Is it crazy to choose a non-ivy over an ivy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For historical reasons, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton remain preeminent. However, since none take students in Early Decision, it's a smaller pool of top students that go there. Many of the best students are committed elsewhere and don't even apply to HYP.

As for the rest of the Ivies, there are at least a dozen schools that are often better choices than Penn, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, and Dartmouth. It depends on the kid and what they want to study and do. This is especially prominent in STEM, which is where a lot of the smart kids are these days. No one chooses Yale or Harvard or Brown or Dartmouth or Columbia for engineering when they have Stanford, MIT, Rice, Georgia Tech, Berkeley, CalTech and so on.

I hate referencing Parchment, but Ga Tech loses to every Ivy school (some like Penn and Dartmouth and Princeton by huge margins) and they are all color-coded except (so it's a statistically significant sample size) vs. Yale or Columbia where they lose but it's not statistically significant enough.

I doubt these are students who applied to Ga Tech to study humanities.

GATech doesn’t offer humanities.

It was a joke...but they do have the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts which has cross-disciplinary degrees some of which are heavy humanities and you can get a minor in Philosophy or other humanities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For historical reasons, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton remain preeminent. However, since none take students in Early Decision, it's a smaller pool of top students that go there. Many of the best students are committed elsewhere and don't even apply to HYP.

As for the rest of the Ivies, there are at least a dozen schools that are often better choices than Penn, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, and Dartmouth. It depends on the kid and what they want to study and do. This is especially prominent in STEM, which is where a lot of the smart kids are these days. No one chooses Yale or Harvard or Brown or Dartmouth or Columbia for engineering when they have Stanford, MIT, Rice, Georgia Tech, Berkeley, CalTech and so on.

Even in this day-and-age a large percentage of kids will be limited either by their own hesitance or their parents about going to school 3,000 miles from home, nor are they excited to attend college in Houston (which is also 2000 miles away).

There are many kids who won't consider traveling to one coast or the other for college, no matter what.

I guarantee you there are quite a few who would turn down Ga Tech for Harvard or Yale even for engineering.

I will give you MIT.

There are tons of families on the West Coast that will happily send their kids to Princeton. And there are tons of families on the East Coast that will happily send their kids to Stanford. And typically, they have the resources to manage a plane ticket to go back and forth on holidays. Whether a student goes some miles away to Boston, Houston, San Francisco, Chicago, wherever isn't really a factor for most of these students at this level of schools. All the Ivies and comparable colleges are national schools.

Sure there are tons...but there is a reason like 36% of all Stanford undergrads are from CA and over 50% are from CA plus WA, OR, NV. You see similar percentages for Rice with like 39% from TX.

CA is the most populous state, but only 15% of Harvard students are from CA...the same as from MA which is a much smaller state.

[Anonymous]

"His take, while fully supporting our D’s choice, was that the lifetime of doors that spring open once you have that ivy on your resume is a perk that’s well worth a less-than-ideal undergrad experience. He didn’t love his four years of undergrad, but says he would do it again in a heartbeat knowing the advantages his choice has since conferred."
Like what? Not being facetious. Does where you go for undergrad matter when so many kids go to grad school?
And what are these amazing perks? I have a nephew graduating from Brown who is in a pretty similar boat to my William & Mary senior. (Both have jobs. They're in different fields but basically the same salary and both are in a good position to later go on to grad or law school). Maybe there are advantages later, though...?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For historical reasons, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton remain preeminent. However, since none take students in Early Decision, it's a smaller pool of top students that go there. Many of the best students are committed elsewhere and don't even apply to HYP.

As for the rest of the Ivies, there are at least a dozen schools that are often better choices than Penn, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, and Dartmouth. It depends on the kid and what they want to study and do. This is especially prominent in STEM, which is where a lot of the smart kids are these days. No one chooses Yale or Harvard or Brown or Dartmouth or Columbia for engineering when they have Stanford, MIT, Rice, Georgia Tech, Berkeley, CalTech and so on.

I hate referencing Parchment, but Ga Tech loses to every Ivy school (some like Penn and Dartmouth and Princeton by huge margins) and they are all color-coded except (so it's a statistically significant sample size) vs. Yale or Columbia where they lose but it's not statistically significant enough.

I doubt these are students who applied to Ga Tech to study humanities.

So the Ivies outside of Engineering only offer Humanities degrees. Good to know lol. lol at Parchment.

