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I went to Georgetown and the most difficult class I ever took in my life was Stats at a community college over the summer.
I went to the U of Pittsburgh and majored in nursing. Then I took stats at a CC in Champaign, IL and thought it was the easiest college class I had ever taken! I did have a hard time with a history class I took at Bloomsburg State College in PA (now Bloomsburg University, I belive). Different strokes for different folks.
Stats is a love it or hate it kind of academic area. My stats classes weren't the easiest classes I had, but I loved them because they always seemed like they were explaining this great secret knowledge about how the world really works.
There are also other reasons not to go to a "top" school, my daughter wanted to go to BYU, those are her standards. She could have gone to a better school, but she wanted to be around people she felt she would have a common ground with, and enjoy college. Now, for graduate school she is driving me crazy, she wants to stay at BYU...she should at least go to another school in Utah...but she won't even consider it. Great. She grew up in Utah, lives there, and does not want to leave there.
Last edited by jasper12; 10-09-2010 at 07:41 AM..
Reason: additional info
Just because a student is a 'genius' or gets straight A's, does NOT mean that academics are all there is to life. Even if they were, there can be a plethora of reasons as to why such a student would want to go to a local school, another type of school, or forgo college altogether!
An older lady who goes to my synagogue has a granddaughter who got a scholarship to go to Harvard. Well she passed up the opportunity, opted to go to Israel to learn in a seminary, and then will study education at Touro University in NY when she returns in 2010. Her grandmother is flabbergasted. However I can totally understand. He granddaughter is a very religious, unmarried Jewish woman. Harvard is no place for her socially. Touro on the other hand is full of Orthodox Jews; a place where her desire to maintain a separation between sexes, keeping kosher, needing time off for Jewish holidays, etc. can be respected.
Another reason is that the family of a great student may be more important than college. If this student has a sick parent or something, they probably would not think to go so far away for school. Point being there is a whole lot more to life than work and school. With some people, these items are way down on the priority list; and you know what, that's perfectly fine!
Just because a student is a 'genius' or gets straight A's, does NOT mean that academics are all there is to life. Even if they were, there can be a plethora of reasons as to why such a student would want to go to a local school, another type of school, or forgo college altogether!
An older lady who goes to my synagogue has a granddaughter who got a scholarship to go to Harvard. Well she passed up the opportunity, opted to go to Israel to learn in a seminary, and then will study education at Touro University in NY when she returns in 2010. Her grandmother is flabbergasted. However I can totally understand. He granddaughter is a very religious, unmarried Jewish woman. Harvard is no place for her socially. Touro on the other hand is full of Orthodox Jews; a place where her desire to maintain a separation between sexes, keeping kosher, needing time off for Jewish holidays, etc. can be respected.
Another reason is that the family of a great student may be more important than college. If this student has a sick parent or something, they probably would not think to go so far away for school. Point being there is a whole lot more to life than work and school. With some people, these items are way down on the priority list; and you know what, that's perfectly fine!
Minor point, but this really caught my eye--I think you're referring to Touro College. Touro University is one of those for-profit schools.
National Merit Scholar kids don't all come from families with piles of money. And I can tell you from experience that even a huge scholarship offer doesn't cover all the costs of an Emory or Yale.
Better, in many people's minds, to use the in-state scholarship money (Bright Futures, etc) for a decent-if-not-stellar undergrad, and try not to mount up the debt /deplete finances until grad school.
I haven't read the entire thread yet, but this post made me almost drown my keyboard with coffee.
This National Merit Scholar was accepted at Emory and at the University of Georgia. Emory's scholarship offer was a pittance at the time. She went to UGA and got a fine education through the Honors Program.
My family absolutely did not have piles of money. Emory would have meant loans and a pile of debt.
Now, because of the Hope Scholarship program, UGA is turning away highly qualified applicants, who are instead going to other state colleges.
Here are UGA stats for the Class of 2014. https://www.admissions.uga.edu/article/a_closer_look.html (broken link)
Just because it is a state school does not mean it is necessarily easy. Not everyone is there to party.
Yes, there will be some bias in that case too. But people that have attended top schools tend to have a better understanding of lower ranked schools than the opposite.
There are a handful of "great" public universities/colleges, most range from decent to horrible with the majority being mediocre. But public universities are only cheap for in-state students, the vast majority of states do not have "great" public universities. If you have top grades, etc going to a private school could actually be cheaper than an out of state public.
A lot of people seem to not understand that few kids pay the sticker price at private colleges.
Both of my kids paid full sticker price at private colleges for both undergrad and graduate school. The price of having successful parents.
Minor point, but this really caught my eye--I think you're referring to Touro College. Touro University is one of those for-profit schools.
Sorry; however I think they are related anyway -- see the Wikipedia entry (not that Wikipedia is always trustworthy).
Regardless, Touro College isn't really all that rigorous academically. A lot of the students come from Orthodox Jewish day schools who are not really known for having strong academics (there are a LOT of various reasons for this; but mostly they do not tend to pay the teachers of secular subjects very well). In spite of this, you still have some absolutely brillant kids coming out of those schools; a lot of whom supplement their education with either AP courses taken at college/public high school or virtual high schools.
If your son or daughter graduated from an elite High School on the top of his class, got a near perfect SAT score and has an impressive record or leadership in countless activities, wouldn't you insist that the go to one of the best colleges in the nation?
In every almost guaranteed admission State College, there are many of these top notch students. Are they wasting their time in such easy settings? Shouldn't they be attending an Ivy League College?
Actually, there are plenty of top-notch public universities that don't cost an arm and a leg. In that sense, the level of instruction you get won't vary markedly from what you'll get at a Harvard or a Yale, particularly if the student is really diligent and applies himself.
To me, the real difference is grad school. And, while top-notch grad schools are as impressed by a Harvard diploma at the next person, they'll take applicants from elsewhere, too.
The question is really, "What can you afford?" Because graduating college with $100,000 worth of student debt will severely hamper your ability to finish graduate school. Private schools have pretty much priced themselves out of the market and are really feeling the pinch, but until they take a reality pill, parents with brains will send their children to a Michigan or Virginia rather than send them to Yale.
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A lot of the students come from Orthodox Jewish day schools who are not really known for having strong academics (there are a LOT of various reasons for this; but mostly they do not tend to pay the teachers of secular subjects very well). In spite of this, you still have some absolutely brillant kids coming out of those schools; a lot of whom supplement their education with either AP courses taken at college/public high school or virtual high schools.
