Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are colleges in super high cost of living areas like NYU the same price as colleges in the middle of nowhere New England? Those dorm prices cannot be the same

Williams runs on $97k, Amherst about the same. These are as prestigious as Harvard and Yale, but at a lower cost than schools like NYU.

Williams nor Amherst are anywhere near Harvard level, are you crazy? They’re good generalist teaching colleges, but Ivy level they are not.

Both are better than any Ivy for undergraduate education. About 20 years ago Harvard actually set up a task force and produced a report in an attempt to improve their teaching to the levels of the top SLACs.

What are you basing this on? This is such a wrong assumption. My DC is at Yale and is having an absolutely amazing time. She has great relationships with professors (in one class the professor takes the students out to a restaurant every week, in another class the professor took students for a fully-funded 2 week trip to Europe last summer (we paid nada despite being a full pay family), her professors have made themselves available etc... This notion that a small college offers the best college experience is truly overrated many times.

I have two that are at two different ivies, neither is Yale. This 100% describes their experiences and they could not be in more different majors/fields from each other. The departments have excellent funding for undergrads, professors are approachable, classes are very small, even STEM classes are often under 18. Professors work to get students paid research (if the department itself is not a mega-funded stem one with guaranteed paid undergrad spots); they help students write real grants for funding. As undergrads. Professors and department coordinators are always passing along opportunities for the students, offering to email peers at peer schools and help network. And on top of all that there are school-wide resources that any student can use to get paid for unpaid summer internships, to apply to externally funded fellowships, and to attend international research or outreach based trips in the summer paid by the college. I have no doubt that top SLACs such as Williams etc do similar but the concept is not limited to SLACS.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are colleges in super high cost of living areas like NYU the same price as colleges in the middle of nowhere New England? Those dorm prices cannot be the same

Williams runs on $97k, Amherst about the same. These are as prestigious as Harvard and Yale, but at a lower cost than schools like NYU.

Williams nor Amherst are anywhere near Harvard level, are you crazy? They’re good generalist teaching colleges, but Ivy level they are not.

Both are better than any Ivy for undergraduate education. About 20 years ago Harvard actually set up a task force and produced a report in an attempt to improve their teaching to the levels of the top SLACs.

What are you basing this on? This is such a wrong assumption. My DC is at Yale and is having an absolutely amazing time. She has great relationships with professors (in one class the professor takes the students out to a restaurant every week, in another class the professor took students for a fully-funded 2 week trip to Europe last summer (we paid nada despite being a full pay family), her professors have made themselves available etc... This notion that a small college offers the best college experience is truly overrated many times.

Did you read before you mindlessly posted? Derek Bok set up a working group at Harvard because R1 teaching was inferior to teaching at top SLACs and he wanted to fix it. They made some suggestions that mostly haven’t been acted upon and today things are if anything worse than they were. The fact that your daughter is having a great experience in no way contradicts the position taken by Derek Bok that SLACs provide superior undergraduate education compared to R1s.

It makes complete sense. The incentives for success at each is the opposite of the other. Teaching at SLACs and research at R1s.

DP, but Harvard grad. How old are you? Derek Bok is 96. He left Harvard in 2007. I was a student of his so googled what you claimed. No, Derek Bok did not say that a liberal arts education is superior to Harvard. Rather, as a prominent scholar of higher education, he has written extensively about the shortcomings of undergraduate teaching at major research universities like Harvard. He wrote about this in 2009 AFTER he left Harvard University and it was his OWN opinion. Back then! In 2009!!!!! How can you draw any conclusions from an opinion in 2009 and extrapolate from that to today’s crises s in higher ed?

Nobody was extrapolating to today poor soul. Derek Bok did are the comment in 2007 I believe and he specifically referred to Amherst. Harvard did put together a working group and issue a paper with a series of recommendations including focusing and rewarding based on teaching which were ignored. Spend $20 and use a decent AI platform to gather your base sources, it isn’t hard but you either cheaped out, can’t properly create prompts, or used a crappy platform because your answer is woefully inadequate. As the old saying goes “RTFM, I’m not going to do your work for you”.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are colleges in super high cost of living areas like NYU the same price as colleges in the middle of nowhere New England? Those dorm prices cannot be the same

Williams runs on $97k, Amherst about the same. These are as prestigious as Harvard and Yale, but at a lower cost than schools like NYU.

Williams nor Amherst are anywhere near Harvard level, are you crazy? They’re good generalist teaching colleges, but Ivy level they are not.

Both are better than any Ivy for undergraduate education. About 20 years ago Harvard actually set up a task force and produced a report in an attempt to improve their teaching to the levels of the top SLACs.

What are you basing this on? This is such a wrong assumption. My DC is at Yale and is having an absolutely amazing time. She has great relationships with professors (in one class the professor takes the students out to a restaurant every week, in another class the professor took students for a fully-funded 2 week trip to Europe last summer (we paid nada despite being a full pay family), her professors have made themselves available etc... This notion that a small college offers the best college experience is truly overrated many times.

