Reply to SUNY schools — why aren’t they as popular as other OOS schools

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote] Well Penn State is Penn State---the atmosphere alone is what many want, along with a quality big school.
Delaware---great state school and it's not located in the middle of nowhere (like most SUNYs)
and Temple is in a Major city.
I honestly think location, location location is why people don't think of SUNYs. And when you put OOS costs with them, it's just not worth it. Many are not easy to fly to---you have to bus a few hours to an airport or take a train and then connect.

People go to Alabama for the big school experience (football, and now basketball) and the fact that Alabama offers MAJOR merit to students. A 1420+ and 3.5+ UW gpa will get you FREE TUITION as an OOS student. So yeah, people are willing to sacrifice "ranking" for the big school experience with only owing room & board. I know for a fact that Boulder does not offer much (if any) merit awards, especially for OOS students. So $18K for R&B at Alabama or $~56K for tuition, R&B at Boulder. Really not that difficult to see why someone would select Alabama (I personally wouldn't and neither would my kids, but I can certainly understand why many would)  [/quote]

Look, you can find any excuse you want, but i don't think these stand up to scrutiny, and certainly not as a measure of educational quality.   If you're going to talk up Penn State, then don't say that a (equally highly ranked) school being in Buffalo or on Long Island is remote or hard to reach by air.   I'm not sure what you mean by Delaware is "a great state school" when the (on this site, authoritative) USNWR report says the three SUNY flagships are better state schools.    As as for Alabama -- well, if someone can get a free ride, anywhere, that changes the equation.   But it's also true that if you talk about "being willing to sacrifice 'ranking'" -- ie, the expert measure of the quality of the academic experience, and the gap between the SUNYs and Alabama is significant -- in favor of the "big school experience (football, and now basketball)," it basically means you're assigning a higher priority to having a good time than to the quality of the educational experience.    Anyone's entitled to make that choice, but let's not pretend that's SUNY's problem.      [/quote]

I personally wouldn't pick any of those over a SUNY, but also wouldn't pick a SUNY because I'm not a NY resident. My kid's have picked where to attend for the academic aspects first, then looked at what else the school/location has to offer.  One kid picked a mid size city, one picked a great school in CA (and yeah the weather is awesome) and one picked a much smaller but still "decent size" city in upstate NY so they definitely didn't pick it for the weather but rather for the academics and quality of research opportunities available at this smaller highly ranked school.  But let's be real, the reason many pick OOS state flagships is for both the academics and the "whole experience" and to be honest---the difference in rankings between 80 and 120 is not that much, IMO, what matters more is the opportunities within your desired major---so you pick a school in that range for academics (and opportunities to actually major in what you want), location and the overall experience.  And yes, many, many people picks schools for the football experience, the greek experience, etc.  We don't in our family, but many do. [/quote]

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