Reply to Anyone touring top schools and finding then all to be dumpy and unimpressive?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We toured almost every T15(all but stanford and Caltech) and found them all great, and they all emphasized small classes. All my kids attend a different one of these schools and find them intellectually stimulating with less than 1/4 of their classes over 40, including stem. We never toured any school outside of T25 that was not W&M or VT or W&L, so we did not see the big schools with the pretty pools and fancy dorms we have seen online. We were looking for academics and found the only ugly/dumpy one to be MIT, yet loved the intellectual vibe of our quirky tour guide. similar-vibe tour guides were WM Hopkins and Brown, but did not select the final schools based on love of tour. People do not pick T15s for beauty, they pick them for academics: faculty, peers, smallish classes. To each his own. [/quote]
Students definitely expect glamor from T15 campuses. Most also have massive classes, all it takes is talking to someone who isn’t a tour guide[/quote]

My kids are at different ivy/T15 private. They each have friends at others. There are no “massive” classes. The biggest is around 200, none of mine have had more than one 200 person class, even for premed.  They have all had the majority of classes less than 30, some less than 10 people. William&Mary is the same that is why it is the “public ivy”. [/quote]
200 is a massive class for $90k. 30 is a massive class for $90k. [/quote]

Where do you expect your kid to go and not have 30-200? Or is 30-200 “worth it” when you have a discounted price? And how do you know who is paying $90! Lots of us get need based aid and are not paying anything close to that. One of the best professors I ever had taught 300 person classes : the lectures were so well regarded students who were not registered would audit just to be there. Class size hs little to do with quality. [/quote]
Class size has a lot to do with quality, are you joking? Would you spend $40k on a private high school with 200 person lecture halls? And before I get accused of “handholding,” no it’s about actually getting an education that you can’t flub and hide behind 200 people. That professor you’re talking about is a showman, not a lecturer[/quote]

HS isn’t college where 13 year olds need more time and attention than 18+.  That said…I doubt anyone would leave Sidwell if they announced tomorrow they plan to double or triple the size of the HS

I would absolutely prefer a lecture from a Nobel prize winning professor with 200 kids vs a random professor with a PhD.

Why are all these schools so highly rated if class size is such a huge criteria?

Sounds like you want a SLAC…so there is a small school for your kid out there (BTW…I assume OP may have visited some top SLACs and they also find them dumpy).[/quote]
The great thing about higher Ed is that if you go to Harvard [b]or you go to some noname state school, you likely won’t be taking classes from a Nobel any time soon. You’re more likely if you go to Berkeley, but even then, will they be that great of a teacher?

Most people on this thread went to universities. Did you really do research with some industry-defining person[/b] or was it a random who happened to have a PhD and had good research output?

I do think a lot of mental health issues and competitiveness spur from big classrooms with cold professors and damaging curves. Now your peers become your competition and your prof doesn’t teach that well, so you have to grind yourself to a pebble trying to beat everyone else.[/quote]

Not all research leads to this type of discovery, but in fact my chem prof was a nobel winner, and my kid at a different T10 is doing cutting edge BME research on a team that includes a nobel winner and yes they get to interact with this person and all the up and coming superstars(the post docs) in the lab.

As far as competitive: yes all these schools are competitive but it is usually self imposed. Your student is either up for that or they arent. No one spoon feeds these kids. They didnt back in the 90s at the same schools: it is up to the students to do the problem sets, go to office hours, read before lecture, spend time on the research and writing. Don’t pick an elite school if you aren’t independent and self motivated. Most of my med school came from T25s . We were all in the same mold and thrived under the rigor[/quote]

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