Did you read before you mindlessly posted? Derek Bok set up a working group at Harvard because R1 teaching was inferior to teaching at top SLACs and he wanted to fix it. They made some suggestions that mostly haven’t been acted upon and today things are if anything worse than they were. The fact that your daughter is having a great experience in no way contradicts the position taken by Derek Bok that SLACs provide superior undergraduate education compared to R1s.

It makes complete sense. The incentives for success at each is the opposite of the other. Teaching at SLACs and research at R1s.

DP, but Harvard grad. How old are you? Derek Bok is 96. He left Harvard in 2007. I was a student of his so googled what you claimed. No, Derek Bok did not say that a liberal arts education is superior to Harvard. Rather, as a prominent scholar of higher education, he has written extensively about the shortcomings of undergraduate teaching at major research universities like Harvard. He wrote about this in 2009 AFTER he left Harvard University and it was his OWN opinion. Back then! In 2009!!!!! How can you draw any conclusions from an opinion in 2009 and extrapolate from that to today’s crises s in higher ed?

Sorry ^, Occidental college want to remain below $100k for appearances sake but if you look closely, they are not including travel expenses and mandatory (if you don’t have your own plan for your kid) health care plans, which easily push the college over $100. Always read the fine print.

Be careful when reading the total Coat of Attendance pages. Many colleges, including my own

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t be outraged. Just don’t go if merit isn’t offered to bring the cost down. Why the handwringing? There are other options.

With a few limited exceptions such as WashU, none of these schools offer merit scholarships.

Merit scholarships are available everywhere except the Ivies, Stanford, MIT and CalTech. And all of the non-merit schools offer exceptionally good financial aid. Of course, it's incredibly difficult to get a merit scholarship at Duke, Chicago, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Rice, and so on. But they do exist.

As I said, "with a few limited exceptions." Of course they exist. But they are not available "everywhere" except the schools you named - most elite schools do not offer them.

NP. You are wrong, again. With the exceptions mentioned (Ivies, Stanford, MIT and Caltech), most T30 schools offer full tuition and/or full ride to the tippy top students. Just because you are ignorant of these scholarships doesn't make them non existent.

Prove it.

Fordham is amazing it gets that much. In NYC in 1970s and 1980s Pace, St. Johns, Hofstra, Fordham were all affordable local colleges kids applied to with about same cost.

Fordham just somehow doubled tuition next to the others over last 40 years.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t be outraged. Just don’t go if merit isn’t offered to bring the cost down. Why the handwringing? There are other options.

With a few limited exceptions such as WashU, none of these schools offer merit scholarships.

Merit scholarships are available everywhere except the Ivies, Stanford, MIT and CalTech. And all of the non-merit schools offer exceptionally good financial aid. Of course, it's incredibly difficult to get a merit scholarship at Duke, Chicago, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Rice, and so on. But they do exist.

As I said, "with a few limited exceptions." Of course they exist. But they are not available "everywhere" except the schools you named - most elite schools do not offer them.

NP. You are wrong, again. With the exceptions mentioned (Ivies, Stanford, MIT and Caltech), most T30 schools offer full tuition and/or full ride to the tippy top students. Just because you are ignorant of these scholarships doesn't make them non existent.

This is quickly spiraling into yet another “I hate LACs” thread. Seems every time
that elite and SLAC are in the same paragraph, or even in adjacent comments, DCUM erupts into this same pissing contest.

I predict next we’ll be hearing about “diner goths,” and if we’re really lucky, anti-woke weirdo will soon chime in.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are colleges in super high cost of living areas like NYU the same price as colleges in the middle of nowhere New England? Those dorm prices cannot be the same

Williams runs on $97k, Amherst about the same. These are as prestigious as Harvard and Yale, but at a lower cost than schools like NYU.

Williams nor Amherst are anywhere near Harvard level, are you crazy? They’re good generalist teaching colleges, but Ivy level they are not.

Both are better than any Ivy for undergraduate education. About 20 years ago Harvard actually set up a task force and produced a report in an attempt to improve their teaching to the levels of the top SLACs.

Link?

Google is your friend.

Do you have a link to back this up? Please post it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are colleges in super high cost of living areas like NYU the same price as colleges in the middle of nowhere New England? Those dorm prices cannot be the same

Williams runs on $97k, Amherst about the same. These are as prestigious as Harvard and Yale, but at a lower cost than schools like NYU.

Williams nor Amherst are anywhere near Harvard level, are you crazy? They’re good generalist teaching colleges, but Ivy level they are not.

Both are better than any Ivy for undergraduate education. About 20 years ago Harvard actually set up a task force and produced a report in an attempt to improve their teaching to the levels of the top SLACs.

Princeton is much better than Amherst and Williams for undergraduate education. Same with Yale. And Brown. And frankly, Columbia.

