Lessons learned from the college process

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lesson for anxiety-ridden, status-obsessed parents:

Apply ED. It gives your kid an advantage because it telegraphs to the school your willingness to pay full price.

Lesson for normal parents:

Never let your kid apply ED to any school. Refuse to pay more than about $30-35K/year for college. That means you should never apply to an out-of-state public university, or to a top 30 private college or private university.

Lower ranked private schools provide a perfectly defective education -- just as the supposedly elite schools do. So why pay twice as much for something that's equally defective?

Go where the discounts are. (These discounts are euphemistically called "merit scholarships.")

Anyone who is paying more than $35K/year for tuition, room, and board, is simply subsidizing someone else's kid.

What do you mean by “perfectly defective?” I see your bias, but I’m curious about your reasoning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lesson for anxiety-ridden, status-obsessed parents:

Apply ED. It gives your kid an advantage because it telegraphs to the school your willingness to pay full price.

Lesson for normal parents:

Never let your kid apply ED to any school. Refuse to pay more than about $30-35K/year for college. That means you should never apply to an out-of-state public university, or to a top 30 private college or private university.

Lower ranked private schools provide a perfectly defective education -- just as the supposedly elite schools do. So why pay twice as much for something that's equally defective?

Go where the discounts are. (These discounts are euphemistically called "merit scholarships.")

Anyone who is paying more than $35K/year for tuition, room, and board, is simply subsidizing someone else's kid.

What do you mean by “perfectly defective?” I see your bias, but I’m curious about your reasoning.

Incoherent curricula. At age 18, kids are told, in essence, to educate themselves. No required courses. No foundation courses. Take whatever courses you want to take, in any order. Doesn't matter. Just have fun, and be sure to observe all the rules about political correctness.

Of course, if you're interested in vocational training (accountancy, nursing, engineering, etc.) then there will be some structure. But these are not the kinds of fields from which leaders emerge.

What's going on in college today is not the Jeffersonisn ideal. Far from it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lesson for anxiety-ridden, status-obsessed parents:

Apply ED. It gives your kid an advantage because it telegraphs to the school your willingness to pay full price.

Lesson for normal parents:

Never let your kid apply ED to any school. Refuse to pay more than about $30-35K/year for college. That means you should never apply to an out-of-state public university, or to a top 30 private college or private university.

Lower ranked private schools provide a perfectly defective education -- just as the supposedly elite schools do. So why pay twice as much for something that's equally defective?

Go where the discounts are. (These discounts are euphemistically called "merit scholarships.")

Anyone who is paying more than $35K/year for tuition, room, and board, is simply subsidizing someone else's kid.

What do you mean by “perfectly defective?” I see your bias, but I’m curious about your reasoning.

Incoherent curricula. At age 18, kids are told, in essence, to educate themselves. No required courses. No foundation courses. Take whatever courses you want to take, in any order. Doesn't matter. Just have fun, and be sure to observe all the rules about political correctness.

Of course, if you're interested in vocational training (accountancy, nursing, engineering, etc.) then there will be some structure. But these are not the kinds of fields from which leaders emerge.

What's going on in college today is not the Jeffersonisn ideal. Far from it.

Don't you remember in the other thread where you were told in capital letters that your political contributions to the college forum were unhelpful and unwanted, and that everyone thinks you are a giant asshole?

Still applies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lesson for anxiety-ridden, status-obsessed parents:

Apply ED. It gives your kid an advantage because it telegraphs to the school your willingness to pay full price.

Lesson for normal parents:

Never let your kid apply ED to any school. Refuse to pay more than about $30-35K/year for college. That means you should never apply to an out-of-state public university, or to a top 30 private college or private university.

Lower ranked private schools provide a perfectly defective education -- just as the supposedly elite schools do. So why pay twice as much for something that's equally defective?

Go where the discounts are. (These discounts are euphemistically called "merit scholarships.")

Anyone who is paying more than $35K/year for tuition, room, and board, is simply subsidizing someone else's kid.

What do you mean by “perfectly defective?” I see your bias, but I’m curious about your reasoning.

Incoherent curricula. At age 18, kids are told, in essence, to educate themselves. No required courses. No foundation courses. Take whatever courses you want to take, in any order. Doesn't matter. Just have fun, and be sure to observe all the rules about political correctness.

Of course, if you're interested in vocational training (accountancy, nursing, engineering, etc.) then there will be some structure. But these are not the kinds of fields from which leaders emerge.

What's going on in college today is not the Jeffersonisn ideal. Far from it.

Except you are incorrect. Many LAC have core requirements.

[Anonymous]

+1. Many colleges, well beyond LACs, have core requirements. This includes most top universities.

[Anonymous]

A piece of advice that I would add with regard to Naviance. Be careful when looking at the test scores as they can be deceiving. A student may have been accepted to a school based on his/her ACT score, but Naviance will still post the student's SAT score (which may be much lower). For example, my DD got accepted into a T15 and only submitted her ACT (34); not her SAT. Her SAT was significantly lower (and would not have been enough for her to have been accepted there). But Naviance still will have her SAT score and ACT scores posted next year.

