What’s the educational difference between a highly-rated college and a good one?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It really depends. If your kid is self motivated they'll find a good peer group anywhere. If they're a slacker they'll find other slackers even at Yale.

I had a friend who got into Harvard. She took the easiest classes and graduated w a C average and barely earns anything. I don't understand how her ambition switched off as soon as she got in, but she had a group of friends just like herself.

Meanwhile I know many people earning 300k+ who went to low ranked schools, but are widely read, ambitious and hard workers. I know which group of rather my kids be in

I love it.

Where you go is not who you'll be.
- Frank Bruni

I know many successful people who didn’t go to college. So don’t send your kids!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a reason that R1 professors disproportionately send their children to SLACs.

Regression to the mean?

'

DCUM is regression to mean. . .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Unless your teen is a battle tested hyper-aggressive go-getter, huge public universities are awful places for an undergrad "education." Sure, everyone can cite doctors, lawyers and rich execs who went to public U -- but what's the average alum up to? The average grad probably took 5 years to finish a BA and goes onto live a mediocre provincial life. A shocking number of public U students never actually graduate.

There's a reason smart well-adjusted UMC parents spend obscene sums of time and money cultivating their child for highly ranked private colleges. If Alcoholic State universities were on par with top 30 private colleges, nobody in their right mind would be this obsessed over K-12 prep, extra curriculars, travel sports, and college admissions.

Revealed preference tells everything

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Professor quality" will be equally great at top-notch and good schools and even the ones considered not so great. The job market for academics is terrible (especially in the humanities) so just ok schools can recruit the best and the brightest. I teach at GW and literally all my colleagues (myself included) got our PhDs at top universities and are very well regarded in our fields. So from that point of view the education your child will get is exactly the same as at Yale etc.

I think it is true that the peer group at top tier schools will be stronger.

+1 I'm a professor at UMD. I previously taught at Hopkins. No measurable different in colleagues or "professor quality." In general I agree about peer group. However, there are many smart kids at UMD that would do well at Hopkins.

This is because UMD is a top research university on par with Hopkins (UMD does not have a medical school while Hopkins has the top-most one, which helps it a lot of in rankings). You'll find a lot of top PhD's among the top publics due to research.

The difference of course is that access to these professors might be lower in a public than a private. Not necessarily by all that much (they are generally inaccessible everywhere), but enough. Also classes tend to be smaller in privates which can help in both learning and interacting with professors.

SLACs on the other hand will have much better professor interaction than both top publics and privates. However generally the best and brightest PhD grads don't want to go to SLACs because they value research first and foremost, while SLAC jobs tend to consist of a lot of teaching. SLACs will also hire a lot of PhD's from schools with name-value but weak research (i.e. Vanderbilt)

So we pay huge tuition at research universities for professors that don't want to teach and have not incentive to teach.

[Anonymous]

Pretty much.

Which is why professors, like myself, favor SLAC’s for undergrad education

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pretty much.

Which is why professors, like myself, favor SLAC’s for undergrad education

+1. Ask any professor how research universities incentivize faculty. We are rewarded for research and publication, not excellent teaching. Does this mean that your child at a research university won't receive an excellent education? Of course not. But, if you are interested in the OP's question about "educational difference," then I would strongly recommend a SLAC. Send your kids to a SLAC for undergrad and save the research university for graduate school.
-Another Professor

[Anonymous]

Profs don’t always favor SLACs, but when their kids aren’t interested in or aren’t competitive for top R1s they have enough info to steer them to (and distinguish among) a variety of good schools that aren’t as universally well known as Ivies or state flagships. Hence the relative popularity of SLACs among academics.

I really don’t believe SLACs provide a better education (or have faculty who are better teachers) than R1s. R1s have many more resources and a much broader range of course offerings (more majors and more courses within each major as well as multiple profs in the same subfield) than SLACs. They also have more people doing cutting-edge work.

Whether and how that matters to your DC is a real question, but for me as an undergrad it did. My kid was the same. And both of us (at different R1s and in very different fields) had close relationships with faculty members (and also appreciated the presence of grad students).

