Your kid takes the top scholarship instead of the top school. What's next?

Parents Forum
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<p>dstark has asked a few questions on another thread. :eek: Rather than eat up all available bandwidth for that thread I thought starting a thread would be a better idea. ;)</p>

<p>


It may take a week but I'm happy to do it as I know somebody will be here in a week or is already here. This thread is for anybody that has been or will be in this situation and is NOT personal to our situation, or to Rhodes. Just similar situations and similar differences in the schools. Top 50 vs. HYP and the uber-elite. Well, it is personal but hopefully you get my drift. Please answer out with your stories.</p>

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<p>As a very short preface my D turned down admission to Yale and Amherst to accept a Bellingrath Scholarship at Rhodes College. Rhodes is a Top 50 LAC in Memphis with about 1600 kids. The Bellingrath is a full ride.</p>

<p>I will take the last one first .
[quote]
Or, does she not think about these things at all? She has moved on?

[/quote]

There is only one person in my house that ever questions her decision to attend Rhodes or her happiness at Rhodes. And he's a bit of a jerk about it.</p>

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<p>"There is only one person in my house that ever questions her decision to attend Rhodes or her happiness at Rhodes. And he's a bit of a jerk about it."</p>

<p>I'm glad the other people are sane in your house. :)</p>

<p>Curmudgeon, the questions I asked you came from your posts, Mini's posts, and a couple of posts I have read in the last couple of days. </p>

<p>I hope this doesn't confuse you. ;)</p>

<p>Kirmum wrote this...</p>

<p>"Andover Summer Program Worth It? </p>

<hr>

<p>Nephew was accepted to the summer program. I have been surprised at some of the kids Andover has taken for the summer, kids with lower averages and scores. Is this a good learning situation for a very bright student? Does anyone recommend other programs where there's still time to apply?."</p>

<p>So, is going to class with kids with lower average gpas and scores a good learning situation for a very bright student?</p>

<p>Tarhunt wrote an amalgam of a recommendation letter. Here it is...</p>

<p>"To Whom it May Concern:</p>

<p>I have known John Smith since he entered my AP Language Arts class as a high school junior, and continued with my AP Language Arts class as a senior. It is my distinct pleasure, indeed an honor, to recommend him to your school.</p>

<p>I have been teaching for twenty-five years, twenty-three of them in high schools that send high percentages of graduates to the most selective colleges in the country. John stands out among this very talented group of students. In fact, he's easily the best I've ever taught.</p>

<p>You will already know that he is a National Merit Scholarship Finalist and a Junior Olympian. You will also know that his grades are nearly as good as it's possible for them to be. What you won't know is how he gets those grades.</p>

<p>I have had many parrots in my classes. They memorize and repeat back, and I give them 'As' because they do nothing wrong. John is not a parrot. Last year, for instance, when we were studying "Anthony and Cleopatra," John provided a detailed analysis of a minor scene, using Plutarch and three other Roman sources for historical context. When we studied Moliere, John did his own translation, pointing out shaky translations in the text we were using, and providing the entire class with insights into Moliere's true meaning in the anachronistic French. John's gets "As" only because there is not a higher mark.</p>

<p>John doesn't do these things because he has to. He does them for love. Ordinarily, I would worry that his energetic scholarship would create social problems for John, but he has a knack of always being right and causing his peers to love him for it. He is a natural leader. Practically every day, I pass John at least once in the hallway. He always has a smile and a wave for me and every other teacher, even though he is surrounded by his friends in a kind of moving entourage.</p>

<p>I?m sure you?ll notice John's list of extracurricular activities. It seems like a rare week when John's name isn't in the newspaper for some new accomplishment. I won't go into those here, except to say that he is not only good at anything he turns his hand to, he absolutely excels.</p>

<p>If I were you, I wouldn't simply offer John admission to your school. I would actively recruit him. He's that good, and he's that impressive. Besides, you'll like him. Everyone does.</p>

<p>Sincerely,"</p>

<p>I read this letter and I think, one this kid is amazing , amalgam or not.
Two, how many kids like this make up the top elites?
Three, how do kids like this influence my education?
Four how important are kids like this to my education?
Five, how stupid am I? I have no idea what this kid is talking about.</p>

<p>So Curmudgeon and others? Those are my questions. The answers to these questions can influence the choice of schools.</p>

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<p>We're in that situation now, too, although not with schools at the level of "Top 50 LAC" or HYPSM. My current HS senior S has been accepted to 3 schools so far: a very large very well-known state school (but OOS so the cost is similar to the privates where he's been accepted), a small not-household-name but with-excellent-reputation school, and a small mostly-unknown-unless-you're-from-the-area school. The latter has offered him merit money to the tune of nearly the entire tuition for four years (whereas one of the other two turned him down for a token departmental scholarship), and he is now indicating that it's probably at the top of his choice list. While he's still waiting for 2 more decisions, I'm guessing it's going to be hard to beat this offer.</p>