Princeton can play, not better but can play so I will give you that. A close friends kid is at Brown now while their oldest went to a top SLAC. They are pretty open that the SLAC was a better education. Frankly (I can fit that in too) I cannot imagine Columbia being better.

Well, if your friend says it…

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are colleges in super high cost of living areas like NYU the same price as colleges in the middle of nowhere New England? Those dorm prices cannot be the same

Williams runs on $97k, Amherst about the same. These are as prestigious as Harvard and Yale, but at a lower cost than schools like NYU.

Williams nor Amherst are anywhere near Harvard level, are you crazy? They’re good generalist teaching colleges, but Ivy level they are not.

Both are better than any Ivy for undergraduate education. About 20 years ago Harvard actually set up a task force and produced a report in an attempt to improve their teaching to the levels of the top SLACs.

Princeton is much better than Amherst and Williams for undergraduate education. Same with Yale. And Brown. And frankly, Columbia.

Princeton can play, not better but can play so I will give you that. A close friends kid is at Brown now while their oldest went to a top SLAC. They are pretty open that the SLAC was a better education. Frankly (I can fit that in too) I cannot imagine Columbia being better.

I don’t see your point. Top ivies have tiny courses, rigorous academics, and real research.

I've been in both places as someone who started out at a premier LAC and transferred to an Ivy. The Ivy had more resources and a bigger and more impressive student body, but the LAC had better teachers and classroom experience. The Ivy wasn't bad, certainly, and had some great professors. But the small classes at the LACs are just enough of a different experience that I still remember it fondly despite transferring. This was almost 30 years ago but not surprised if it's still the same case today.

I've taught at both a SLAC and a T10 university (so, not Ivy, but ranked higher than several Ivies). I would say that overall, the faculty are slightly better at the T10, but students get more attention from and interaction with the faculty at the SLAC. The gap in the quality of faculty is more pronounced in the lab sciences than in the humanities or math. Obviously, there are also more serious research lab opportunities at the T10. OTOH, all the faculty at the SLAC are good teachers. Some of the faculty at the T10 are excellent researchers but mediocre teachers.

As a faculty member, I am happier at the T10, but will strongly encourage my kids to go to a SLAC unless they have a specific interest in the lab sciences.

Can you explain how there's a massive STEM gap but LACs are still dominating the Grad school admissions process for these subjects? Does it really matter that a professor is really great at giving millions of dollars in grants if the undergrads just have projects advised by grad students and often of little significance.

The simple answer is that they aren't "dominating" grad school admission when you compare apples to apples -- high school students of similar wealth and entry credentials and major of interest

Can you show data on that? I’ve not seen a single source show that liberal arts college students aren’t very successful in graduate admissions per capita, even in STEM subjects that aren’t engineering (for obvious reasons).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are colleges in super high cost of living areas like NYU the same price as colleges in the middle of nowhere New England? Those dorm prices cannot be the same

Williams runs on $97k, Amherst about the same. These are as prestigious as Harvard and Yale, but at a lower cost than schools like NYU.

Williams nor Amherst are anywhere near Harvard level, are you crazy? They’re good generalist teaching colleges, but Ivy level they are not.

Both are better than any Ivy for undergraduate education. About 20 years ago Harvard actually set up a task force and produced a report in an attempt to improve their teaching to the levels of the top SLACs.

What are you basing this on? This is such a wrong assumption. My DC is at Yale and is having an absolutely amazing time. She has great relationships with professors (in one class the professor takes the students out to a restaurant every week, in another class the professor took students for a fully-funded 2 week trip to Europe last summer (we paid nada despite being a full pay family), her professors have made themselves available etc... This notion that a small college offers the best college experience is truly overrated many times.

Did you read before you mindlessly posted? Derek Bok set up a working group at Harvard because R1 teaching was inferior to teaching at top SLACs and he wanted to fix it. They made some suggestions that mostly haven’t been acted upon and today things are if anything worse than they were. The fact that your daughter is having a great experience in no way contradicts the position taken by Derek Bok that SLACs provide superior undergraduate education compared to R1s.

It makes complete sense. The incentives for success at each is the opposite of the other. Teaching at SLACs and research at R1s.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t be outraged. Just don’t go if merit isn’t offered to bring the cost down. Why the handwringing? There are other options.

With a few limited exceptions such as WashU, none of these schools offer merit scholarships.

Merit scholarships are available everywhere except the Ivies, Stanford, MIT and CalTech. And all of the non-merit schools offer exceptionally good financial aid. Of course, it's incredibly difficult to get a merit scholarship at Duke, Chicago, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Rice, and so on. But they do exist.

As I said, "with a few limited exceptions." Of course they exist. But they are not available "everywhere" except the schools you named - most elite schools do not offer them.

Anonymous wrote:Why are colleges in super high cost of living areas like NYU the same price as colleges in the middle of nowhere New England? Those dorm prices cannot be the same

They charge higher tuition, which may be understandable because schools like NYU and USC can spread fixed costs over a much larger number students.