[Anonymous]

This cycle Georgia Tech had 32,204 OOS and International applications just for Engineering (Does not include CS) and accepted 2,424 for a 7.5% OOS Engineering Acceptance rate. Last cycle they had a 40.1% yield rate for OOS engineering majors. Overall yield was over 45.8%.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"His take, while fully supporting our D’s choice, was that the lifetime of doors that spring open once you have that ivy on your resume is a perk that’s well worth a less-than-ideal undergrad experience. He didn’t love his four years of undergrad, but says he would do it again in a heartbeat knowing the advantages his choice has since conferred."
Like what? Not being facetious. Does where you go for undergrad matter when so many kids go to grad school?
And what are these amazing perks? I have a nephew graduating from Brown who is in a pretty similar boat to my William & Mary senior. (Both have jobs. They're in different fields but basically the same salary and both are in a good position to later go on to grad or law school). Maybe there are advantages later, though...?

Brown is a brand name mostly among parents of kids applying to college. In other demographic groups, even among professionals in NYC/LA/Miami/Houston/Chicago, you’re not going to find anyone stopping to take note that a colleague went to Brown. No one assumes you must be a genius if you’re a Brown or Cornell alum. People are more likely to think you must be smart if you went to HYP, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, even Hopkins and Berkeley; and then there are people in the business world who assume (rightly or wrongly) that you must be fun or have great people skills if you went to Duke, UT Austin, UCLA…no one bats an eyelash over Brown.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"His take, while fully supporting our D’s choice, was that the lifetime of doors that spring open once you have that ivy on your resume is a perk that’s well worth a less-than-ideal undergrad experience. He didn’t love his four years of undergrad, but says he would do it again in a heartbeat knowing the advantages his choice has since conferred."
Like what? Not being facetious. Does where you go for undergrad matter when so many kids go to grad school?
And what are these amazing perks? I have a nephew graduating from Brown who is in a pretty similar boat to my William & Mary senior. (Both have jobs. They're in different fields but basically the same salary and both are in a good position to later go on to grad or law school). Maybe there are advantages later, though...?

Brown is a brand name mostly among parents of kids applying to college. In other demographic groups, even among professionals in NYC/LA/Miami/Houston/Chicago, you’re not going to find anyone stopping to take note that a colleague went to Brown. No one assumes you must be a genius if you’re a Brown or Cornell alum. People are more likely to think you must be smart if you went to HYP, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, even Hopkins and Berkeley; and then there are people in the business world who assume (rightly or wrongly) that you must be fun or have great people skills if you went to Duke, UT Austin, UCLA…no one bats an eyelash over Brown.

lol dude you are so funny. Thanks for letting us know what schools to attend to be considered smart. Are you for real?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For historical reasons, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton remain preeminent. However, since none take students in Early Decision, it's a smaller pool of top students that go there. Many of the best students are committed elsewhere and don't even apply to HYP.

As for the rest of the Ivies, there are at least a dozen schools that are often better choices than Penn, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, and Dartmouth. It depends on the kid and what they want to study and do. This is especially prominent in STEM, which is where a lot of the smart kids are these days. No one chooses Yale or Harvard or Brown or Dartmouth or Columbia for engineering when they have Stanford, MIT, Rice, Georgia Tech, Berkeley, CalTech and so on.

Even in this day-and-age a large percentage of kids will be limited either by their own hesitance or their parents about going to school 3,000 miles from home, nor are they excited to attend college in Houston (which is also 2000 miles away).

There are many kids who won't consider traveling to one coast or the other for college, no matter what.

I guarantee you there are quite a few who would turn down Ga Tech for Harvard or Yale even for engineering.

I will give you MIT.

There are tons of families on the West Coast that will happily send their kids to Princeton. And there are tons of families on the East Coast that will happily send their kids to Stanford. And typically, they have the resources to manage a plane ticket to go back and forth on holidays. Whether a student goes some miles away to Boston, Houston, San Francisco, Chicago, wherever isn't really a factor for most of these students at this level of schools. All the Ivies and comparable colleges are national schools.

Sure there are tons...but there is a reason like 36% of all Stanford undergrads are from CA and over 50% are from CA plus WA, OR, NV. You see similar percentages for Rice with like 39% from TX.

CA is the most populous state, but only 15% of Harvard students are from CA...the same as from MA which is a much smaller state.

