<p>Curmudgeon, it's your job to take the posts out of numerical order and rearrange the posts in a more logical way. :)</p>
<p>I think the "what if" is only human. My oldest, who goes to a great school but might have chosen a bigger adventure, had regrets later.</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>Actually, dstark that was Colgate where D was named an Alumni Memorial Scholar. (Except for us it was $11K where in the example I created it was $9K left to pay.) Rhodes is easy to calculate - we pay zero. </p>
<p>For anyone who doesn't know, Yale and Rhodes were $25K/yr different and Yale's award was subject to the vagaries of income. Also, it is helpful to remember that my D plans on attending medical school and we have agreed to spend her UG money there. D felt strongly that she wanted the freedom less debt would bring, so she could chose her career based on her desires rather than a difficult loan payment.</p>
<p>Kirmum, since you wrote , "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>you have doubts about sending students to schools with other students with lower grades and test scores. Maybe for reasons Tarhunt has articulated.</p>
<p>I wonder does that mean that I am hurting the education of students with better grades and test scores than me? </p>
<p>Why would these top students want to go to school with me? Maybe, they don't.</p>
<p>I look at the education Curmudgeon's kid and Mini's kid are getting and they look great to me. This tells me there are places to get a great education besides HYPSM. So where is the line drawn?</p>
<p>I sure don't want to have my kids go to a place where the professors have to dumb down the material. That's one line easy to draw.</p>
<p>Well my kid is in the enviable or unenviable (depends on your POV and the question at hand) position of having been to 3 schools. One top 50 but not elite, with merit $$. One top (but not tippy-top) LAC due to Katrina. And now one of the elites (but not HYPSM).</p>
<p>For him, the top-50 with the merit $$ was very much the best fit. (For us, the price fit oh so nicely, btw ;) ). The academics at all three schools were good in his opinion. He found academic peers at all three. His comment: the kids are no smarter at his current "elite" school. But they are much more intense and un-balanced. Obsessed with GPA. This may well be due to the particular school and the particular field (Engineering). YMMV.</p>
<p>He had visited his current school and really liked it prior to the senior year in hs application process. But he never even applied because he next visited Tulane and found his "home". He didn't feel the need for an elite. When he had to leave Tulane due to the Katrina debacle, he was quite thrilled to have this more elite, higher-ranked school open to him. </p>
<p>But, really, it is not better <em>for him.</em> And why, oh why do we all (moi aussi, guilty as charged) assume that the higher-ranked school is the better school? We have really bought into this ranking business, whether we mean to or not. </p>
<p>Is Harvard (or Yale or Hopkins or ...) worth $25K a year more than Centre or Rhodes or Tulane? My take - and I am paying that difference: It is worth it to the extent that your life's path will be a function of the ranking of your school. If you are going into a world of academic elitists, a world where the ranking of your school continues to matter, then it is "worth" it. I think that is a very small world (probably existing largely in the mind of a select few). I think my kid had the same opportunities to solve the world's problems in dorm room discussions, the same opportunities to learn the necessary body of knowledge at all three places. I think his career trajectory (and he is in a career-oriented field) will not be noticeably different because he is at an elite, although his current school's name may open an early door. Or not.</p>
<p>My kid is a regular guy. Smart. Good student. Nobody's prodigy, though. For a kid like that, the "top scholarship" instead of the "top school" was the right choice. </p>
<p>And, you know, this set of musings comes from his mom who has the elite label pasted to all her schools (Wellesley, Cal Berkeley, Stanford). I am not dissing those schools. I'm glad I went to them. There was no better education, imho, than what I had at Wellesley. Folks are impressed that I went to Cal and Stanford. But do I think my experience was qualitatively superior at them because of the uber-achievers who joined me? I do not. I look around every day at my very close friends who went to state flagships, (gasp) no college at all, or colleges rated as lesser lights in the academic ranking pantheon. They are as stimulating, wise and wonderful as the friends I have from my elite institutions.</p>
<p>I'll bite on the $25K question: Yes. $100K difference would not be enough for me to want my kid to go to Centre rather than Harvard. $200K . . . I'd think about.</p>
<p>But my valuation of the differences comes down fast as the schools get a little more comparable. My son might face a choice between Top State Uni with half-scholarship and "lesser" Ivy or the equivalent with none, and there's no question that the scholarship makes that decision very tough (or, really, not so tough at all), even though I think the Ivy is a somewhat better school.</p>
<p>Four of my daughter's classmates provide an interesting array of comparisons. (1) Yale at $25K/yr vs. BU for absolute free. Working class kid, the $25K/year will be debt. Yale wins. (2) Columbia at $25K/yr. (debt) vs. NYU for absolute free. Penniless orphan kid in foster care. NYU wins. (3) Penn at full freight (some loans) vs. Carnegie-Mellon at 1/2 price. Affluent kid, but not wealthy, younger siblings. CMU wins. (4) Penn at full freight (some loans) vs. McGill Honors College with C$10,000/yr. merit money, an effective difference of about $20K/yr. Affluent, but far from wealthy kid. McGill wins.</p>
<p>I don't disagree with any of those decisions, although I think the last one was pretty questionable (and has gotten more questionable with exchange rate shifts, since the difference has narrowed to about $15K/yr).</p>
<p>Note, as I have said before many, many times: Only a virtual handful of kids every year actually turns down actual acceptances at HYPS or MIT to go anywhere other than another of those schools. It happens -- as c's daughter proves -- but it doesn't happen very much. I think it happens much, much more often just one step down the rung. And for kids with a bent towards LACs, I think the differences among the top 50 or so, other than perhaps Swarthmore, are not worth a whole lot of money.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Can she tell who had high SAT scores or not?
