If you child got into a top college

[Anonymous]

Above -- what does that have to do with this topic...if yoour child got into a top college? UMCP is not a top college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd never send my son or daughter to UMCP. Too much crime in PG County, too ugly a campus and too close to home.

We're all really sorry you don't get along with your kid. However it's not an excuse to trash somebody else's university.

[Anonymous]

UMCP is one of the best public universities in the country.

[Anonymous]

is Towson considered an elite university? what about Salisbury?

[Anonymous]

No and no.

[Anonymous]

I meant to add above that the OP asked how the student got into a top college. By "top college" I assumed she or he meant a top-ranked college. So, I was answering the question based upon the US News Rankings for both National Universities and Liberal Arts Universities. The list is available online for free.

[Anonymous]

For somebody who wants to do, say, engineering at Carnegie Mellon, would it be a good strategy to apply for history and then switch to engineering? Provided it's not a completely different school within the university, which could make switching impossible?

I don't know how it is at Carnegie Mellon now (or other schools), but I went to CMU for music and it would have been impossible to switch majors without applying again as if starting from scratch. I would think that would put a student at a disadvantage (either you had done poorly in your first major and HAD to switch or you were wishy-washy, undecided, whatever). There were a lot of students in the College of Fine Arts who did well enough, but they weed out even B students so that they graduate only the best musicians, actors, etc. Some of these people liked the university enough to want to stay so they applied to another program, but you start again as a freshman, minus maybe 1 or 2 general courses. Not an inexpensive strategy. Of course people change their minds and 1 difficult thing about CMU is that it almost completely requires 17-year-olds to declare a major upon application, but in general I think this would not be a wise idea.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:i thought ODU was considered the "harvard of norfolk". not true?

Any school that thinks of itself as the "Harvard of (whatever)" is not "elite."

[Anonymous]

I didn't write that pp -- but why would it really hurt someone/some college to dream big? So what if they want to be the Harvard of....the scrappies or whatever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I got into Brown and Columbia and went to University of Chicago. Just a quick point, there are other great schools. I am really happy with my decision.

The University of Chicago is a wonderful school!

I don't understand the purpose of this post (either the original or the one making the original poster try to feel better about his or her non-"Ivy" choice. Isn't the University of Chicago ranked HIGHER than Brown and the same as Columbia? The top ten:

1. Harvard/ Princeton
3. Yale
4. Cal Tech/ MIT/ Stanford/ University of Pennsylvania
8. Columbia/ Chicago
10. Duke


The distinction "ivy" is meaningless except as a grouping of eight colleges that happened to be in the same athletic league. The fact that some of them happen to be the top colleges in the country is coincidental. Notice that three of them are not in the top ten, while five non-Ivies are in the top ten.

Thus, when I see a post discussing top colleges of "ivies," in general, I view it as a short-hand for the actual elite colleges, not just the Ivies. Someone making a comment like "I chose Stanford over Brown" or whatever is fairly meaningless as a barometer of someone actually choosing a lesser school over a "top" college.

[Anonymous]

22:15 PP here. I made my point badly. I meant to say, does anyone seriously think that someone would choose, say, Cornell over Stanford, Chicago, or MIT? Highly doubtful. That's why the term "Ivy" as limited to those 8 colleges is so useless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:22:15 PP here. I made my point badly. I meant to say, does anyone seriously think that someone would choose, say, Cornell over Stanford, Chicago, or MIT? Highly doubtful. That's why the term "Ivy" as limited to those 8 colleges is so useless.

Depending on what DC wants to study, I might just encourage her to choose Cornell over the other three. Although we're a few years away from applying anywhere yet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:22:15 PP here. I made my point badly. I meant to say, does anyone seriously think that someone would choose, say, Cornell over Stanford, Chicago, or MIT? Highly doubtful. That's why the term "Ivy" as limited to those 8 colleges is so useless.

Depending on what DC wants to study, I might just encourage her to choose Cornell over the other three. Although we're a few years away from applying anywhere yet.

Fair enough, but my only real point was that any discussion of "top colleges" cannot possibly be limited to the actual EIGHT so-called Ivy Leagues, because, as is made clear by the US News and World Report rankings (which have remained fairly static over the years), half of the Top Ten are non-Ivy. The three remaining Ivies, Brown, Cornell, and Dartmouth, are in the Top 20, which is still impressive, and I'm certainly not knocking those schools. I'm simply pointing out the rather obvious point that several of the objectively "top" universities are not in the Ivy League, and yet, are viewed as better, more prestigious, etc., than several schools IN the Ivy League.

Finally, meandering back to my first point, based on this fact, it seems hardly shocking that the poster I quoted chose the University of Chicago over Brown and Columbia. It would be similarly non-shocking for an applicant to choose MIT over Dartmouth or Columbia or Brown or Cornell . . . or I could go on, but you get my point.

[Anonymous]

Anyone that thinks it's snobbery to say that ODU and Radford aren't top schools are being silly. ODU is better than Radford, but both are way below the "elite" public schools, such as UVA, W&M, JMU, VA Tech, and UMD. Radford, especially, has always been considered the quintessential safety school.

[Anonymous]

I do alumni interviewing for Dartmouth and the kids are almost uniformly outstanding on paper. So I look for the kid who lights up when asked about his favorite piece of music, a book that she read that means something to her, or really can talk about any subject with geniune enthusiasm, knowledge, and excitement. I don't like the ones that are too slick, too rehearsed, and too perfect. You can always tell the kids that have been prepped to say what they think we want to hear, and who just somehow don't sound natural. Foster your child's genuine passions in life and they will do well on their own. It's the kid who devours books whose going to blow the SAT verbal out, not the kid who spends endless ours in prep class.