Next year, if folks only look at the SAT scores on Naviance for that college (and not the ACT), they are going to think that those low SAT scores (by that college's standards) is all it takes to get into that college. But, that is not true, because my DD never even submitted the SATs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lesson for anxiety-ridden, status-obsessed parents:

Apply ED. It gives your kid an advantage because it telegraphs to the school your willingness to pay full price.

Lesson for normal parents:

Never let your kid apply ED to any school. Refuse to pay more than about $30-35K/year for college. That means you should never apply to an out-of-state public university, or to a top 30 private college or private university.

Lower ranked private schools provide a perfectly defective education -- just as the supposedly elite schools do. So why pay twice as much for something that's equally defective?

Go where the discounts are. (These discounts are euphemistically called "merit scholarships.")

Anyone who is paying more than $35K/year for tuition, room, and board, is simply subsidizing someone else's kid.

What do you mean by “perfectly defective?” I see your bias, but I’m curious about your reasoning.

Incoherent curricula. At age 18, kids are told, in essence, to educate themselves. No required courses. No foundation courses. Take whatever courses you want to take, in any order. Doesn't matter. Just have fun, and be sure to observe all the rules about political correctness.

Of course, if you're interested in vocational training (accountancy, nursing, engineering, etc.) then there will be some structure. But these are not the kinds of fields from which leaders emerge.

What's going on in college today is not the Jeffersonisn ideal. Far from it.

On the contrary, Jefferson was done with William & Mary precisely because of its rigid curriculum of Latin, Greek and theology. He introduced modern languages and natural sciences at UVA in a break with tradition. This was a major intellectual precdent for the development of the elective system post-Civil War. The Great Books idea you seem to be fond of was an innovative reaction to the elective system from the 1930s. It difffers from the actual "traditional liberal arts" curriculum (i.e. old W&M style) in that it does not demand linguistic competence and includes a hotchpotch of books from all times and places. It is, in short, a fraud; both historically and in terms of academic rigor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A piece of advice that I would add with regard to Naviance. Be careful when looking at the test scores as they can be deceiving. A student may have been accepted to a school based on his/her ACT score, but Naviance will still post the student's SAT score (which may be much lower). For example, my DD got accepted into a T15 and only submitted her ACT (34); not her SAT. Her SAT was significantly lower (and would not have been enough for her to have been accepted there). But Naviance still will have her SAT score and ACT scores posted next year.

Next year, if folks only look at the SAT scores on Naviance for that college (and not the ACT), they are going to think that those low SAT scores (by that college's standards) is all it takes to get into that college. But, that is not true, because my DD never even submitted the SATs.

So true. My DD took the PSAT and got a mediocre score, so never took the SAT. Naviance has her PSAT score as her SAT score. Her ACT score is much higher. It would be misleading if you did not know.

[Anonymous]

Naviance also only works well when there are lots of data points from your school. For small schools like Mt. Holyoke, where 1-3 kids apply in any given year, it is much harder to extrapolate from the naviance data.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for all this advice. My kid will be a senior next year at Whitman. Do any senior parents at Whitman know how college admissions went this year?

[Anonymous]

Oh how I yearn for the 70s when you could be normal and get into a top school. We had students get into Harvard, Dartmouth, MIT, Cornell, Cal Tech, etc. And nobody had perfect grades, 12 varsity letters, 15 AP credits, was teaching English as a second language, and starting a non-profit. Just reading about the college admissions-industrial complex makes me queazy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh how I yearn for the 70s when you could be normal and get into a top school. We had students get into Harvard, Dartmouth, MIT, Cornell, Cal Tech, etc. And nobody had perfect grades, 12 varsity letters, 15 AP credits, was teaching English as a second language, and starting a non-profit. Just reading about the college admissions-industrial complex makes me queazy.

I'm an HYP interviewer and I get REAL squicky when anyone says they started a non-profit, and make sure to interrogate the point with hostile closeness. I am hoping the admissions office does the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh how I yearn for the 70s when you could be normal and get into a top school. We had students get into Harvard, Dartmouth, MIT, Cornell, Cal Tech, etc. And nobody had perfect grades, 12 varsity letters, 15 AP credits, was teaching English as a second language, and starting a non-profit. Just reading about the college admissions-industrial complex makes me queazy.

+1. I graduated HS in 2001. My matches then would be reaches today. My SAT scores got me over but would be completely unremarkable now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lesson for anxiety-ridden, status-obsessed parents:

Apply ED. It gives your kid an advantage because it telegraphs to the school your willingness to pay full price.

Lesson for normal parents:

Never let your kid apply ED to any school. Refuse to pay more than about $30-35K/year for college. That means you should never apply to an out-of-state public university, or to a top 30 private college or private university.

Lower ranked private schools provide a perfectly defective education -- just as the supposedly elite schools do. So why pay twice as much for something that's equally defective?

Go where the discounts are. (These discounts are euphemistically called "merit scholarships.")

Anyone who is paying more than $35K/year for tuition, room, and board, is simply subsidizing someone else's kid.

I think “merit aid “ is mostly not enough to make it as affordable as in state tuition for most full paying families.
Families who are frugal seems to spend money on college because of fake rankings.

[Anonymous]

Except you are incorrect. Many LAC have core requirements.

Can you cite an example? I mean a bona fide example, where all students spend the first two years taking a common set of required courses, before they declare a major.