California and Texas are gigantic states. There's like 80 million people in those two states alone. Saying Stanford and Rice get 30+ percent from those two states is kind of pointless. There's so much talent in those two states they could take 100 percent of their students in-state with no drop off in quality. But they don't. Comparing student profiles with schools in tiny states like Massachusetts and Rhode Island isn't particularly useful. Harvard and Brown need to get decent students from elsewhere. Colleges in California and Texas could fill their classes ten times over with strong students without leaving the state.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For historical reasons, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton remain preeminent. However, since none take students in Early Decision, it's a smaller pool of top students that go there. Many of the best students are committed elsewhere and don't even apply to HYP.

As for the rest of the Ivies, there are at least a dozen schools that are often better choices than Penn, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, and Dartmouth. It depends on the kid and what they want to study and do. This is especially prominent in STEM, which is where a lot of the smart kids are these days. No one chooses Yale or Harvard or Brown or Dartmouth or Columbia for engineering when they have Stanford, MIT, Rice, Georgia Tech, Berkeley, CalTech and so on.

Even in this day-and-age a large percentage of kids will be limited either by their own hesitance or their parents about going to school 3,000 miles from home, nor are they excited to attend college in Houston (which is also 2000 miles away).

There are many kids who won't consider traveling to one coast or the other for college, no matter what.

I guarantee you there are quite a few who would turn down Ga Tech for Harvard or Yale even for engineering.

I will give you MIT.

There are tons of families on the West Coast that will happily send their kids to Princeton. And there are tons of families on the East Coast that will happily send their kids to Stanford. And typically, they have the resources to manage a plane ticket to go back and forth on holidays. Whether a student goes some miles away to Boston, Houston, San Francisco, Chicago, wherever isn't really a factor for most of these students at this level of schools. All the Ivies and comparable colleges are national schools.

Sure there are tons...but there is a reason like 36% of all Stanford undergrads are from CA and over 50% are from CA plus WA, OR, NV. You see similar percentages for Rice with like 39% from TX.

CA is the most populous state, but only 15% of Harvard students are from CA...the same as from MA which is a much smaller state.

California and Texas are gigantic states. There's like 80 million people in those two states alone. Saying Stanford and Rice get 30+ percent from those two states is kind of pointless. There's so much talent in those two states they could take 100 percent of their students in-state with no drop off in quality. But they don't. Comparing student profiles with schools in tiny states like Massachusetts and Rhode Island isn't particularly useful. Harvard and Brown need to get decent students from elsewhere. Colleges in California and Texas could fill their classes ten times over with strong students without leaving the state.

Where did you come up with this stuff?

https://houston.innovationmap.com/texas-school-system-ranking-wallethub-2668852876.html#:~:text=According%20to%20WalletHub's%202024%20report%2C%20Texas%20has,plan**%201st%20*%20**Math%20test%20scores**%2018th

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/public-school-rankings-by-state#:~:text=The%20better%20the%20public%20school%2C%20the%20more,look%20at%20data%2C%20including%20high%20school%20graduation

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For historical reasons, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton remain preeminent. However, since none take students in Early Decision, it's a smaller pool of top students that go there. Many of the best students are committed elsewhere and don't even apply to HYP.

As for the rest of the Ivies, there are at least a dozen schools that are often better choices than Penn, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, and Dartmouth. It depends on the kid and what they want to study and do. This is especially prominent in STEM, which is where a lot of the smart kids are these days. No one chooses Yale or Harvard or Brown or Dartmouth or Columbia for engineering when they have Stanford, MIT, Rice, Georgia Tech, Berkeley, CalTech and so on.

Even in this day-and-age a large percentage of kids will be limited either by their own hesitance or their parents about going to school 3,000 miles from home, nor are they excited to attend college in Houston (which is also 2000 miles away).

There are many kids who won't consider traveling to one coast or the other for college, no matter what.

I guarantee you there are quite a few who would turn down Ga Tech for Harvard or Yale even for engineering.

I will give you MIT.

There are tons of families on the West Coast that will happily send their kids to Princeton. And there are tons of families on the East Coast that will happily send their kids to Stanford. And typically, they have the resources to manage a plane ticket to go back and forth on holidays. Whether a student goes some miles away to Boston, Houston, San Francisco, Chicago, wherever isn't really a factor for most of these students at this level of schools. All the Ivies and comparable colleges are national schools.

Sure there are tons...but there is a reason like 36% of all Stanford undergrads are from CA and over 50% are from CA plus WA, OR, NV. You see similar percentages for Rice with like 39% from TX.

CA is the most populous state, but only 15% of Harvard students are from CA...the same as from MA which is a much smaller state.