[Anonymous]

The idea that professor quality differs is laughable. I have taught in the Ivy League, a top private, and a decent state school. If anything, my colleagues in the Ivy were worse teachers. I know many faculty who have gone from, for example, a school like Harvard to a school like Minnesota and also vice versa. They move for research reasons, not teaching reasons. I’m sure this has been covered one way or another in the fifty pages of this thread but it was just such an absurd assertion on the first page that I couldn’t ignore it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Profs don’t always favor SLACs, but when their kids aren’t interested in or aren’t competitive for top R1s they have enough info to steer them to (and distinguish among) a variety of good schools that aren’t as universally well known as Ivies or state flagships. Hence the relative popularity of SLACs among academics.

I really don’t believe SLACs provide a better education (or have faculty who are better teachers) than R1s. R1s have many more resources and a much broader range of course offerings (more majors and more courses within each major as well as multiple profs in the same subfield) than SLACs. They also have more people doing cutting-edge work.

Whether and how that matters to your DC is a real question, but for me as an undergrad it did. My kid was the same. And both of us (at different R1s and in very different fields) had close relationships with faculty members (and also appreciated the presence of grad students).

Just curious about what R1 you have in mind?

[Anonymous]

Actually, I am curious to what SLACs you are referring.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It really depends. If your kid is self motivated they'll find a good peer group anywhere. If they're a slacker they'll find other slackers even at Yale.

I had a friend who got into Harvard. She took the easiest classes and graduated w a C average and barely earns anything. I don't understand how her ambition switched off as soon as she got in, but she had a group of friends just like herself.

Meanwhile I know many people earning 300k+ who went to low ranked schools, but are widely read, ambitious and hard workers. I know which group of rather my kids be in

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It really depends. If your kid is self motivated they'll find a good peer group anywhere. If they're a slacker they'll find other slackers even at Yale.

I had a friend who got into Harvard. She took the easiest classes and graduated w a C average and barely earns anything. I don't understand how her ambition switched off as soon as she got in, but she had a group of friends just like herself.

Meanwhile I know many people earning 300k+ who went to low ranked schools, but are widely read, ambitious and hard workers. I know which group of rather my kids be in

I know very successful people who didn’t go to college at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Profs don’t always favor SLACs, but when their kids aren’t interested in or aren’t competitive for top R1s they have enough info to steer them to (and distinguish among) a variety of good schools that aren’t as universally well known as Ivies or state flagships. Hence the relative popularity of SLACs among academics.

I really don’t believe SLACs provide a better education (or have faculty who are better teachers) than R1s. R1s have many more resources and a much broader range of course offerings (more majors and more courses within each major as well as multiple profs in the same subfield) than SLACs. They also have more people doing cutting-edge work.

Whether and how that matters to your DC is a real question, but for me as an undergrad it did. My kid was the same. And both of us (at different R1s and in very different fields) had close relationships with faculty members (and also appreciated the presence of grad students).

Faculty as teachers? Get serious. It’s the TA’s who are doing the teaching. I hear two of my kids who go to Big Ten schools talking about their TA’s relative suckitude and it’s depressing. My two SLAC kids look at them like they’re aliens.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Profs don’t always favor SLACs, but when their kids aren’t interested in or aren’t competitive for top R1s they have enough info to steer them to (and distinguish among) a variety of good schools that aren’t as universally well known as Ivies or state flagships. Hence the relative popularity of SLACs among academics.

I really don’t believe SLACs provide a better education (or have faculty who are better teachers) than R1s. R1s have many more resources and a much broader range of course offerings (more majors and more courses within each major as well as multiple profs in the same subfield) than SLACs. They also have more people doing cutting-edge work.

Whether and how that matters to your DC is a real question, but for me as an undergrad it did. My kid was the same. And both of us (at different R1s and in very different fields) had close relationships with faculty members (and also appreciated the presence of grad students).

You’re not a professor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Profs don’t always favor SLACs, but when their kids aren’t interested in or aren’t competitive for top R1s they have enough info to steer them to (and distinguish among) a variety of good schools that aren’t as universally well known as Ivies or state flagships. Hence the relative popularity of SLACs among academics.

I really don’t believe SLACs provide a better education (or have faculty who are better teachers) than R1s. R1s have many more resources and a much broader range of course offerings (more majors and more courses within each major as well as multiple profs in the same subfield) than SLACs. They also have more people doing cutting-edge work.

Whether and how that matters to your DC is a real question, but for me as an undergrad it did. My kid was the same. And both of us (at different R1s and in very different fields) had close relationships with faculty members (and also appreciated the presence of grad students).

You’re not a professor.

I used to be a professor and many of my friends still are professors.