<p>I am struggling with whether I should care. We are a full-pay family: there will be no need-based aid for us, in fact we haven't even filed a FAFSA. This needs to be his decision, and we'll insist he sit down and go over all the pros/cons of each school before he decides, but I know I am wrestling the inner mootmom over how important it will be in the long run, and whether he'll remain satisfied with his decision 5 or 10 or 20 years from now.</p>

<p>In the end, though, it's just 4 years of college, and maybe for most kids it's not the momentous earth-shattering decision some of us parents are making it out to be. Especially given that these are all good schools, where plenty of students get excellent educations. </p>

<p>(PS: My older S is at MIT, so we have experience in the world of top school admissions also. Maybe that's coloring my thoughts some? Hmm.... I really didn't think of myself as a prestige snob, I hope I'm not going that direction in my old age...)</p>

<p>EDIT: OK after reading dstark's post directly above, I have a feeling my post is off-topic for this thread. If so, my apologies. But I'm still struggling with the issue I mentioned. ;)</p>

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<p>My parents encouraged me to come to my first-choice (Barnard) after I was accepted, even though I had been accepted to two other schools that, with a combination of hefty scholarships and financial aid, I could have gone to nearly for free, and several others that would mostly have been cheaper than Barnard. While I'm aware every day of how valuable my education here is, I've also been thinking that I could have done just fine at one of the other, considerably less prestigious schools and emerged a lot more well off financially as well. My parents, the ones who are currently bearing large loans on their shoulders, have never, not once said a word about it.</p>

<p>But being on the other side of the fence--as someone who turned down a great scholarship for a great school--I would say I would have thrived at one of the other schools, particularly Simmons, which I feel doesn't get nearly as much recognition as it should (a bit like Rhodes, perhaps). Maybe the triumph of getting into your best fit, first choice, whatever, can be enough for someone who chooses to go to the scholarship school instead. Still, as a second-semester sophomore, I wouldn't have made a different choice.</p>

<p>Dstark makes a good point about John Smith. There's a lot to be said for being the top student, and what happens when a classroom is full of John Smiths? That's another plus (although perhaps a rather snobbish one) for going to the scholarship school instead, and one that I admit has been part of the waning of my rose-colored glasses for Barnard. Still, going to a school because you know you'll be at the top there is not the same as going to a school where you are determined to work your way to the top.</p>

<p>I guess the ideal is a top scholarship at the top school, no?</p>

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<p>Mootmom, not off topic.</p>

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<p>dstark:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Hard to say. Surely, there are a number of obnoxious parrots in the elite schools, but there are also ones like a young lady I know who will be attending Harvard next year. She won the Intel, is a top athlete, and is just about the nicest and scariest smart kid I've ever met.</p></li>
<li><p>Read any of the Socratic dialogues written by Plato. I think that will give you one of the more important answers. There are others, as well. A culture of scholarship and creative inquiry tends to change norms of behavior. A kid who goes to a party school is more likely to party than if he goes to a non-party school. The same is true for a school that loves learning. Finally, professors build their classes around what they think the class can handle. My own classes have been dumbed down over the years.</p></li>
<li><p>Being around a kid like John, and debating things with him, will help you understand how he thinks, and you can mimic him if the way he thinks is better than the way you think. You can also learn to imitate the way he takes on debate so that he makes friends doing it. And, if you admire him as I would have, you might try to emulate him. Emulating him would cause you to become a better student, perhaps.</p></li>
</ol>

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<p>I'm wondering why Rhodes is not better known.</p>

<p>1) It is an LAC. Nobody has ever hear of Carleton or Bowdoin either.
2) It is in Memphis, not the Northeast.
3) It's football team doesn't play on TV.
4) There seems to be a bit of a bias in the rankings in favor of schools outside the south, especially in the category of reputation or peer review.</p>

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<p>My mother did that almost 60 year ago -- chose a full ride at Mills College in Oakland CA (a three-day train trip from home) over Radcliffe, against the wishes of her Radcliffe-alumna mother and her three Harvard uncles (all of whom lived on the same block with her). She loved Mills, and thought she got a wonderful education there, very proud of it. She has stayed in touch with her Mills friends all her life (95% of which has been spent within a few miles of the house where she grew up, in a Northeastern city).</p>

<p>I've only heard her question her decision once, around the time Sandra Day O'Connor was appointed to the Supreme Court. She told me that maybe if she had gone to Radcliffe, she would have been less insistent on going to Harvard Law School, and that if she had gone to Yale Law School instead, she might have finished law school and had a career like O'Connor's, rather than teaching high school. It was not a line of thought she was interested in pursuing much with me, since if she had gone to Yale Law School she would never have met my father, and I wouldn't have existed.</p>

<p>(She was in the second class of women at Harvard Law School, and, I believe, was the first woman to drop out of it. She loved Harvard, but hated how she was treated by many of the Law School faculty, and thought many of them slighted policy analysis in favor of doctrine. The HLS women of her day tended not to have pathbreaking legal careers, unlike their contemporaries at Yale, Columbia, Stanford . . . .)</p>