[/quote]
I really need to address this myth. High SAT scores of all/most students do NOT mean that all the students at the school are amazingly smart. Quite the contrary, unfortunately. </p>
<p>As you all know, my daughter is a 1200 SAT/28 ACT kid who managed to land herself in an elite college. Given that her test scores are in the bottom 25% of the school she attends, I worried about whether she would be able to keep up, especially as she came from a public high school which simply isn't all that great academically. I'm sure she worried too. </p>
<p>Her first big surprise was the realization that she was not surrounded by brilliance; in other words, she is not in a world filled with the posited John Smith-like students. (Though ironically, she had a letter that sounded a lot like the Tarhunt amalgam -- I had to smile, because my d's rec from her English teacher also contained the phrase, "She's that good." LOL)</p>
<p>That's not the same as saying that students are stupid. Far from it. </p>
<p>Just that most of them aren't all that amazingly smart, either. Reasonably intelligent, of course, but not dazzingly brilliant. </p>
<p>My daughter feels that she is definitely in the upper end of the spectrum, and she was never one to brag -- I think she is just seeing that intelligence and ability is not something that is measured by SAT scores. My d. probably got accepted largely on the strength of her demonstrated abilities, including her internal drive and discipline, which continue to propel her through college. There are many high ability students around her, but also many who are focused primarily on grades (most frequently asked question in class: "will this be on the test?") - and who don't show the intellectual curiosity or imagination that the theoretical John Smith demonstrates. </p>
<p>I agree with Scarfmadness that the academics are amazing at their school -- and my d. says there are some students who are also incredibly smart. But that is a relatively small percentage. Now if you change the adjective from "intelligent" to "ambitious" it's probably a different story: d. says the atmosphere is charged, she is definitely surrounded by students who are intent and focused and hope to accomplish a lot in their lives. Since the SAT is a test that can be studied for, it is natural that many students with drive and determination did whatever work was necessary to get the grades and the scores. </p>
<p>I don't know anything about Rhodes -- but I think that the overall campus culture is probably far more important than the average SAT scores. My daughter is at a college where students in general are focused more on what they want to be after college than on the idea of learning for its own sake. This is not a bad thing: my d. also shares that overall perspective. But it does not necessarily make for a socratic classroom imbued with a high level of intellectualism. These are not the type of students who will gather late into the night discussing the reading and the concepts they are learning in class -- unless it is a study group preparing for a midterm.</p>
<p>I do think that LAC's may <em>tend</em> to offer a somewhat more academic/intellectual focus. My daughter's largest class has 300 students in it - not much opportunity for student participation and dialog. And that's fine with her. She wouldn't want to be on the spot in every one of her classes -- one or two small seminar classes each semester are fine for her.</p>
<p>Does anyone else get the sense that we just opened the floodgates? LOL Great posts folks , and I might add-</p>
<p>all very respectful. Good job posters.</p>
<p>I'm going back to read 'em again and then pick me a mouthful to chew on next. ;)</p>
<p>Tarhunt -- Thanks for the compliment. I hope there wasn't a backhanded insult in there that I missed. I tend to find myself agreeing with you, too. You should be glad you're not me.</p>
<p>dstark -- It's unfair to your team to discuss my sister's Arizona experience. It was a complete waste of time from almost any perspective. She had a good time, was an officer of her sorority, got decent grades, learned very little, matured very little, and got no direction in life. Her horizons expanded not at all -- she managed to spend four years in Tucson without once tasting Mexican food. She wound up practically having to do it all over 10 years later. But the problem was much more her than Arizona. I think it would have been almost the same at Stanford, except that maybe the higher ambitions of the people around her, and an inability to pull B+s on cruise control, might have dragged her to a somewhat higher level. (By way of comparison: Sister 1, a weaker but harder-working student, struggled at Stanford, but has had a great career from the moment she left, something the school definitely helped her achieve. Sister 2, better SATs but something of a slacker, essentially spun her wheels for 10 years after graduating from Arizona, although she did fine in a job her sister got for her. She became financially independent for the first time in her life a year ago, in her 40s.)</p>
<p>jmmom, wrote, "I look around every day at my very close friends who went to state flagships, (gasp) no college at all, or colleges rated as lesser lights in the academic ranking pantheon. They are as stimulating, wise and wonderful as the friends I have from my elite institutions."</p>
<p>This is one of the biggest reasons why I don't think which college matters as much as it is thought by many.</p>
<p>I can't tell which of my friends have gone where. </p>
<p>However, I'm not hanging out with any rocket scientists, and I'm only occasionally hanging out with law professors, so maybe my friends and I aren't very bright. :)</p>
<p>Just a question:
Does it mean anything to the student knowing that a school wanted them enough to give them a free ride? Does it mean that the school has a vested interest in that student and will do more to work with them, more so than say a student that received need based aid? Just curious.</p>
<p>Ah, but then there are the kids who are high scorers on the SAT without any study at all....no "drive or determination" to improve their scores...just kids with naturally high aptitude.</p>
<p>Perhaps they are less ambitious, but they also may be more naturally intelligent, at least some of them. Will these students find their peer group among the overachievers?</p>
<p>(donning my flame suit)</p>
<p><a href="most%20frequently%20asked%20question%20in%20class:" title="will this be on the test?">quote</a>
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Interestingly, a standard question my kids have asked faculty members at various prospective colleges over the years is, "How often do you hear the question, 'Will that be on the test?,' in your classes?"</p>
<p>
[quote]
Does it mean anything to the student knowing that a school wanted them enough to give them a free ride? Does it mean that the school has a vested interest in that student and will do more to work with them, more so than say a student that received need based aid? Just curious.
