


#1 question Students ask of other students is, "What's ....?"

#1 question students ask of administration officials is, "...?"
#1 question students ask of professors is, of course, "curve or point grading?"
YKidMV
Understood.Big Dog wrote: ↑Sun Sep 03, 2017 11:11 amUnderstand, but my way of thinking about college for my kids was value vs. price. A top private (like need-only MIT) is a little less than 2x the cost of Urbana-Champaign. The question becomes, does a need-only top private (or even U-Michigan or Berkeley) provide 2x more value than UI? If so, sticker might be worth it.I believe the statement was meant to be hypothetical for decision making. Point was ... we are going through a process.
Of course, Rose Hulman and CMU offer merit aid, so they are even less than sticker.
Keeping you away from my kids. Well, maybe not my 3rd one. The consensus seems that we won't care much about him anyway.itstoomuch wrote: ↑Sun Sep 03, 2017 11:41 amChose a school that has a low or high incident of Hookups/Engagements.![]()
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#1 question Students ask of other students is, "What's ....?"![]()
#1 question students ask of administration officials is, "...?"
#1 question students ask of professors is, of course, "curve or point grading?"
YKidMV
I'm too lazy to check if I noted this above. We went to Purdue over the Summer, maybe the Spring. We left impressed and it is on the list.DrGoogle2017 wrote: ↑Sun Sep 03, 2017 11:26 amWhen my kid applied to Purdue, the school only gave her $10k per year for scholarship. Not enough to go out of state. Michigan gave her nothing. But I was glad she had them on her list because she knew by Dec that she was accepted somewhere, softened the blow of being waitlisted at MIT, even after doing the WTP there in the summer. In the end she went in state to the school in the top 15 for CS, she was a Regents scholar, and had a great experience there. She was a tutor after freshman year and then TA, and head TA junior year. Extremely supportive faculty. This is a kid with top SAT scores and top GPAs. Maybe a bit lacking on ECs. But not a kid who's reading Physics in the summer or coding in her spare time for fun. So I think your kid will do well regardless of the school.
I'm 3 of 4. The 2nd middle child. I can way out sad you with my stories! There was walking up hill - to and from school. Then there was the snow - even during summer.
Thank you.Doubleeagle4me wrote: ↑Sun Sep 03, 2017 8:24 pmWant a good engineering school? If you have a 30 act score you can get in state tuition at ohio state in Columbus.My daughter is now a junior in ME and loves it. Can't beat a big ten school for undergrad. Also make sure that the engineering school is ABET certified or you are wasting your money.
timmy wrote:Keeping you away from my kids. Well, maybe not my 3rd one. The consensus seems that we won't care much about him anyway.
.I could understand why son didn't hookup while he was an undergrad. At a private residential university, everyone is from everywhere else and will go to everywhich way on graduation. But at least, Network.
When he went to a foreign school for grad degree, I told him he had a Great opportunity to Network. Lots of 25,000 undergrads who need the mentoring of an older male.
Then he became a research assistant at a major state university, I said, You have a really Really golden opportunity. The 25,000 Opposites are looking. You have the goods and should be showing off your feathers.
So now he's 32. And "Interviewing"![]()
I think the genders at their age look at "picking a college and college scholarships" differently. And could be making a choice different from the parents
Howdy
Not necessarily a "long-term mate" but at least the firstTimmy wrote: I read a really interesting article once ... It was along the lines of what you posted. It basically made your point. For those interested, college is the best place to find a long term mate. It gave a bunch of reasons that seemed legit. If I find it, I'll post it.
It's gender specific. Check out a book "Date-onomics: How Dating Became a Lopsided Numbers Game" by Jon Birger. The vast majority of universities have more women than men, and in some of these schools the ratio is so lopsided that dating is excessively promiscuous. The best colleges for women are in San Francisco and the Silicon Valley. The best colleges for men are everywhere else.timmy wrote: ↑Mon Sep 04, 2017 7:17 amI read a really interesting article once ... It was along the lines of what you posted. It basically made your point. For those interested, college is the best place to find a long term mate. It gave a bunch of reasons that seemed legit. If I find it, I'll post it.
Howdytimmy wrote: ↑Mon Sep 04, 2017 11:47 amRegarding personal experience, I've worked (more than 6 months, complex matter) with 3 folks from MIT. 2 were extremely impressive - the 3rd not so much. Of the 2, 1 one was the best engineer that I've worked with. Quite literally, he's the type of engineer that invents/ discovers equations. Mortals like me are lucky enough to use them.
