were, and if the school was a castle- because that’s what Hilary Duff told me in A Cinderella Story.</p>
<p>I had this brilliant, genius plan to just mess with the admissions people and bother them, but now I can’t because my mom says she’s going to read all of my submissions. Oh well.</p>
<p>But anyway, I know right? USC really isn’t a bad school. It’s ranked like, 26th I think, and it’s got basically everything that I want in a college! I do need to research more schools though. What’s extra ridiculous about my parents though is that I’m being forced to apply to schools that don’t even offer one of the majors I want- it’s insane!</p>
<p>Haha I would totallly turn down the acceptance if they gave me NO financial aid =]</p>
<p>Yes but in this hypothetical situation you have the money. your grandparents left you a trust specifically for college and the exact amount you need for tuition, books, the meal plan, housing, and whatever else is in there.</p>
<p>Yeah I wouldn’t go to an Ivy League school. Too elite and upper class for me. I can’t handle those people.</p>
<p>Personally, I’d go with Stanford/MIT/CalTech if I was technically inclined, UCLA or one of the top public schools if I wasn’t.</p>
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<p>It’s true that many turn down Harvard to go to peer institutions, but not all do. Every year on CC we see kids agonizing over the Harvard decision. And every year we see some choose “lesser” schools. Sometimes for financial reasons, sometimes for regional preference or religious reasons, sometimes they’ve been scared off by all the CC exaggerations and falsehoods about how Harvard is cut-throat or doesn’t care about undergrads, and sometimes they just fell in love with another school.</p>
<p>It’s true. </p>
<p>This past year I declined HYPS for a scholarship to Michigan, based on a combination of fit and money. My roommate also declined Stanford, one of my hall-mates Dartmouth, one of my great friends Cornell and Wharton, and another hall-mate Columbia; I know of all of these people who turned down Ivy or Ivy-level prestige already and I haven’t even arrived on campus yet.</p>
<p>I think that for students who don’t receive much need based financial aid and for students who like bigger schools and more complete college towns, choosing a top public over an ivy league school isn’t as rare as one would think. Granted, in the cases of Michigan and Cal, the difference in prestige between the non HYPS top privates is pretty small.</p>
<p>Maybe for Wharton, Princeton, or Oxford.</p>
<p>I know a gal at school who turned down Stanford, and not for monetary reasons. All it takes removal of oneself from the rankings, that’s not so hard.</p>
<p>Assuming that I had the resources to pay for the tuition, I can’t imagine myself doing that.</p>
<p>Oh! I can’t BELIEVE I forgot! My sister turned down Harvard for a full ride UVA scholarship. That was her reason though; money, and in my posed hypothetical situation, money is no issue.</p>
<p>Anyway, for those people that wouldn’t choose another school over an ivy:
why wouldn’t you?</p>
<p>Oh! I can’t BELIEVE I forgot! My sister turned down Harvard for a full ride UVA scholarship. That was her reason though; money, and in my posed hypothetical situation, money is no issue.</p>
<p>Anyway, for those people that wouldn’t choose another school over an ivy:
why wouldn’t you?</p>
<p>For grad school, if NYU or Duke or Chicago gave me a full ride, yes, otherwise no</p>
<p>There was a thread like this a few months back. I tried to point out that from what I’ve seen, Harvard is far from a one-size-fits-all college…but nobody understood what I meant and I got shouted down.</p>
<p>What I meant was that there seems to me a TON of reasons that Harvard wouldn’t be a good choice for some people, and that people who turn it down shouldn’t be considered odd or stupid. It’s like saying actress/model X is generally considered the most famous and beautiful woman on earth…but that doesn’t mean she’d be just right for EVERYBODY.</p>
<p>Places I could EASILY understand people picking over Harvard:</p>
<p>Notre Dame, Georgetown, Michigan, Williams, Amherst, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Stanford, USC, UCLA, Berkeley, Pomona, Chicago, Northwestern, Hopkins, Vanderbilt, Oxford, Cambridge, McGill, Toronto, Virginia, UNC, Dartmouth, Brown, Naval Academy, West Point, Rice, Texas, U of Hawaii, Wellesley, Smith, Barnard, </p>
<p>In other words, there are dozens of criteria that have varying importance to different people…not everybody is obsessed with going to the most famous college in the country in one of the most pretentious cities on earth (Cambridge).</p>
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<p>You have GOT to be kidding me.</p>
<p>No one would turn down Harvard for U of Hawaii.</p>
<p>Do you have ANY idea how crappy U of Hawaii is?</p>
<p>I would choose Stanford over Harvard, but thats about it</p>
<p>I would chose MIT over Harvard in a heartbeat. </p>
<p>Over other schools, probably not. Part of me would like to say I would since there is no chance of me getting into Harvard I want to reject them, like I expect them to reject me, but I would totally go if I got in full ride. Plus they have great grade inflation which is good for med school :)</p>
<p>Yea… I applied ED and got into my school, but if I had applied RD and gotten into Harvard, I probably would have turned it down. Fit matters so much more than ranking…
And… I know plenty of people that have turned down Ivies for non-Ivies. I know people at Williams, Bowdoin, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and Swarthmore that did that… it’s not a big deal. Just because a college is 3rd in the rankings or whatever doesn’t make it the school for you, unless that’s the only thing that matters to you.
That said, I wouldn’t cross out any school judged on stereotypes. Like, I wouldn’t turn down the Ivy League because they may or may not be elitist, or a LAC because they’re too crunchy, etc. Do what’s best for you. :)</p>
<p>Only for Princeton, Yale, Swarthmore, or U Chicago.</p>
<p>I’d choose MIT, Stanford, Chicago, and Princeton over Harvard.</p>