Turning down Ivies for a liberal arts college?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I applied early decision to a liberal arts college and loved it. A close friend (and academic peer) was much less happy at her Ivy.

Yup. I went to a LAC and loved it. Have several friends who went to bigger, "better" schools, including Duke and Stanford (!) who told me they wished they had gone to my college. For some people, it's just a better experience.

Also know someone who turned down Harvard for Amherst. Amherst is a top school but doesn't carry the same cachet as the big H. Nonetheless, she is very successful.

[Anonymous]

+1 for smaller schools. Our DD won't even look at schools with >3000 students. Doesn't like the tailgate culture of big Div I sports palaces and is much more comfortable in a class of 15-20 taught by a professor than a lecture hall of over 200 or a class taught by a TA she can't understand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your research skills are lacking. Pomona, year in year out, is a top ranked liberal arts college. It has a small but beautiful campus and a sterling reputation. Having said that, one should never turn down Stanford. Why would anyone do that?

Hatred of UMC suburbia and/or the cult of entrepreneurship?

To be in Claremont, CA, which is also UMC suburbia (albeit ex-suburbia)?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your research skills are lacking. Pomona, year in year out, is a top ranked liberal arts college. It has a small but beautiful campus and a sterling reputation. Having said that, one should never turn down Stanford. Why would anyone do that?

Ha! If you ask my DH ( who went to Berkeley) he would say no one should go to Stanford! It is the one school he doesn't want our kids to go to. Luckily I don't think this is going to be a problem and no he hasn't told them this to their face!

Just hoping that they don't want to go there ( and it is slim that they would get in anyway)

Well, as you said, it won't be a problem.

[Anonymous]

Small schools have teachers that personally help the students and other staff that really work to give students every advantage. Much less likely to slip through the cracks, fail out, or drift through without developing any passions. Also, they tend to have tight-knit alum groups who help get their students with summer work and jobs afterward. SLACs are very different experiences from big schools, even Ivies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your research skills are lacking. Pomona, year in year out, is a top ranked liberal arts college. It has a small but beautiful campus and a sterling reputation. Having said that, one should never turn down Stanford. Why would anyone do that?

Hatred of UMC suburbia and/or the cult of entrepreneurship?

To be in Claremont, CA, which is also UMC suburbia (albeit ex-suburbia)?

Agree in this case. But the question was why would "anyone".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your research skills are lacking. Pomona, year in year out, is a top ranked liberal arts college. It has a small but beautiful campus and a sterling reputation. Having said that, one should never turn down Stanford. Why would anyone do that?

DH had to turn down Stanford because his parents were willing to pay for college on the east coast but not in CA. Mine also said no to Stanford (and Harvey Mudd) because of the distance so I didn't bother applying. We've survived

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No *TAs* teaching.

I don't think the ivies are big on TAs, certainly not the case at Dartmouth where I went. Several of them don't have enough grad students to have TAs, or the grad students are in professional schools like law, business or med.

It depends on the Ivy. The ones with larger graduate schools outside of the professional schools certainly have the TA issue. The smaller schools like Dartmouth or Princeton are more like small/medium liberal arts schools where students see professors from day one.

+1

Plenty of TAs at Harvard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your research skills are lacking. Pomona, year in year out, is a top ranked liberal arts college. It has a small but beautiful campus and a sterling reputation. Having said that, one should never turn down Stanford. Why would anyone do that?

DH had to turn down Stanford because his parents were willing to pay for college on the east coast but not in CA. Mine also said no to Stanford (and Harvey Mudd) because of the distance so I didn't bother applying. We've survived

So you say.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Recently, I talked to a coworker whose daughter is attending Pomona College in California this fall after turning down offers at Yale, Stanford, and Brown. Apparently this isn't uncommon, and there are a number of students picking top LACs over Ivies/comparable universities every year. I didn't want to badger further about why she had done that, so I'm interested from those with similar experiences- why would someone turn down a prestigious university over a liberal arts college?

I don't know much about Pomona, and my little research indicates that it is a reputable school, but it only has 1600 students and an admissions rate double that of Stanford.

Fake news. Nobody turns down Yale or Stanford. And few apply to both.

[Anonymous]

Money talks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your research skills are lacking. Pomona, year in year out, is a top ranked liberal arts college. It has a small but beautiful campus and a sterling reputation. Having said that, one should never turn down Stanford. Why would anyone do that?

Hatred of UMC suburbia and/or the cult of entrepreneurship?

To be in Claremont, CA, which is also UMC suburbia (albeit ex-suburbia)?

Agree in this case. But the question was why would "anyone".

And a rational answer has not yet been offered.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Recently, I talked to a coworker whose daughter is attending Pomona College in California this fall after turning down offers at Yale, Stanford, and Brown. Apparently this isn't uncommon, and there are a number of students picking top LACs over Ivies/comparable universities every year. I didn't want to badger further about why she had done that, so I'm interested from those with similar experiences- why would someone turn down a prestigious university over a liberal arts college?

I don't know much about Pomona, and my little research indicates that it is a reputable school, but it only has 1600 students and an admissions rate double that of Stanford.

Fake news. Nobody turns down Yale or Stanford. And few apply to both.

Not sure about not applying to both, but my troll sense was tingling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

And a rational answer has not yet been offered.

Plenty have been offered, but you're not willing to hear them.

The OP seems a lot like the "Has anyone ever heard of Davidson?" poster from some months back. I know not everyone is particularly interested in the quality of various colleges and universities, but plenty of people are. Pomona is well known among people who know about higher education (recruiters and graduate and professional schools), so if someone wants a SLAC, it's a very sensible choice.

[Anonymous]

As a college professor at a large research university, I would definitely encourage my children to apply to and attend LACs over large universities for undergraduate (college) education. Assuming that your child will go onto graduate school, your child's likelihood of obtaining a graduate degree are higher for LAC graduates than graduates of larger universities.

Pomona is one of the very best colleges in the country (I would put it up there with Swarthmore, Amherst, and Williams), and it likely does not offer any kind of merit aid.

The higher percentage of accepted students at Pomona compared to Stanford is due to the fact that a lot of kids apply to Stanford (or Harvard or Yale), but the kids who apply to top LACs tend to be a pretty self-selecting group.