Brown $68K vs. UMich (in-state) $28K

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No one should presume they'll get into Brown.

This. OP's daughter would need a 99 percentile test score, great grades and craft a really good app. I'd give her a slight bump for targeting Brown vs sending out 10-20 apps, and being from Michigan instead of out East or California is worth maybe a 1% bump. But still, no higher than a 15% chance she gets in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No one should presume they'll get into Brown.

This. OP's daughter would need a 99 percentile test score, great grades and craft a really good app. I'd give her a slight bump for targeting Brown vs sending out 10-20 apps, and being from Michigan instead of out East or California is worth maybe a 1% bump. But still, no higher than a 15% chance she gets in.

Surprised it took this long for posters to make this point. Brown is highly selective so just because your kid has stats that look comparable doesn't give him/her likelihood of getting in-- there will be thousands of kids with those stats for them to choose from.

If you know tou wouldn't pay for Brown-- which is a decision that I agree should not be based on a message board-- I wouldn't apply. Otherwise I'dd apply and go from there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Girls tend to find spouses at college or through college friends. Who's your daughter going to meet at Michigan? Half the kids are middle class Michigan residents; the other half are kids that were rejected from Berkeley (California students), Brown, Penn and Cornell. 1/2 the boys are engineering or business (at Ross, a marketing school). Statistically, if your daughter meets her husband at Michigan, he's most likely going to be a future Ford engineer or mid-level manager at Kraft/Heinz.

At Brown a likely mate possessed the candle power (and/or $) to get into an Ivy, will be conditioned, respect culture, cosmopolitan, and post-grad will likely end up in finance, or a top tier law/medical school.

Different leagues.

Hahahaaa

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Girls tend to find spouses at college or through college friends. Who's your daughter going to meet at Michigan? Half the kids are middle class Michigan residents; the other half are kids that were rejected from Berkeley (California students), Brown, Penn and Cornell. 1/2 the boys are engineering or business (at Ross, a marketing school). Statistically, if your daughter meets her husband at Michigan, he's most likely going to be a future Ford engineer or mid-level manager at Kraft/Heinz.

At Brown a likely mate possessed the candle power (and/or $) to get into an Ivy, will be conditioned, respect culture, cosmopolitan, and post-grad will likely end up in finance, or a top tier law/medical school.

Different leagues.

Mrs. Bennett is on the Internet!!

Love it!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nobody cares where you get your undergraduate degree. I'd tell her that I'd pay for a year of travel once she's done if she chooses the cheaper school. Hell, she'd learn more in that year than 4 years at either institution.

True but grad schools and Med schools do take it into account. And honestly, DD is scoffing at high school 2.0 now, but when she goes to college and feels like fish out water like all of us sometimes did, she has the option of reconnecting with her high school friends and shifting down into that easy state college, job in home town, hanging out with high school buddies until well past middle age mentality. Maybe OP is fine with that, but if she has potential and dreams to big things, it would be sad if she ends up at middle age and regrets taking the safe choice but has two kids and a job at GM.

This is absurd, and eerily reminiscent of my own mistaken assumptions about Michigan vs. Brown when I was in high school. I chose Michigan (with heavy pressure from my parents), and went to the most highly ranked ivy graduate program in my field afterwards. Having attended Michigan did not hold me back. I did the undergraduate honors program recommended above, lived on campus all four years, and had a mix of new friends plus one high school friend. Michigan has a LARGE alumni community here and throughout the country; for every alum who's 'middle aged with two kids and a job at GM', I've met two who are doing more interesting things and continuing to pursue their dreams. Michigan is not an 'easy state college,' and its specialty programs are particularly rigorous.

OP hook your DD up with some Michigan alums (that was part of my parents' persuasive attack) and send her to Michigan.

+1 -- The idea that Michigan is some backwater school full of slackers is laughable. I went to an Ivy undergrad and a top 5 law school where several of my classmates were Michigan grads in a range of fields, including engineering, music and English. All very sharp; all quite successful lawyers. When I visited the campus with my own kids during their college search, I could see why. The students we met, their sense of energy and ambition, and the university's resources were impressive. Among my kids' friends (grads of a DC K-12 independent school), we know a number of current Michigan students -- they are bright, engaged in learning, and love it there. And the recent grads we know were successful in job search and grad school admissions. Socially, Michigan is a different scene from Brown, of course, and maybe that's key for OP's daughter, but academically, these schools are very much on par.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I'm familiar with the curriculum, but I don't know what you mean by a student needing structure. Open is just flexibility and gives the student freedom to explore. It's not like they're on their own without an advisor, right? I'd think most college students would find that really ne

I graduated from Brown over 20 years ago, so my experience may be outdated.

