<p>I was just perusing the facebook group for our incoming freshman, and I must say, I am very impressed. These are the schools I saw that incoming freshman turned down for Tufts:</p>
<p>Princeton
Columbia
Northwestern (at least 5+ people)
Amherst (again, like 5+ people on a small thread with like 60 responses)
JHU (quite a few)
Barnard (a few)
Lehigh (a bunch)
Duke
UVA
Emory
Middlebury
Vassar (a bunch)
Vanderbilt
BC (a bunch)
NYU (a ton)
Smith
Mt. Holyoke
Wellesley
CMU
Every UC school
Georgetown
UPenn
UChicago (a surprising number)
USC (a bunch)
Williams (a couple)
Cornell
Dartmouth
McGill (a few)
Colgate (a bunch)
William & Mary
LSE
Edinburgh
Wesleyan
Sarah Lawrence
Almost every LAC in the top 40 or so</p>
<p>Wow...these kids are going to be amazing. :)</p>
<p>what is tuft...im sorry... i don't know</p>
<p>A small university in the Boston area known for International Relations, Pre-Med, etc.</p>
<p>Duffman, you might be even more impressed to hear that this incoming class is not unique in the caliber of schools they're picking Tufts over... that list sounds pretty consistent with all the kids I've met at Tufts during my four years there, and the ones before, too. ;)</p>
<p>^ heh, interesting.</p>
<p>was Harvard not on your list? I've met at least five kids in the class of 09 who turned down Harvard to go to Tufts.</p>
<p>lol, but oops, one of them is transferring to Harvard this year ;-)</p>
<p>I think most often I hear of kids turning down: Cornell, Northwestern, Hopkins and NYU for Tufts.</p>
<p>^ ^ Yeah I would agree with those schools and add several peer LACs like Wellesley, Wesleyan, Middlebury, etc.</p>
<p>Tufts is definitely underrated. so are W&M, Davidson, Wake Forest, Carleton. I would take these over some of the large "name" schools in a second.</p>
<p>Why would you turn down Harvard for Tufts? What does Tufts offer that Harvard doesn't?</p>
<p>I know a girl who transfered to Harvard from Tufts, but she says she worked harder here :) A lot of people (the few) who went to Tufts over Harvard mostly did so out of personal fit, or at least one of my friends says that's the reason why. She didn't like the elitist atmostphere and for whatever reason really hated the environment there. I dunno if I would be able turn down Harvard if I had to choose between the two, but in the end everything works out well. I am, however, very happy with the education I received at Tufts. Sure I won't necessarily have the same wow factor when talking to people at cocktail parties, but I'm already in a top graduate school anyways :)</p>
<p>Very few people who apply to Tufts and Harvard choose Tufts, but plenty of people choose Tufts over Harvard by not applying to Harvard.</p>
<p>True, I didn't apply. Anyway he originally chose Tufts because he couldn't stand the idea of Harvard kids being obsessed with themselves, and had heard that the undergraduate education there wasn't very good - professors don't care about teaching, only their research. But he had a good reason for transferring, I don't dispute his decision.</p>
<p>Edit: Oh, but to answer the general question "why turn down Harvard for Tufts?" In addition to the ones already stated, how about the idea of "Tufts has a better program in what I want to study than Harvard"? I mean, I chose Tufts with only a vague idea of what I wanted to study, and ended up pursuing IR and Econ. I lucked out, because it just so happens that Tufts has arguably the best undergraduate IR program. But other kids specifically wanted to go to Tufts b/c they knew they wanted to study IR and that Tufts was the place to do it. That type of thing.</p>
<p>There's also the reverse-AA argument. I've heard stories about the top schools accepting slightly underqualified URMs/athletes/legacies in the interest of diversity. They accept these kids in place of qualified kids from overrepresented areas, like New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Mass, California. I feel like all those kids who deserved spots at "top" schools, but were not taken because too many kids from their area applied there, end up choosing a school like Tufts. As a result, I feel like I'm surrounded by awesome candidates. I mean, I've taken classes at Columbia and would not say at all that the people there were smarter or more engaging than the people in my Tufts classes. In fact, some of them amazed me with how unintelligent they were.</p>
<p>That's not to say that there aren't less-qualified people at Tufts. But I feel good that Tufts apparently recognized some qualities in me that they found attractive and took me, and I ended up fitting in here quite nicely. I guess the admissions office had a feeling that I had the potential to be a Tufts student. Meanwhile, the valedictorian of a school on Wyoming who got straight B's in all special education classes walked into Harvard, and isn't smart enough to handle the work and leaves after a semester...not exactly enriching to me as a fellow student.</p>
<p>Tufts has a lot going for it as a school... if I were accepted to every school I applied to besides my first choice (UChicago), I probably would have chosen Tufts. Boston is a college student's dream, I liked the size and location of the school, and I felt that the school was missing the holier-than-thou Ivy League pretension that I wanted to avoid at all costs, but the students I know who go there are all ridiculously smart. The school also had a warmth to it... students were happy to be there and weren't crying about not getting into another top school (as Duffman's post reflects, a lot of students had the choice of a higher-ranked school anyway).</p>
<p>Too bad Ben is obviously a loser for stalking the class of 2011's facebook group! ;-)</p>
<p>lol, I left the group renee :-p</p>
<p>dude...not going to lie...totally glanced over the class of 2010's myspace group last summer to see who was living near me in South hahaha</p>