Yes. For example, Princeton's program is excellent.Big Dog wrote: ↑Mon Sep 04, 2017 10:21 pm^^with all due respect, 4 of the 8 Ivies have top 20 engineering programs: Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, & Penn. The first two are tied at 13th. Harvard is #23, but has millions to pump into their program to upgrade it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/educ ... chool.html
Test scores do go pretty quick, once they are available. The Common App usually goes within a couple of days from the time your kid pushes send and you pay the fee.With everything online, you'd think sending ACT score and grades would be quick and easy. No!
Really not worth the huge IT investment for a once a year activity.College admissions lags well behind current technology for some reason.
It is a racket. For example, ACT costs per test date, per school
ETA: SATs are no angels, but iirc they don’t charge extra for each test dateRegular report
Processed within one week after your request is received, ACT delivers regular reports to colleges and agencies you've selected depending on their preferred schedule—at least every two weeks.
Fees for Regular Report
(effective through 8/31/2018)
Tested after 9/1/2015 - $13.00 per test date per report
Tested before 9/1/2015 - $37.00 per test date per report (includes a nonrefundable $24.00 archived scores fee)
Priority report
Priority reports can only be sent within the United States. Processed within two working days after your request, priority reports are usually delivered three to four business days later.
Fees for Priority Report
(effective through 8/31/2018)
Tested after 9/1/2015 - $16.50 per test date per report
Tested before 9/1/2015 - $40.50 per test date per report (includes a nonrefundable $24.00 archived scores fee)
You can send four free ACT scores if you select that option before you receive your scores; afterwards, it's $13 per school, per test date.timmy wrote: ↑Sun Oct 01, 2017 6:58 pmI believe SAT/ ACT charge $15 per school with the first four schools free.
In terms of transcripts and grades, you type them in (to online App). The real copies are sent (I believe) after the Fall semester. (Of course, if you submit false info and are accepted to the school, when the real info shows, you'll be dumped.)
I know this is a once of year process but there are 3 to 4 million 12th graders in the USA. If 1/2 apply for schools ... that's a lot of inefficiency.
It does beat using a type writer ... typing on stock forms. Not that I am old enough to remember that![]()
A money-maker, to be sure, but only a few colleges superscore the ACT, so only one report date needs to be sent. (yes, the highly selective colleges do want to see all reports, but that is only a recent change.)It is a racket. For example, ACT costs per test date, per school.
That’s a fair point, but from a cost accounting standpoint, SAT manages to send multiple test dates for one fee; I can’t imagine ACT has a cost driver that warrants the additional expense. Maybe calling it a racket was excessive, but over the years, I’ve become jaded and cynical about the college admissions industry, while becoming more positive about college admissions itself. Go figure.Big Dog wrote: ↑Mon Oct 02, 2017 4:14 pmA money-maker, to be sure, but only a few colleges superscore the ACT, so only one report date needs to be sent. (yes, the highly selective colleges do want to see all reports, but that is only a recent change.)It is a racket. For example, ACT costs per test date, per school.
Remember, the vast majority of students attend their directional state uni close to home, and may only apply to a handful of local/regional colleges. Those applying to the super-select are definitely not the norm.
Right, but then nearly every college superscores the SAT. Only a few superscore the ACT (bcos it is in their best interest to do so).SAT manages to send multiple test dates for one fee
I'm one of the most cynical out there, so get in line.I’ve become jaded and cynical about the college admissions industry...
The second half of that quote speaks to the admiration I have, for the most part, in the decisions reached by Admissions Officers at some of the selective schools. They seem to read between the lines of LoRs, and apparently read essays carefully, and I have been impressed how they seem to reject the posers and accept the real deal. I have become a believer in holistic admissions.
Consider it read. Thanks for sharing!Psyayeayeduck wrote: ↑Tue Oct 03, 2017 7:54 amThis will get buried with the sea of posts but hopefully one day someone reading this will follow my path regarding scholarships. As a full-ride scholarship recipient (undergrad and grad), I found some tips along the way that made life financially easier.
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- Filling out scholarship applications is very similar to filling out job applications. In both cases, you are trying to convince someone or a group of people to give you money. So start off by having some generic essay templates with fill-in-the-blank entries at the ready. A lot of these scholarship essays are similar to each other doing the same song and dance of why should they give you money.
- When starting out, your best chances of getting a scholarship are from local ones because applicant pool is so small compared to the large, popular ones like the Coca-Cola or Microsoft scholarships of the world. You have a better chance going against 20 applicants versus thousands of applicants. It's all about numbers. In addition, some of smaller businesses love using scholarships as a way to advertise themselves in a more personalized manner. They win because they are advertising by giving back to the community and the recipient wins because free money.