But yes, students are on their own. THey are assigned a freshman advisor, but that's it. I think we had to take a freshman seminar with them. But there was very much the culture of, if you need help, go seek it out. If you are a self starter, ambitious, extrovert, you can do OK.

There is NO curriculum, except what your concentration requires. There are no distribution requirements. And in most cases, prerequisites are flexible... if you think you can handle a class without the prerequisite, go ahead.

We have hired a college counselor to help us navigate and what PP describes above is my understanding of Brown. Brown has an 8% admissions rate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work in the District Mon-Thurs and our main residence is in Metro Detroit. Daughter likes UMich but believes too many students from her h.s. matriculate so it ends up being h.s. 2.0. She plans to specifically target Brown and would attend UMich if rejected. But if she's accepted to both, is Brown worth the extra $120K? I'm on the fence.

UM is huge; she would probably never need to see anybody from HS if she didn't want to. IMO I'd pick UM over Brown; no way is Brown worth the extra cash.

[Anonymous]

If she gets in and doesn't go she'll be another kid at Michigan who claims they got into [an Ivy] but came to Ann Arbor. Of course most kids are lying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Girls tend to find spouses at college or through college friends. Who's your daughter going to meet at Michigan? Half the kids are middle class Michigan residents; the other half are kids that were rejected from Berkeley (California students), Brown, Penn and Cornell. 1/2 the boys are engineering or business (at Ross, a marketing school). Statistically, if your daughter meets her husband at Michigan, he's most likely going to be a future Ford engineer or mid-level manager at Kraft/Heinz.

At Brown a likely mate possessed the candle power (and/or $) to get into an Ivy, will be conditioned, respect culture, cosmopolitan, and post-grad will likely end up in finance, or a top tier law/medical school.

Different leagues.

Mrs. Bennett is on the Internet!!

[Anonymous]

All things being equal, one should go with the better ranke school. And parents need to make that happen however possible. But Michigan is good enough, I guess, to be an exception here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work in the District Mon-Thurs and our main residence is in Metro Detroit. Daughter likes UMich but believes too many students from her h.s. matriculate so it ends up being h.s. 2.0. She plans to specifically target Brown and would attend UMich if rejected. But if she's accepted to both, is Brown worth the extra $120K? I'm on the fence.

UM is huge; she would probably never need to see anybody from HS if she didn't want to. IMO I'd pick UM over Brown; no way is Brown worth the extra cash.

I grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. and went to Northwestern. 100 per year from my high school went to U of M; easily 500 a year within a 10 mile radius of my house. Acting like you can avoid everyone from high school at the state flagship is a lie. Good luck reinventing yourself when everyone still hangs with everyone from home and everyone joins the same frats and sororities. It's doable, obviously, just not all that realistic. You're going to bump into kids from high school on a daily basis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No one should presume they'll get into Brown.

This. OP's daughter would need a 99 percentile test score, great grades and craft a really good app. I'd give her a slight bump for targeting Brown vs sending out 10-20 apps, and being from Michigan instead of out East or California is worth maybe a 1% bump. But still, no higher than a 15% chance she gets in.

+1. Although since the applicant in question is a girl, the road to admission is even tougher. Brown admits boys at a higher rate than girls since they received 18,108 apps from girls last year but only 12,292 applications from boys.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work in the District Mon-Thurs and our main residence is in Metro Detroit. Daughter likes UMich but believes too many students from her h.s. matriculate so it ends up being h.s. 2.0. She plans to specifically target Brown and would attend UMich if rejected. But if she's accepted to both, is Brown worth the extra $120K? I'm on the fence.

I'm a recent Brown grad. What does she want to do after undergrad? Brown has some great programs, such as applied math, but if she's interested in engineering, Caltech is the place to go imo. Brown has the pmle program which includes med school. I know Ann Arbor has a great literature grad program. For job prospects, please take a look at the employment data. Same for law school. Is Yale Law admitting more people from Brown or Michigan? For example, GS IB recruits only from certain programs. The only people I know doing the open curriculum or self made concentration are the ones with over $100M trust funds. The rest of us, who had to get jobs, go to grad schools, followed the BA / BS requirements, which are pretty strict, and took graded classes. It's true that a lot of people found their spouses at Brown including myself and I think it's true of a lot of undergraduate schools. Can your family afford the $120k without putting a burden on your other kids' education funds and your retirement?

[Anonymous]

92% chance she'll be rejected so you won't have to worry. Probably closer to 99% once you account for recruited athletes, URMs, and hooked trust fund kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work in the District Mon-Thurs and our main residence is in Metro Detroit. Daughter likes UMich but believes too many students from her h.s. matriculate so it ends up being h.s. 2.0. She plans to specifically target Brown and would attend UMich if rejected. But if she's accepted to both, is Brown worth the extra $120K? I'm on the fence.

Where'd you get the $120k number? I get $160k (4 years times $40k higher).