[/quote]
Yes, yes and yes. </p>
<p>Although it wasn't a free ride for my son, it was a big $$ number. Money talks - we are in the good old USofA after all. And, as mootmom has experienced with her S2, it wasn't just the money. Letters from Deans; letters from alums in his field and in companies he would give an arm to work for; calls from students. Encouragement from professors. These things are validating. And often come at a very vulnerable time, when kids are wondering if any place will accept them (remember andison?) and how they will fare in this whole new world.</p>
<p>So if my kid takes the big scholarship at the wonder-if-future-employers-will-have-heard-of-it school, his stats will put him in the tippy-top rung of students there (which is probably why he was offered such notable merit money). For anyone who's had any experience with a student in this situation, how much did it matter to them? If said student isn't an intense academic, but prefers good friends and good music and good anime and good laughs and good food, maybe it'll be a good experience for him to be respected at the top of his class for a change?</p>
<p>
[quote]
I look around every day at my very close friends who went to state flagships, (gasp) no college at all, or colleges rated as lesser lights in the academic ranking pantheon. They are as stimulating, wise and wonderful as the friends I have from my elite institutions.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Ah, heck, one of the smartest friends and best friends I ever had did his undergrad work at Idaho State. But I would stop short of saying that I would find the same percentage of stimulating (I'll leave out the word "wonderful" because there are many ways to be wonderful) students at Idaho State as I would at Swarthmore.</p>
<p>Circles of friends are, after all, selected groups.</p>
<p>It's all in the eye of the beholder. I did not see in Smith what Mini sees just as an example. The girls from DDs high school who went were not academically her peers. Does that matter? To some. </p>
<p>I have long felt that I learned more from my classmates than from professors. The late night dorm room discussions in college and law school were my greatest education. </p>
<p>In the end, it's what you can afford. Like JHS, I would not let $100K stand in the way of the college of choice because of fortunate financial circumstances. Most people don't have the option.</p>
<p>The question is not whether one would let $100K stand in the way of the college of choice. The question is whether you are really buying something superior because of the (1) average SAT score (2) USN&WR ranking of the options.</p>
<p>It really comes down to that when we are talking about a Rhodes vs. a Yale, a Tulane vs. a Hopkins IMHO. These schools, at this level, are attracting huge proportions of top 10% and top 20% high school class; SATs that are very strong anywhere but on cc and in March discussions at HYPSM admissions meetings.</p>
<p>We are splitting hairs, here, in thinking that the kids at Hopkins and Yale are of a hugely higher caliber than at Rhodes or Tulane. In thinking that there will be difficulty in finding a critical mass of kids who are smart, quick, intellectual, ambitious, name-your-achievement-oriented adjective.</p>
<p>We are NOT talking about the difference between a Harvard and a voc/tech school, or even a jr. college. But we act like we are. We forget ourselves. And what the commodities we are comparing really are.</p>
<p>"If said student isn't an intense academic, but prefers good friends and good music and good anime and good laughs and good food, maybe it'll be a good experience for him to be respected at the top of his class for a change?"</p>
<p>This is my sophomore son's situation. It works well 80% of the time, and I don't think it gets any better than that.</p>
<p>JHS, you wrote, "dstark -- It's unfair to your team to discuss my sister's Arizona experience. It was a complete waste of time from almost any perspective. She had a good time, was an officer of her sorority, got decent grades, learned very little, matured very little, and got no direction in life."</p>
<p>I don't really see it as unfair or fair. I see it more like what was. </p>
<p>Do you think she got out of the school what she wanted at the time? You did mention she was an officer of a sorority and got good grades. Maybe, that's what she wanted at that time?</p>