<p>She certainly didn't encourage me or my sisters to do the same thing, though. I was virtually forbidden to apply anywhere but Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, and she was not so sure about Yale and Princeton. (I remember her actually calling a friend who had a child at Yale, to find out whether he was really stimulated by it.) One of my sisters chose between Dartmouth and Stanford, the other went to the University of Arizona with some merit scholarship, but it was clear that my mother was upset at her failure to get accepted at a school with a better name.</p>

<p>I'm not certain exactly what her 17-year-old motives were. She says it was a combination of worrying about family finances (her mother was a young widow and had to live the rest of her life on an inheritance from her recently dead father), rebelliousness, and feeling flattered that she had been offered the scholarship. Doubtless all of that was true, although I suspect her uncles would have found a way to help pay for Radcliffe. A cynic who knew her well might also point out that at several points in her life she made a choice to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond, and that she may have felt more comfortable that way, but I'm sure she would deny it.</p>

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<p>Not to even more completely confuddle the issue, but rorosen asks whether or not a top school has a definable dollar value or pecuniary worth , independent of what your financial circumstances are. Is Harvard worth $25K a year more than Centre? Should that "value" so determined be for everyone or is it entirely dependent on your own family's possibly peculiar situation? Is there a value apart from the pocketbook of those looking at it?</p>

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<p>Hey, y'all are cooking. Anyone care to try to narrow it down?</p>

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<p>JHS:</p>

<p>Whew!!! You've taken a load off my mind. For some time now, I've admired your posts so much that I was worried you might be an alter ego. I've thought about multiple personality disorder a lot, recently.</p>

<p>Now that I know your background, I know for sure that you're not me.</p>

<p>It's quite a relief, let me tell you.</p>

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<p>Narrow what down, cur?</p>

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<p>curm</p>

<p>Their loss. My son just LOVED the schools we visited in the Midwest. I do understand there are reasons for wanting your kids close to home, but if it can be worked out to have them farther afield, it's an admissions advantage.</p>

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<p>


Not in the slightest . When D was taking her week of required comtemplation on this decision she arrived at the following "Dad. I understand Yale is a world class opportunity but so is the St.Jude's Program at Rhodes.This is what I want to do. Research as an undergrad at a top medical facility doing non-grunt work on cutting edge research and having summers of paid work, and the opportunity to get my name on a paper in a ( peer reviewed) journal. That's worldclass opportunity, too."</p>

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<p>So JHS, what did your sister think of her education at Arizona?</p>

<p>I read posts like this and think there are many opportunities ...</p>

<p>from Curmudgeon talking about the Bonner Scholars at Rhodes...</p>

<p>"If you are passionate about effecting positive change in the world, you may be a good candidate for this award. Each year, we select 15 incoming first-year students with exceptional records of leadership, community service and/or social justice work to participate in a unique, four-year leadership program.</p>

<p>As a Bonner Scholar, you will be challenged to connect your academic studies, personal beliefs, leadership skills and philosophy of service to real-life organizations and situations</p>

<p>What benefits will I receive as a Bonner Scholar?
An award of $12,100 per year in addition to any other financial aid for which you qualify (not to exceed full tuition, room and board)
$2,500 in earnings and living expenses for each of the two summers you participate in service projects
An additional $500 available to senior Bonner Scholars for a final summer service project or for a special project during senior year
A four-year program of leadership development, reflection and service activities".</p>

<p>And Curmudgeon talking about Rhodes....
"Obviously this is dramatic but if you really want to blow your mind and all your pre-conceived notions of merit aid at need only schools think about this . They give you $31K of the direct costs of $40K in our example , paid for by grant (direct costs are R+B, tuition and fees) , leaving you with $9K and you can still get your loan and your workstudy if you want it. $3000 and $2000. So out of pocket the family pays direct costs of $40K with a $31K grant, $3K in loans, and $2K in W/S and they shell out of pocket $4K of the $40K direct costs. Capische?"</p>

<p>Mini's response talking about her daughter at Smith....
Other than no loans required, this pretty precisely describes what my d. ultimately got, except that there was a travel grant to India, Cambodia, and Thailand, a $2k paid summer internship, free music lessons, a paid research assistantship in the first two years, help with travel to Italy this year, and (we expect), more coming next year. </p>

<p>Yes, preferential packaging".</p>

<p>Of course, these schools aren't chopped liver.</p>

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<p>Man, by the time I type a reply, hunt and peck, it's totally irrelevant. I'm going out for a hot tub beore the new batch of snow makes it impossible.</p>

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<p>Just need to get somebody smart to try to boil this down to its essence, which I think is what ro was trying to do. To universalize it in a way. I'm trying to answer Rhodes questions accurately but in such a way that they could be answers from any similarly situated school.</p>

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<p>I always thought Tarhunt and JHS were the same person. I'm shocked they are not.</p>

<p>Tarhunt wrote...
"Finally, professors build their classes around what they think the class can handle. My own classes have been dumbed down over the years."</p>

<p>I find this disturbing and one of the better reasons to go to a "better" school.</p>

<p>Tarhunt, I appreciate your not answering question number 5. :)</p>

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<p>bethie, got any room in that tub? My head's spinning , too. I feel like Forrest Gump at meeting of the Algonquin Roundtable.</p>