- Focus on the smaller amount scholarships. $100 here, $500 there. It adds up! People focus on the one-and-done full-ride scholarships but keep forgetting the smaller ones. Like my previous bullet, those smaller amount scholarships have a smaller pool of applicants versus the one-and-done full-ride scholarships. When you build up an arsenal of scholarships under your belt, you have an easier time getting future scholarships because your CV fills up faster. By then, you become a viable consideration for the larger ones including the full-ride scholarships. This is how I got my full-ride scholarship when I was an undergrad. From my experience, it is easier to get awarded money when you have already been awarded money regardless of amount.
- The more focus the scholarship is towards your major, the better. Again, you can't control who applies but you can control which pool of applicants you can be involved. The engineering scholarship is a better route than the general scholarship.
- Keep applying at all years of your schooling. For whatever reason, student applicants drop significantly after their freshman year. Whether it is school workload, laziness, or whatever reason I can't think of, applying for scholarships especially in the later years is more critical than ever because now you can show your academic prowess through taken classes and grades as evidence. A scholarship committee will be able to get a better grasp of what kind of student you are when show them that you can handle a semesters worth of school workload.
- Visit your school's financial aid office and scholarship office. They exist for a reason and have more knowledge/resources than you do.
I'd be interested to hear the basis for your admiration. To be clear, I'm not doubting you - in fact, I'd love for this to be the case. It's just that, based on how incredibly competitive the process is today, it seems as though each school could fill their class 5x with students who are the "real deal," and the main issue is picking among them. Is your admiration based on your own personal experience, or do you have some inside info on the admissions process? Thanks.TomatoTomahto wrote: ↑Mon Oct 02, 2017 7:17 pmThe second half of that quote speaks to the admiration I have, for the most part, in the decisions reached by Admissions Officers at some of the selective schools. They seem to read between the lines of LoRs, and apparently read essays carefully, and I have been impressed how they seem to reject the posers and accept the real deal. I have become a believer in holistic admissions.
I have no inside information on the admissions process, but I have observed it, closely, for a few years. There are of course, as you say, 5x available seats or more "real deal" students that would be academically suited to each selective school, but there probably aren't close to as many who would be a good fit. Harvard and Yale, for example, accept students with roughly comparable SATs, GPAs, etc., but I think I could spot a Harvard-fit vs. a Yale-fit at a thousand yards. Every year, on college confidential, I get a few requests to give some advice to an applicant. I give most of them encouragement, but don't deal with them extensively. Over the years, I have spent extra time on 4 kids, whose stats were no better than the rest (and in one case considerably less good), but so far I'm 4 for 4 in picking the ones that I think are a Yale fit.jodydavis wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2017 5:40 pmI'd be interested to hear the basis for your admiration. To be clear, I'm not doubting you - in fact, I'd love for this to be the case. It's just that, based on how incredibly competitive the process is today, it seems as though each school could fill their class 5x with students who are the "real deal," and the main issue is picking among them. Is your admiration based on your own personal experience, or do you have some inside info on the admissions process? Thanks.TomatoTomahto wrote: ↑Mon Oct 02, 2017 7:17 pmThe second half of that quote speaks to the admiration I have, for the most part, in the decisions reached by Admissions Officers at some of the selective schools. They seem to read between the lines of LoRs, and apparently read essays carefully, and I have been impressed how they seem to reject the posers and accept the real deal. I have become a believer in holistic admissions.
TomatoTomahto wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2017 7:57 pmI have no inside information on the admissions process, but I have observed it, closely, for a few years. There are of course, as you say, 5x available seats or more "real deal" students that would be academically suited to each selective school, but there probably aren't close to as many who would be a good fit. Harvard and Yale, for example, accept students with roughly comparable SATs, GPAs, etc., but I think I could spot a Harvard-fit vs. a Yale-fit at a thousand yards. Every year, on college confidential, I get a few requests to give some advice to an applicant. I give most of them encouragement, but don't deal with them extensively. Over the years, I have spent extra time on 4 kids, whose stats were no better than the rest (and in one case considerably less good), but so far I'm 4 for 4 in picking the ones that I think are a Yale fit.
And, that's what I think AOs do very well. My son's year, 8 of his classmates matriculated at Penn. I knew most of those kids pretty well, and aside from one development case (a subject for another time), the kids were well chosen for Penn. I also knew some of the kids who were not accepted to Penn, and I don't know of one of them that, based on much more information than the AOs had, I would have suggested were a better choice than any of the accepted kids (save the development outlier). I had known these kids for years, they spent time at my house, I knew who was resume padding and who was sincerely interested, I spent time with the teachers, but the AOs had to read between the lines of a LoR, parse their essays, and made decisions that correlated highly with mine based on considerably less data. I find that impressive.
From personal experience, with my son, he did not have the highest GPA of the kids applying to Yale that year. His school-based ECs were not noteworthy. He and his best friend weren't even selected for the Cum Laude Society by their fellow students, so they joked that they would have to get that honor at Yale and Dartmouth, respectively. He has done quite well at Yale.
