Overrated schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Duke is not even a top ten school anymore at USNews. Its rating is becoming more accurate. I guess when it falls to around 15 or so, then it won’t be overrated anymore.

Agree. Duke is only respected for athletics and its academic reputation is declining.

This is hilarious. Duke is accelerating as a popular choice for students and has one of the best mixes of social/academic life of any top college. Not every school needs to be some miserable New England college where the students can't take a joke and are stressed beyond their limit.

[Anonymous]

I don't know about overrated—I think the real question is more about being "overpriced" or whether there is enough value for the cost.

I firmly believe in a college education, but there are many cases where it is not worth the cost anymore. It's sad that we are throwing the "baby out with the bathwater." The answer isn't don't go; the answer is to fix these ridiculous, unrelenting, and never-ending price increases.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't know about overrated—I think the real question is more about being "overpriced" or whether there is enough value for the cost.

I firmly believe in a college education, but there are many cases where it is not worth the cost anymore. It's sad that we are throwing the "baby out with the bathwater." The answer isn't don't go; the answer is to fix these ridiculous, unrelenting, and never-ending price increases.

The price of an education should never be $90-99k/year like these colleges have normalized for the upcoming fall. I attended an Ivy and wouldn't say my experience was worth much more than $40k. I'd likely be a donor today if the college didn't try bankrupting me for the first 10 years of my adulthood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't know about overrated—I think the real question is more about being "overpriced" or whether there is enough value for the cost.

I firmly believe in a college education, but there are many cases where it is not worth the cost anymore. It's sad that we are throwing the "baby out with the bathwater." The answer isn't don't go; the answer is to fix these ridiculous, unrelenting, and never-ending price increases.

But you never really know what someone else is actually paying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think this thread would be more interesting if there is a comparison and contrast between 2 or more schools, overrated and underrated.

For example,

If student’s dream school is Harvard,
apply to Williams, Amherst.

If student’s dream school is Columbia with its Core,
consider St. John’s College.

If student’s dream school is MIT,
consider Harvey Mudd, Olin, Georgia Institute of Tech

If dream is Yale,
consider Vassar

If Dartmouth,
then Colgate, CMC

If JHU,
U of Washington, U of Pitt

If U of Notre Dame,
Fordham

.
.
.

That doesn’t necessarily seem like a comparison between overrated and underrated (although Harvard is surely overrated for undergraduate education), but instead an identification of somewhat similar, but less selective, schools.

This will be more informative. There’s no such thing as “overrated” or “underrated” all by itself. It’s always relative.

It also highlights the fallacy of using external rankings as the way you evaluate any college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pitt!

Same. We live in Pa and I know very few people who apply there. It isn’t on anyone’s radar here.

Pitt has some standing in NoVa for some reason. I am not aware of it having similar standing anywhere else.

Well, probably MoCo, since the buses that Pitt charters for students during the holidays arrive and depart from Westfield Montgomery Mall.

They also charter buses to Zohio, New Jersey, New York, Philadelphia, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't know about overrated—I think the real question is more about being "overpriced" or whether there is enough value for the cost.

I firmly believe in a college education, but there are many cases where it is not worth the cost anymore. It's sad that we are throwing the "baby out with the bathwater." The answer isn't don't go; the answer is to fix these ridiculous, unrelenting, and never-ending price increases.

The price of an education should never be $90-99k/year like these colleges have normalized for the upcoming fall. I attended an Ivy and wouldn't say my experience was worth much more than $40k. I'd likely be a donor today if the college didn't try bankrupting me for the first 10 years of my adulthood.

Housing and feeding kids for 20k a year is pretty reasonable. That would leave 20k for tuition which seems low

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't know about overrated—I think the real question is more about being "overpriced" or whether there is enough value for the cost.

I firmly believe in a college education, but there are many cases where it is not worth the cost anymore. It's sad that we are throwing the "baby out with the bathwater." The answer isn't don't go; the answer is to fix these ridiculous, unrelenting, and never-ending price increases.

The price of an education should never be $90-99k/year like these colleges have normalized for the upcoming fall. I attended an Ivy and wouldn't say my experience was worth much more than $40k. I'd likely be a donor today if the college didn't try bankrupting me for the first 10 years of my adulthood.

Housing and feeding kids for 20k a year is pretty reasonable. That would leave 20k for tuition which seems low

Is it? These colleges have enough money to run off of free tuition, room and board indefinitely. I would much prefer the money go towards reducing COA for everyone rather than infinitely constructing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ah, OP needs to change the title to, “Schools that rejected both me AND my kids...”

Hahahahahahahahahaha - yep

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Duke is not even a top ten school anymore at USNews. Its rating is becoming more accurate. I guess when it falls to around 15 or so, then it won’t be overrated anymore.

Agree. Duke is only respected for athletics and its academic reputation is declining.

Why did you resurrect a 4 year old thread? Little if this griping is even relevant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Georgetown, UVA, Duke

+1 UVA is only respected in Virginia. However Georgetown has a strong reputation internationally.

[Anonymous]

Unc, WashU, Ucla, uc’s for out of state.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Duke is not even a top ten school anymore at USNews. Its rating is becoming more accurate. I guess when it falls to around 15 or so, then it won’t be overrated anymore.

Agree. Duke is only respected for athletics and its academic reputation is declining.

In what world is this true? You responded to a post from 3 yrs ago, Duke was briefly 11 then back to #7-9, AND continues to have more and more applications. Pre-test-optional, when scores were useful for general assessment of the peer group, Duke had higher 25-75th ranges than half the ivies(and, was nudged out by the other half of the ivies and Stanford, MIT and Vanderbilt—the latter has always loved super-high scorers). Not the only factor one should consider, but there is no question Duke gets the brightest kids just like those other schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA. Why would anyone want to go there?

Same reasons people want to go to any state flagship.

But that assumes UVA is the state flagship

It’s called The University of Virginia for a reason...

Yeah, because a slaveholder defined things. UVA too small to be a flagship. VT, GMU, JMU, ODU and VCU are state supported schools that are larger than UVA.

Virginia Tech has more funded research.

UVA does have the highest Blood Alcohol content of any of those schools (maybe with the exception of JMU).

All kidding aside, UVA is highly ranked because they limit the size -- not for the education received. It is a fine school, but it is highly ranked because of its size: its freshman class is about 4000... there are probably nearly that many worthy kids in graduating from Fairfax County.

UVA does more research than Virginia Tech.

UVA: $662M
VT: $592M
VCU: $405M

[Anonymous]

UNC, UVA, UCLA, UofM, UT Austin