California and Texas are gigantic states. There's like 80 million people in those two states alone. Saying Stanford and Rice get 30+ percent from those two states is kind of pointless. There's so much talent in those two states they could take 100 percent of their students in-state with no drop off in quality. But they don't. Comparing student profiles with schools in tiny states like Massachusetts and Rhode Island isn't particularly useful. Harvard and Brown need to get decent students from elsewhere. Colleges in California and Texas could fill their classes ten times over with strong students without leaving the state.

Where did you come up with this stuff?

https://houston.innovationmap.com/texas-school-system-ranking-wallethub-2668852876.html#:~:text=According%20to%20WalletHub's%202024%20report%2C%20Texas%20has,plan**%201st%20*%20**Math%20test%20scores**%2018th

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/public-school-rankings-by-state#:~:text=The%20better%20the%20public%20school%2C%20the%20more,look%20at%20data%2C%20including%20high%20school%20graduation

https://www.texaspolicy.com/grading-the-graders-unmasking-texas-accountability-crisis/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For historical reasons, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton remain preeminent. However, since none take students in Early Decision, it's a smaller pool of top students that go there. Many of the best students are committed elsewhere and don't even apply to HYP.

As for the rest of the Ivies, there are at least a dozen schools that are often better choices than Penn, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, and Dartmouth. It depends on the kid and what they want to study and do. This is especially prominent in STEM, which is where a lot of the smart kids are these days. No one chooses Yale or Harvard or Brown or Dartmouth or Columbia for engineering when they have Stanford, MIT, Rice, Georgia Tech, Berkeley, CalTech and so on.

Even in this day-and-age a large percentage of kids will be limited either by their own hesitance or their parents about going to school 3,000 miles from home, nor are they excited to attend college in Houston (which is also 2000 miles away).

There are many kids who won't consider traveling to one coast or the other for college, no matter what.

I guarantee you there are quite a few who would turn down Ga Tech for Harvard or Yale even for engineering.

I will give you MIT.

There are tons of families on the West Coast that will happily send their kids to Princeton. And there are tons of families on the East Coast that will happily send their kids to Stanford. And typically, they have the resources to manage a plane ticket to go back and forth on holidays. Whether a student goes some miles away to Boston, Houston, San Francisco, Chicago, wherever isn't really a factor for most of these students at this level of schools. All the Ivies and comparable colleges are national schools.

Sure there are tons...but there is a reason like 36% of all Stanford undergrads are from CA and over 50% are from CA plus WA, OR, NV. You see similar percentages for Rice with like 39% from TX.

CA is the most populous state, but only 15% of Harvard students are from CA...the same as from MA which is a much smaller state.

California and Texas are gigantic states. There's like 80 million people in those two states alone. Saying Stanford and Rice get 30+ percent from those two states is kind of pointless. There's so much talent in those two states they could take 100 percent of their students in-state with no drop off in quality. But they don't. Comparing student profiles with schools in tiny states like Massachusetts and Rhode Island isn't particularly useful. Harvard and Brown need to get decent students from elsewhere. Colleges in California and Texas could fill their classes ten times over with strong students without leaving the state.

You completely and utterly missed the point.

If kids only cared about the strength of an engineering program and practical matters like distance to college didn’t factor into anything, then schools like Stanford and Harvard would have similar profiles of % of kids from CA, right?

The fact is they don’t, because Stanford gets far more kids applying from CA and neighboring states then they do from the East Coast and vice versa.

Rice gets far more applications from Texas and closer states than coastal states.

It’s also why you hear people on DCUM say “we are from TX or IA or AZ” and kids aren’t obsessed with Ivy schools.

The reality is if you picked up the Ivy schools and moved them TX and OK and IA then guess what? You would have tons of kids in the southwest and Midwest obsessed with them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For historical reasons, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton remain preeminent. However, since none take students in Early Decision, it's a smaller pool of top students that go there. Many of the best students are committed elsewhere and don't even apply to HYP.

As for the rest of the Ivies, there are at least a dozen schools that are often better choices than Penn, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, and Dartmouth. It depends on the kid and what they want to study and do. This is especially prominent in STEM, which is where a lot of the smart kids are these days. No one chooses Yale or Harvard or Brown or Dartmouth or Columbia for engineering when they have Stanford, MIT, Rice, Georgia Tech, Berkeley, CalTech and so on.