So what makes a Harvard man, vs. a Yale man, other than being a Kennedy? Or a Rutgers man?TomatoTomahto wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2017 7:57 pmHarvard and Yale, for example, accept students with roughly comparable SATs, GPAs, etc., but I think I could spot a Harvard-fit vs. a Yale-fit at a thousand yards.
That’s difficult to answer, and even more difficult to answer without angering fans of HarvardThatGuy wrote: ↑Sat Oct 07, 2017 10:34 amSo what makes a Harvard man, vs. a Yale man, other than being a Kennedy? Or a Rutgers man?TomatoTomahto wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2017 7:57 pmHarvard and Yale, for example, accept students with roughly comparable SATs, GPAs, etc., but I think I could spot a Harvard-fit vs. a Yale-fit at a thousand yards.
+1. Admissions committees are not geniuses; they're probably superfluous. It's arbitrary at the tippy-top. "Back in the day," the kid who got into Harvard got into Princeton and certainly Penn. Not any more (forthcoming anecdotal counterexamples notwithstanding). I've recently seen a few dozen top kids get into top Ivies and the most striking thing is the percentage that get into one (even Harvard or Yale) and get into no others. It's completely idiosyncratic. I guess sometimes if comes down to who's the better liar (have seen this firsthand). Legacy protestations notwithstanding, legacy status means a lot. Doesn't mean legacies all get in, but I'd rather go to the (mythical) casino where the odds were tipped slightly in my favor before I'd go all the others where the odds are tipped in the house favor. For low-prob events, this makes a big difference.jodydavis wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2017 5:40 pm
I'd be interested to hear the basis for your admiration. To be clear, I'm not doubting you - in fact, I'd love for this to be the case. It's just that, based on how incredibly competitive the process is today, it seems as though each school could fill their class 5x with students who are the "real deal," and the main issue is picking among them. Is your admiration based on your own personal experience, or do you have some inside info on the admissions process?
TomatoTomahto wrote: ↑Sat Oct 07, 2017 4:27 pmThat’s difficult to answer, and even more difficult to answer without angering fans of Harvard![]()
It’s a bit like the scene in Rain Man where he knows, instantly, that 82 toothpicks fell on the floor. I’m sure he couldn’t have verbalized how he counted them so quickly.
I favor Y over H, and I’m sure that would come out in my explanation. I have a lot of experience with Y students. I have less experience with H students and grads, but many grads seem to mention that they attended H within minutes of meeting, something that doesn’t seem to happen as quickly (if at all) with Y grads (hmmmmm).![]()
Kidding aside, they’re both great schools, but they attract different types. I laugh every time I hear of kids who applied to every Ivy. It’s a stunt, as no human with a personality would be happy at all 8. Brown and Columbia? Please.
You did say that H and Y "attract different types," but it's possible I read too much into that. My point is that, because there is such a wide range of different types within each school (from artists, to hockey players, to physics majors, to whatever), it's hard for me to see any strong patterns, much less be able to identify right away where someone went to school. It's quite possible that these patterns exist and that others are more discerning than I am, but I guess I'm just saying that my own personal experience differs from yours.TomatoTomahto wrote: ↑Sat Oct 07, 2017 8:15 pmI never said that there was one “type” at Yale. Coming back to my Brown and Columbia example, how many kids do you know that would fit well into both?
That self-selection, coupled with the advice of parents, classmates, and GC, probably leads to a very different set of applicants at schools that, at a glance, have similar stats for accepted students. You might be right, and to some extent, it might be the GCs at my son’s HS who directed applicants toward their best fit, and the AOs trusted the GC’s sense. The HS did send a high percentage of kids to selective schools, and the GCs had ongoing relationships with the AO.That said, I have no problem believing that a particular student might fit better at one over the other. I also have no problem believing that a student might choose one school over the other on that basis, and that this self-selection might explain whatever differences there are between the students at one school versus the other. However, I have a harder time believing that the admissions offices can make these fit determinations with a tremendous amount of accuracy, once you get beyond the major, broad metrics.
No, they don't mention Yale within the first few minutes. But every last one of them says, "When I was in New Haven..."TomatoTomahto wrote: ↑Sat Oct 07, 2017 4:27 pmI have a lot of experience with Y students. I have less experience with H students and grads, but many grads seem to mention that they attended H within minutes of meeting, something that doesn’t seem to happen as quickly (if at all) with Y grads (hmmmmm).
This is just my personal opinion, but making a school more challenging by finishing sooner isn't making it more challenging in a good way. I think it's important for the actual coursework to be challenging in difficulty, not in quantity. And I think it's important to be able to have classmates who have the same depth of understanding of the course material.