Even in this day-and-age a large percentage of kids will be limited either by their own hesitance or their parents about going to school 3,000 miles from home, nor are they excited to attend college in Houston (which is also 2000 miles away).

There are many kids who won't consider traveling to one coast or the other for college, no matter what.

I guarantee you there are quite a few who would turn down Ga Tech for Harvard or Yale even for engineering.

I will give you MIT.

There are tons of families on the West Coast that will happily send their kids to Princeton. And there are tons of families on the East Coast that will happily send their kids to Stanford. And typically, they have the resources to manage a plane ticket to go back and forth on holidays. Whether a student goes some miles away to Boston, Houston, San Francisco, Chicago, wherever isn't really a factor for most of these students at this level of schools. All the Ivies and comparable colleges are national schools.

Sure there are tons...but there is a reason like 36% of all Stanford undergrads are from CA and over 50% are from CA plus WA, OR, NV. You see similar percentages for Rice with like 39% from TX.

CA is the most populous state, but only 15% of Harvard students are from CA...the same as from MA which is a much smaller state.

California and Texas are gigantic states. There's like 80 million people in those two states alone. Saying Stanford and Rice get 30+ percent from those two states is kind of pointless. There's so much talent in those two states they could take 100 percent of their students in-state with no drop off in quality. But they don't. Comparing student profiles with schools in tiny states like Massachusetts and Rhode Island isn't particularly useful. Harvard and Brown need to get decent students from elsewhere. Colleges in California and Texas could fill their classes ten times over with strong students without leaving the state.

Public education in CA is really really poor. The vast majority of the CA applicants are a notch down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For historical reasons, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton remain preeminent. However, since none take students in Early Decision, it's a smaller pool of top students that go there. Many of the best students are committed elsewhere and don't even apply to HYP.

As for the rest of the Ivies, there are at least a dozen schools that are often better choices than Penn, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, and Dartmouth. It depends on the kid and what they want to study and do. This is especially prominent in STEM, which is where a lot of the smart kids are these days. No one chooses Yale or Harvard or Brown or Dartmouth or Columbia for engineering when they have Stanford, MIT, Rice, Georgia Tech, Berkeley, CalTech and so on.

My kid did and has no regrets, although DC got in early and didn’t apply elsewhere.DC is having the time of their life and is thriving. DC was recently tapped into one of the most exclusive senior societies and have had amazing access to opportunities. While there are definitely other schools with deeper and more robust programs, it hasn’t mattered for my DC because there were many intangibles they have gotten from their school. On a recent visit home they said you couldn’t pay them to go to another school and I was happy to hear this since we are full pay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DC is facing such a choice. The non-ivy is their first choice and a better fit. But it’s just difficult to ignore the prestige of an ivy.

I went with in-state public, and saved a ton of money and avoided massive student loans. It hasn't hurt my academic opportunities or my career. After undergrad, got a PhD from a top-5 in my field.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"His take, while fully supporting our D’s choice, was that the lifetime of doors that spring open once you have that ivy on your resume is a perk that’s well worth a less-than-ideal undergrad experience. He didn’t love his four years of undergrad, but says he would do it again in a heartbeat knowing the advantages his choice has since conferred."
Like what? Not being facetious. Does where you go for undergrad matter when so many kids go to grad school?
And what are these amazing perks? I have a nephew graduating from Brown who is in a pretty similar boat to my William & Mary senior. (Both have jobs. They're in different fields but basically the same salary and both are in a good position to later go on to grad or law school). Maybe there are advantages later, though...?

Brown is a brand name mostly among parents of kids applying to college. In other demographic groups, even among professionals in NYC/LA/Miami/Houston/Chicago, you’re not going to find anyone stopping to take note that a colleague went to Brown. No one assumes you must be a genius if you’re a Brown or Cornell alum. People are more likely to think you must be smart if you went to HYP, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, even Hopkins and Berkeley; and then there are people in the business world who assume (rightly or wrongly) that you must be fun or have great people skills if you went to Duke, UT Austin, UCLA…no one bats an eyelash over Brown.

lol dude you are so funny. Thanks for letting us know what schools to attend to be considered smart. Are you for real?

I literally did not say “attend these schools to be considered smart.” I said “people are more likely to think you must be smart if you went to HYP, stanford, MIT, Caltech…(rightly or wrongly)…” How is that not a common perception? People make assumptions; I didn’t say those alums are in fact smarter. People make assumptions that if you are tall, you’re likely a better basketball player than someone who is short. Are you going to give them an “are you for real?” too?